Gypsy Jazz Guitarist Remi Harris

Arthur Busch 0:18

Okay, this is Arthur Bush. You're listening to Radio Free Flint, and I have a wonderful program for you today. And for all of you jazz and blues guitar fans out there, this will be a special treat for you. We have Remy Harris, who is a jazz and blues guitarist, and uh he is in uh the United Kingdom this morning for me, afternoon for him. Good morning, good morning, or good afternoon, Remy.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Good morning.

Arthur Busch 0:54

Where are you at at this moment?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

What town? So we're in the in the countryside, um, kind of between a town called Tembry Wells and a town called uh city called Worcester. So we're kind of in in uh in the countryside in between a few towns, yeah.

Arthur Busch 1:12

Okay. And uh Remy, uh just uh for uh the audience's edification, uh he has a worldwide following on social media for his talents as a guitarist. Uh he is uh a remarkable player. I want to start out by um reading a bit of a um a review that was done by uh uh by the um magazine and uh Jazz Man, uh, in which one of the reviewers, uh a fellow by the name of Ian Mann, writes, I first witnessed him, that's Remy, playing in the gypsy jazz style a decade ago when he performed with his trio in a nearby town. That was back in 2010. How old were you in 2010? Uh 22, I guess. Yeah. He says, I've seen him perform many times, both in my capacity as a reviewer and as a very satisfied punter. What's a punter?

SPEAKER_00 2:21

That's that's English for um uh audience member, you know.

Arthur Busch 2:26

Uh see, in in in our English, it's you play football and you kick the ball. That's a kicker. Oh I thought it had to do with drinking. I thought it had to do with drinking when I first read it.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Well, it kind of is it kind of is as well, because if you're in a in a pub, you're you can be a punter in a pub, but also I gotcha.

Arthur Busch 2:49

I've never seen him play a bad gig, and over the years he has accrued a very healthy following on the jazz circuit. His reputation flourishing by sheer word of mouth. Audiences at Remy Harris's gigs tend to come back for more. As a result, Harris has become one of the United Kingdom's most successful jazz guitarists and increasingly popular live attraction. He has played sellout shows at the Brecon and the Chelten Chelten, how do you say it? Cheltenham? Cheltenham. Chetland Jazz Festivals. Brecon, I've heard of that. And in 2016, he traveled to Canada to appear at the prestigious Montreal Jazz Festival. I might add, that's the largest jazz festival of its kind in the world, uh, or in North America, and I believe the world. Uh Harris's performance at Cheltham have led uh to airplay on Jamie Cullum's Radio 2 program. That's the BBC, I take it, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Yeah.

Arthur Busch 3:58

And he's a big deal when it comes to jazz. Uh and Sherry Matthews' show on the BBC Radio 6. The summer of 2016 also saw him appearing on national radio and TV as he and his trio guested with Cullum at the later's BBC Promenade concert for Harris, the culmination of a six-year journey from the backroom of the bell in Lelminster to the Royal Albert Hall. So that's what they got to say about you, Remy. And uh I believe it's true because I've listened to your music for a number of years now. Um so Remy, tell us a little bit about uh uh about where you come from.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Uh well I grew up in uh little town in Herefordshire, which is not far from where I am now. It's called um Bromyard. And um yeah, it's a very rural little town. And um yeah, I grew up around there um playing guitar and playing football. And we used to we used to have a band, um, me and some mates who lived just literally up the road from me. So we used to we spent a lot of our childhood um, you know.

Arthur Busch 5:19

And your mum, your mom, uh tell us about your mom and dad.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Yeah, so mum mum was from Normandy, as as you know, um and uh dad was uh originally from around the kind of West Midlands area, and I I believe they met in London um uh when dad was at university down there, college. And I think mum was traveling over and they met. Yes, both. Now they were what what did they do for a living? Well, dad uh they both um painters, uh dad's uh kind of landscape and seascape artist, although uh he was doing it for a living back then, I think obviously he was studying at the time, but and he was doing it for a living. And then um recent years he's been making his living doing gardening, but he still paints, uh he's still always working on stuff.

Arthur Busch 6:18

And he he was selling his paintings as well. And your mom was uh was an illustrator.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah, yeah. So mom used to do uh kind of Christmas cards and um and paintings that were kind of uh like cartoon-based, I guess. Um but and children's books.

Arthur Busch 6:39

She illustrated children's books, as I understand. Yeah, that kind of thing, yeah. Okay, so where you grew up is sort of a rural area, some distance from Oxford, right? Um yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

It's kind of it's quite away from Oxford, it's in the in the West Midlands, so we're kind of um near a town called uh near Worcester, the city of Worcester and Hereford, which is kind of towards the Welsh border.

Arthur Busch 7:10

Okay, and uh in that town, you your mom and dad uh gave you an interesting name, Remy.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Yeah.

Arthur Busch 7:19

How'd that happen?

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Well, uh I didn't know this until um like I was in my early twenties, but apparently mum got the idea from the the musical scale, Do Remi Faso Lati Do, um, which is obviously in the film The Sound of Music, but um so I'm a second and third notes Ray Me. But it is it is obviously a French name as well, so um yes, but that's where she said she got the inspiration for it.

Arthur Busch 7:52

All right, and uh and when did you first start to play the guitar?

SPEAKER_00 7:58

I was I was seven years old when I had my first real guitar. Um, I had toy guitars before that when I was a little boy, and um, and I used to muck around on my dad's guitar, but I didn't properly start learning until I was seven, yeah.

Arthur Busch 8:14

And and so uh eventually you your dad also played a guitar, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Yeah, yeah, my dad and my uncle, uh my dad's brother, uh they both played, and so I was always kind of surrounded by you know the sights and sounds of guitar, and I used to sit and watch my dad practice, and uh I used to sit when we when he'd be watching uh you know a Jimi Hendrix video, I'd be sat on the sofa next to him. So I was I was always absorbing all that kind of guitar music, mainly kind of sixties, seventies uh guitar music. That was the main um thing he was most into at the time. So obviously the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, um Led Zeppelin, Leonard Skinnard, these kind of rock and blues bands, Eric Clapton and all that kind of thing.

Arthur Busch 9:10

Very good. And uh you uh your earlier influences uh uh were those people, I take it.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Yeah, that was I'd basically kind of uh absorbed my dad's taste in music, I guess, and just uh so I was yeah, big into all that music and still am to this day. It's still some of my favorite music. Um I consider myself really lucky in that fact that some of my favorite music today is was my favorite music when I was seven years old, so I was kind of um really lucky to be so there's so so one thing popped off the page when I read it.

Arthur Busch 9:52

There were two things really. One was you you love Jimi Hendrix when you're young. Hmm. Yeah. And and it took me a little bit, I'll tell you a personal story. Um my son Michael, who you know, moved to Seattle. So he wanted to take me to the electronic arts museum, I guess it is, in downtown Seattle, right by the Space Needle. So that there's a whole section of that dedicated to Jimi Hendrix because that's where Jimi Hendrix, that was his hometown. And my son was arguing with me about watching this movie because it was such a beautiful day out, and uh he wanted to stay outside. I said, Michael, you'll never see this again if you don't go now. He watched the movie, he didn't want to leave the movie, and when we got when we left that place, he didn't stop playing Jimi Hendrix music for about two weeks.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Ah, cool.

Arthur Busch 10:55

So so I guess I hadn't realized that he had never heard of Jimi Hendrix much. Well, I mean, probably you'd heard the name, but he didn't really understand what it was. And so when you said Jimi Hendrix, it it sort of surprised me. Uh so you it was because of your dad that you got interested in him?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah, yeah, dad. Dad's a big Hendrix fan and used to have lots of uh videos, um, live performances of Hendricks on on VHS.

Arthur Busch 11:25

Well, Hendrix really, his career really made a big I mean the first big breaks of his career were playing in uh in London and in and in England as well, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Yeah, yeah. So I think it was Charles Chandler of the Animals um the um brought him over um to England, and that's where he kind of made his name. And of course, at that time there was the British blues boom that was happening over here with Eric Clapton and um you know the Yardbirds and all this kind of um British blues guitar playing, Stan Webb's Chicken Shack, um Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, uh The Who, all these kind of people were so London would have been a really really happening place for that kind of music. And of course, Hendrix came in, and from what I understand, it just he completely um took the place by storm um because he was just incredible, you know, and he and he really was a perfect setting for him in the sense that the kind of music he was playing was uh absorbed straight away by that kind of scene. Whereas I think over in America that wasn't so there wasn't so much of a scene going on, so it's harder for him to um get a foot in.

Arthur Busch 12:45

And and another of your influences was Led Zeppelin.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Yeah, yeah, big like really big influence on me during through my teenage years, you know, they were um and still are, you know, one of my favorite bands, yeah.

Arthur Busch 13:03

And uh one of the best known members of that band is Robert Plant.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

Mm-hmm.

Arthur Busch 13:10

And now, as I understand it, Robert Plant lives lives nearby or lives within some distance of your home.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Yeah, so Robert Plant and the drummer John Bonham, they uh both from this kind of West Midlands area. Um slightly um Robert Plant, um from what I understand grew up in Stourbridge, I think, if I'm right, which is um slightly north of here, uh maybe like 45 minutes north, but he lives um currently within I think about half an hour of this of where I am now.

Arthur Busch 13:47

And you got to know Robert Plant and his uh family, I take it.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Uh I met him, I've met him a few times, and uh I briefly played in a band with his son, who was playing drums at the time. This was going back years, but um uh yeah, so Robert Plant was um used to come to band practice and bring um his son with uh his drum kit and everything, and and so um that's how I first met him. And since then I've met him a few times, you know, at gigs and things and um and stuff like that.

Arthur Busch 14:28

And he's come to watch you play, I take it.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Yeah, he's been to a couple of my gigs. I'm not not sure whether he's come specifically to see me, but he's he's been in the audience at some gigs that I've played at.

Arthur Busch 14:40

You're pretty modest there, Remy. You're pretty a modest dude. The band has been the Remy Harris trio. That's funny. Uh so obviously it wasn't necessarily because he grew up around you, you just loved his music, I take it.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Yeah, yeah, I didn't know uh where he was from when I was little. Although although my my grandma actually said to me once she saw him in the post office, um, because she she was uh she used to live in Kidderminster, which is very near where he lives. And so I think she saw him around one time and told me that when I was a kid.

Arthur Busch 15:19

Um so you're your your uh your little town there, Hereford, Hereford, uh and Bromyard, uh they they have also produced some other uh the world's well-known musicians. Tell us about those guys.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Yeah, so um well Bromyard specifically. Um uh one of the most well-known musicians to come out of Bromyard was uh Mick Ralphs, who was the guitar player with Bad Company. And um, yeah, he he apparently he went to school in in uh Bromyard, which would have been the school. It's this it had moved sites by the time I went there, but it was the same, it was essentially the same school. And uh I've met people who who knew him when he was younger, you know, in town.

Arthur Busch 16:17

And and the jazz trumpeter Brian Corbett, I understand, is also from your school.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Yes, yeah. Um Brian Corbett uh lived on the same road that I grew up on, actually. But he's a little older than me, so I didn't know him when I was uh when I was growing up. But yeah, he lived at the top of the Winslow Road, and I was towards the bottom of Winslow Road.

Arthur Busch 16:39

All right, and so your your area is rich in tradition of uh music, and obviously your family was too. Where was your first gig?

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Uh my first gig was at my um primary school. Uh I would have been about 11 years old, and it was like an after-school concert, and um it the band um comprised of my uh some of my teachers and my dad played in the band. And then I was um I was brought in to play a couple of numbers at the end of the at the end of the show, and um from what I remember it was I played back in the USSR, which was uh the big 11 years old, yeah, and communication breakdown, which was led up in June, and uh that was it, yeah.

Arthur Busch 17:37

That's funny. Well, since then you've had the good fortune to play at some really cool places. You've played all around uh the globe in some ways. Uh, you've been to Canada, of course, at the Montreal Jazz Festival, the most prestigious of all the jazz festivals in the world, in my opinion. Uh you've played throughout Australia, uh, France, uh continental Europe, uh, London, Ireland, Scotland, uh, Italy, and Norway. Did I miss a few?

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Uh yeah, I think, yeah. And Bromyard. And Bromyard.

Arthur Busch 18:16

You missed you miss Belgium. How in the hell did that happen?

SPEAKER_00 18:20

I haven't been to Belgium yet. Uh hopefully one day.

Arthur Busch 18:24

It's so close to France. Uh, so you I mean you you've had the experience to get out of your neighborhood and go go around a bit and play some music. How many gigs do you think you've done since uh you started at 22 years old playing professionally?

SPEAKER_00 18:43

I don't know. I I wouldn't know how I'll just start counting to be honest. Um, I mean, I I was very I've been through periods when I've been very, very busy. I've done months where I've done, I think one month um quite a few years back, I did 27 gigs within one month, and it was it was just such a busy period at that time. Um, often doing two gigs a day on on weekends and things. And I don't play, I don't gig as often as that anymore, but it was a period that I was uh learning a lot and um experiencing lots of new things. So so I don't know how many gigs now.

Arthur Busch 19:24

Your music, your music is I mean, it's hard for us over here on the other side of that big big pond uh to comprehend that there's millions of people on the other side of that big pond, but your your country's you know really, really a big place. You play you're played on national radio over there all the time, is what I understand.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Uh I have done. Over the years I've had um a bit of at play here and there.

Arthur Busch 19:52

Yeah. So the BBC is the is the and they they have numerous channels as well, right? They have numerous yeah. But you play you played, I don't know, I I wrote it all down here with such a volume I had to copy the to copy it. Um your appearances on radio throughout your country um uh uh have been impressive as hell.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Um well the B BBC is really great um for that kind of thing because you've got the national stations, um, you know, radio one, two, three, four, five, and then you've also got the regional stations, so BBC Hereford and Worcester, you know, um BBC, you know, um uh Gloucestershire and and the different counties have all got their own station. So um so I've been on lots of the local stations, and then I've also um played on Radio 2, Radio 3, which are the national stations. And they've got this scheme over here called BBC Introducing, um, which has been really great for me. Um it's where you kind of uh upload your tracks onto the BBC website um and it goes to your local station, so in my case, Hereford and Worcester, BBC Herevin and Worcester, and the the the guys at the at the introducing um BBC Herevin and Worcester um show will go through the submissions and pick out the ones they like and play them on the local radio, and then every now and again they'll be asked to submit their favorites to the national level. And so I've I've been selected by the local BBC introducing um show, and then I've been passed on to uh to the national um stations, and that's how Jamie Cullen picked up on us, and we got played on uh Radio Six and Three and uh three and two, yeah. And so Jamie Cullen's show and Karis Matthews.

Arthur Busch 22:06

And um and and uh when I was looking at uh uh uh all of your reviews of your performances, um some of the places that you've appeared at uh were quite remarkable. I mean the Buckingham Palace, that must have been cool.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Yeah, yeah, that was a that was an interesting, interesting gig. How did you get that? How did you get that deal? It was it's um it's kind of a long chain of events. It all started at a gig in Hereford, and we were spotted um playing in Hereford and invited to play a festival in south of France. Um and so we went down and played this gig in South France, and from there there was somebody there who spotted us there and invited us to play at a party in London, and there was somebody at that party who then invited us to play another party in London, and at that second party there were um some kind of celebrities and stuff, and uh one of the uh people there was um Mike Batt, who is um a music uh kind of composer and um producer, and and uh he was organizing the music at Buckingham Palace for a Christmas event, and so he saw us at the second party and said, you know, you guys would be great at this um thing that I'm putting on at the palace, and so we got invited along um from there, basically. So it's this weird kind of chain of events that took us to the south of France and then back up to London and and um yeah, yeah, you never know where things lead.

Arthur Busch 23:54

Yeah, well, it also led you to play at Royal Albert Hall, which is one of the world's most renowned music venues.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Yeah, yeah. That was um that was for the BBC Proms, um, and that was where we kind of um played with Jamie Cullum.

Arthur Busch 24:12

Yeah, I see. And uh your music has also been reviewed by various uh people around the globe. I read one interview, one review here just a second ago from Jazz Man, which uh but some of the words that they use to describe your music, Jamie Cullum, who's one of the most well-known um BBC programs in the United Kingdom, called it an extra you were an extraordinary musician. Uh the BBC radio series Matthews said it's astonishing stuff, um, and others uh uh to the Telegraph, which is uh a large newspaper uh in your country, called your music uh terrific. Um uh and it goes on and on. So anyway, you've had a lot of acclaim for a young guy, and uh uh how do you how does that make you feel when you hear people describe your music in such a such glowing terms?

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Um I mean uh I don't know really. I I think it's obviously it's um flattered that people like what I do. Um and I'm I'm glad that people enjoy my kind of playing and stuff, and I and that's it, I guess. Yeah, it's it's cool.

Arthur Busch 25:42

Well, I mean let's let's hear one of your songs that you you you uh you prepared to play for us. That's a good time for that so that people can see what is so terrific.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Live gotta live up to that. Um that's a lot of pressure.

Arthur Busch 27:35

Bravo, as the French would say. Bravo. Uh Remy, um, what was the name of that song, by the way?

SPEAKER_00 27:43

Uh it doesn't really have a name. It's um yet. I might I haven't thought of a name for it yet.

Arthur Busch 27:49

So if people want to want to uh visit your website, where how would they find it?

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Uh oh, so Remyharris.com, yeah, and from there you can find links to everything, you know, um all the social medias and everything like that. Yeah, it's like you're you're like on YouTube and what yeah, yeah. We do Facebook, YouTube, you know, Twitter, um, Instagram, uh Spotify, a bit of everything, really. Yeah, you've got to kind of use all these platforms if you can. Yeah.

Arthur Busch 28:24

So you you're on a lot of the music platforms around the world, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Yeah, you can listen to my albums on Spotify, um, Apple Music, Deezer, and uh um the ones, but that they're the kind of big three um popular ones, yeah.

Arthur Busch 28:42

Now you've been um you've been sponsored, as I mentioned earlier, by the BBC and by uh P PRS, which is public radio service uh for the music foundation of the BBC as well. What do they do for you exactly? Is that the promotion that they've been doing for you?

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Uh so the PRS is the Performing Rights Society, I think that's what it stands for. And they um are kind of royalty collection um society. Um so when you get your music played on radio, you'll get paid um royalties through the PRS. But they also um offer out grants and things to help up-and-coming musicians and to help people make uh albums and stuff like that. And so they actually sponsored me to go to the Montreal Jazz Festival, that was the PRS, um, in kind of partnership with the BBC introducing thing.

Arthur Busch 29:43

So your yeah, your music, uh what I find interesting is you know, my daughter Annique worked for the Detroit Jazz Festival for many years. And what I was astonished to see, and I I of course I got to meet a lot of the musicians who came from all over the the world really uh to perform in Detroit. Uh I was astonished to find uh that so many of them were young. Okay. Um I wondered what is your attraction to jazz, what you I mean, you weren't always attracted to jazz. I mean, you said you started out playing rock and roll, and you liked Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. How did you get from there to jazz?

SPEAKER_00 30:35

Ah, so uh well for me it was because um because a lot of the rock music that I liked in particular, um, and the blues music, um, people like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Plapton and and Led Zeppelin, uh when they when those guys were performing live, they were often there was a lot of improvising going on um at that time in rock music, um, probably more so than it happens in today's rock music. Um there was a lot of extended jams, like if you ever go to live versions of songs with any of those kind of 60s, 70s bands, they were always stretched out and extra long solos and and lots of improvising and jamming, um, which is essentially what jazz is. Um, but obviously the music is stylistically different. So I grew up grew up with my friends playing all these long jam sessions and and all of this um and that kind of approach of playing. Um so it was kind of very natural, I guess, for me to then start looking at jazz music because jazz music is all about the jamming and the improvising. So it for me it feels like it's the same thing, really. It's just I'm playing different tunes. So I never felt like I ever kind of just suddenly was into jazz, although I know jazz is in a way it's it's a style in a way, but I think of jazz more as just um an approach. So it's it's an approach to music that involves lots of improvising. And so to so when I hear Hendrix playing, you know, live versions of Red House, I mean it's that's basically jazz to me. So so that was kind of my um that's what led me towards jazz, yeah.

Arthur Busch 32:31

And and you know, when I talked to uh these young people in Detroit, uh you know, I hung around at the hotel uh they had like jam sessions there all the time with these youngsters. A lot of them had uh they played festival the festival circuits around the country, and uh and they seemed to have there was such there was such a powerful um demand for what they were doing. Do you find that true in England? Uh with jazz music.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

Um well I guess uh there are so many different scenes, you know, there's the jazz scene, and then you've got the kind of the festivals with the kind of rock and and pop and stuff like that. I mean the uh before obviously the coronavirus, um there were there's a lot of things that you can there are a lot of places that you can get gigs if you're if you're keen to do that. Um and uh yeah, I think and it's yeah. I think there is a there's been a demand for it, obviously. People can do it, but um it doesn't it's not the easiest way of making a living there. I will be being a musician isn't the easiest way to make a living. Well, especially that type of touring type musician where you're relying a hundred percent on gigs, which is what we did before the coronavirus was all of our money is from from um gigs and touring and stuff. A lot of people teach more, you know.

Arthur Busch 34:17

Well, in what ways has the coronavirus changed your uh uh your method of playing of staying with your music?

SPEAKER_00 34:28

Uh sorry, it cut out slightly there.

Arthur Busch 34:30

The coronavirus has changed the way that you uh I mean you haven't given up playing music.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

No, no, but things have changed a lot because all the gigs have gone for the time being, at least. So you do a live stream now, right? Yeah, yeah, I I go live on my Instagram and um my Facebook and stuff. Um although that's I I mean I don't earn any money from that, it was just something I I like to do. But um we're we're looking at other ways of of earning a living um for the time being at least. And you do teaching as well? Well, that's something I'm gonna be pursuing now. Um I used to teach a lot and then I got very busy with gigs, and um, so I kind of did less and less teaching, and then um I'm gonna be starting back up with the online kind of teaching with Zoom like this, and um I'll see that we'll see where that takes me.

Arthur Busch 35:35

Yeah, and and when I looked at your website, you were booked, you had bookings clear out into October 2021. So those are all sort of sort of hanging in in the in the air, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 35:50

Yeah, yeah. Well, when it first hit in the spring, we were kind of in the middle of a tour, and all of those gigs um were basically postponed till the autumn. Well, most of them anyway, and um, and then now most of those autumn gigs, along with the gigs we already had booked, are now being postponed till next year. So so it's because no one knew how long it would go on for, you know. So um, and I suppose we still don't know. So it's constantly moving things ahead in the diary, and just you know, we'll just play it by here.

Arthur Busch 36:25

Now, your your music, uh the way you've approached your music at this point, is it become more uh retro? I mean, is it become more retrospective in the sense of you've worked on new music during this downtime? Because you have more time on your hands, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:42

Yeah, yeah. I've been um I always write music anyway, but I've been had more time to to work on that stuff, and I've been learning lots and working on new tunes and things, which has been nice because um when I when I've got lots of gigs on, I tend to work on the things that I've got coming up, you know, on a gig, which means um certain some things that are kind of uh I guess less uh crucial for the live performance, they sometimes get put to the side. Whereas the last you know, the last few months I've been able to just work on I've been a bit more playful with it. I've been able to just um follow you know what is what's inspiring me a little bit more because I don't have to worry about a gig coming up, you know, in a few days where I have to play a certain song, you know. So that's been in a way kind of nice because it's been um a bit of an adventure musically, which I've which I've enjoyed.

Arthur Busch 37:47

So, Remy, uh the room that you're in, tell us a little bit about that room.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Oh yeah, so this is actually uh an old recording studio. Um when I first moved to this um place, um this was part of a studio, and the control room with the mixing desk was upstairs, and this was the kind of recording room, and um so it's all acoustically treated. It's got um, I don't know if you can see in the video, but the carpet panels on the wall, and um and and now I um use it to practice in and I make my videos and stuff here, and I've got all my guitars out, um, which is quite nice because when it when we're doing lots of gigs, a lot of them are in cases in the van. So I've been able to get them all out and and play them all a bit, which is pretty nice.

Arthur Busch 38:39

So you have a wide range of guitars there, I see. You have all different kinds, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

So electrics, uh, acoustics, different ones. This I mean, this type of guitar is a a gypsy guitar, but it's known as a gypsy guitar, and this is the kind of thing I play mostly on on kind of jazz and swing and stuff like that. And there's another one of those fucking there. That's another one of this type, and then there are some of my electrics. This this I don't trying to point here, it's weird. But this one here is my lespoul, that's my main kind of um rock guitar, I guess. Les Paul, yeah, yeah, on the wall there, and uh there's a few other things. Now I read some go ahead. Sorry, yeah. Oh, go ahead. I was just gonna say I've got guitars here that go back since I was a kid, you know. So um uh a guitar that I had when I was 14, for example, and um yeah, so just various things.

Arthur Busch 39:43

Lucky guitar.

SPEAKER_00 39:45

Yeah, well it's one of those guitars I don't actually play nowadays, but uh unless I really have to, I'll I'd rather keep hold of it, but just for sentimental value. It's not worth a lot of money anyway.

Arthur Busch 39:57

So it's now you it in reading about uh you in uh media in your country, uh they were talking about you now have a signature guitar that people are beginning to pick up. Oh yeah, that's that's actually this guitar.

SPEAKER_00 40:15

Yeah, I don't know if you can you probably won't be able to see inside, but inside there, it's this is known as I guess the Remy Harris model. I think that's basically what it's called. Um who manufactures that guitar? This is made in uh the lake district in the UK, and the company's called Field. File guitars. There we go. How do you spell that? F Y L D E.

Arthur Busch 40:42

F Y O L D, okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

F Y L D E. And yeah. And they're the they're available, you can you can buy them from File Guitars, yeah.

Arthur Busch 40:55

And it's your it's named after you, that's cool. And uh uh you mentioned the um gypsy uh guitar, I think that's what you called it. Yeah, and one of the things I learned also was that uh you were known in your country as a gypsy jazz guitarist, and I had never heard this term gypsy jazz. I probably heard the music, but you know, growing up we called those kind of guitars flamingo guitars.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

Uh yeah, so this is slightly different to a flamenco guitar. It's um it's they are often kind of um uh you know they they got I guess their playing style is slightly similar in the fact that um the both styles can be quite frenetic and um and all played on acoustic instruments. But flamenco is I think from Spain, but I don't know a lot about flamenco, but flamenco is finger style guitar, um whereas uh gypsy jazz comes from um basically it originates with Django Reinhardt, a guitarist who was um guitar genius back in the 30s and um 40s, um and uh yeah he kind of he was a gypsy musician who um essentially just fell in love with American jazz, and so he kind of fused the two, and today it's known as gypsy jazz, and that's it's just a it's a stylistic um uh sub kind of uh genre, I guess, of swing music, and it originates out of Paris, really, because that's where it all happened, so it's like a European version of American swing. Of what? Of American swing music.

Arthur Busch 42:58

Oh, okay. And now when I introduced you, I introduced you as a blues guitarist as well. Yeah. So so you you really you really have a wide variety of talent.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

And well, well, blue blues was the the thing that I grew up with, you know, and so um Peter Green and Eric Clapton and this kind of you know this music that we've mentioned earlier from the 60s and 70s, that was that was what I spent um from the age of well when I started at the age of seven till basically till twenty or something like that. I just played um I played rock and blues. And so and then I started getting interested in jazz music and um that um became my main focus. Um can you play us some can you play us some acoustic uh blues? Well, I mean this is a a jazz guitar, but um when I think of blues, you know, um the blues that I tend to play is on electric guitars, but it might sound a little bit like this. It's kind of electric. It's hard to play that kind of thing on a on a guitar like this, but on an electric guitar it's more suited for that kind of playing. It's kind of um you know, Steve Ray Vaughn influenced kind of blues guitar playing.

Arthur Busch 44:47

That's more like the Delta Blues.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

Uh well, I think Stevie, where was he from? Is he Dallas, Texas?

Arthur Busch 44:57

Yeah, no, that's a different kind of blues. The Delta Blues is like uh Robert uh Johnson and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

Yeah, no, I I don't play a lot of that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

Um kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

I'm not an expert with that kind of acoustic kind of um blues kind of sound, but because uh there are uh that's a whole kind of world of guitar playing, um but I've I've played with toyed with things, you know, like that.

Arthur Busch 46:04

Like Robert Cray and all that, right?

SPEAKER_00 46:07

Yeah. I don't um Robert Cray, yeah. Um playing that well, but Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters and you know this uh early blues stuff. I love listening to that stuff. But it's uh very often that kind of blues playing involves um uh open tuning on the guitar and uh often with a slide like a bottleneck, you know. And um yeah, style of guitar playing that I'd like to explore more one day.

Arthur Busch 46:42

So your your um your favorite jazz artist today is who?

SPEAKER_00 46:50

Um probably Ahmed Jamal is one of my favorites. Um Stangetz, obviously Django Reinhardt, Wes Montgomery.

Arthur Busch 47:01

Um some of these kind of Can you do a couple of riffs of Wes Montgomery?

SPEAKER_00 47:07

Wes so um this is uh this is a Wes tune. That's a little tune called The Thun, which That was great.

Arthur Busch 48:06

Well now you worked on a second album. Your first album was uh called Nanique, which was written in honor of your mother, who's now the cigar has now passed away. And now you've wrote a second album.

SPEAKER_00 48:23

Yeah, so my second album is out actually, uh it's called In On the Two. Uh that came out I believe 2016. And then now we're near near completion of the third one, which has taken a while. And it's obviously been set back another kind of five or six months with the coronavirus. But um, I'm back in the studio in about two weeks, I think, to continue work. It's nearly done. Um we were work actually we were like booked into the studio working on it at the time we went into lockdown and then it all got put on hold again.

Arthur Busch 48:58

So do you do your fans uh that you have an audience of sorts in the United States? Where where when when do you think you'll ever make it over here?

SPEAKER_00 49:10

Oh, I don't know really. I would love to. It's just a case of logistics really, because it's it's very expensive to uh to get the flights over and um visas uh I know um can be um tricky going to America. I've heard from a number of friends that it can be hard um compared to you know going to European countries. So it's a case of um trying to put it together. But I fingers crossed one day. I'd really like to do it one day.

Arthur Busch 49:43

Great. Well we love to have you here. In the meantime, we get to listen to you on the internet. And uh one of the things, just closing up here for a second, I had one other question because uh I've listened to your music for several years now, and the one the one was I listened to you do a set and it almost sounded like Dixieland jazz.

SPEAKER_00 50:05

Okay, yeah, yeah. Well, um well, some of the kind of early swing type stuff, which kind of has a bit of a Dixieland flavor, some of that kind of gypsy jazz stuff can sound a bit that way sometimes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:21

Um I'm I'm not sure to be honest with you, I there's so many subgenres, you know, with um jazz music. I'm not sure what um Dixieland I think tends to have a banjo.

Arthur Busch 50:34

Um but I yeah, right, they use banjos too. Uh and uh and all that. Do you ever play with jazz singers?

SPEAKER_00 50:43

Yeah, yeah, sometimes yeah. We've got some friends who uh who we do gigs with sometimes, yeah.

Arthur Busch 50:51

Cool. Well, uh Remy, um, I've enjoyed our conversation, and uh I would like to let you uh choose a song to play out on. Um maybe did your mom have did your mom's uh influence, I guess she wrote a record named after her, but uh play a song that you can play any song you want that's your favorite, I guess. But uh I would especially like to hear something that reminds you of your mother. She was uh I knew his mother by the way, and she was a wonderful lady, beautiful woman. Um so that would be a great way to end this. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 51:36

Um yeah, uh not sure what to play.

Arthur Busch 51:42

I'll I'll I'll um play your favorite song. Don't don't let me don't let me select your song for you.

SPEAKER_00 51:49

I'll play I'll play a little um I'll kind of make something up for you.

Arthur Busch 51:54

All righty. So we have Remy Harris, uh uh an emerging one of the world's uh emerging uh jazz and uh blues guitarists, all the way from Hereford, uh, England in the Midlands in the United Kingdom, which I like to compare to our version of Kansas or Nebraska. Uh it's wonderful to be with you, Remy, and uh to have you join us and share a little bit of your um your music. Uh our country is in uh is in a frazzle right now, and so your music is very calming. Um with that, I again I appreciate the time you've taken to join us. Thank you. Thanks. Uh thank you. And we'll see you next time. And when you come to the United States, we'll do another podcast. Sounds good. See you later, Remy. Goodbye. Thank you.

unknown 55:03

Thank you.

Arthur Busch 55:04

This is Arthur Bush from Radio Free Flint. Uh, we're signing out. Uh, would like to remind you that if if you uh would like to hear this episode, you can go to www.radiofreeflint.media. This um episode will be posted. Uh it'll also be on my uh on the Radio Free Flint YouTube channel, so you can watch the video of this. Uh, we'll be playing uh uh into and out of this uh episode some more of Remy's music. And if you'd like his to listen to his music, you can go to where is it, Remy? Uh Remy Harris.com. Or Spotify or any place else that you can find. Including Apple, of course. We always got to mention Apple music. Thank you, Remy. Take care, have a good day. Bye-bye.