"Thanks for hanging in there through my mini-meltdown."
Jason Harrod
is playing the legendary Club Passim in Harvard Square, Cambridge,
Massachusetts. He wipes sweat from his forehead (and was that a tear?),
then leaves his hands on either side of his head, like he's just run a
sprint and needs to catch his breath.
At 6'2", the 41-year-old songwriter dwarfs the already small stage at a
venue where Joan Baez and Bob Dylan hung out in the 1960s. Tonight he's
in a pair of dark jeans and an eggplant button-up, which haphazardly
hangs open beneath his guitar strap. The strap holds a handmade Lowden
032c, marked by a piece of graffiti: Pete Seeger's autograph.
The "mini-meltdown" wasn't a meltdown, in fact, not even a "mini" one:
Harrod forgot the words to one of his old songs—not entirely uncommon
for singer-songwriters whose careers span three decades. "My spirit's
willing, but my mind . . . ." he trails off.
After playing a full set from his third solo record, Highliner
(Lincoln City Records), accompanied by a drummer and bassist, Harrod
treats the 90 or so fans gathered to a solo acoustic set featuring songs
from the earlier days. The crowd is virtually sitting on top of each
other, leaning into the stage, but the intimacy is part of what makes
Club Passim special.
Tonight the room is brimming with longtime Harrod devotees who have
been following his career since the early 1990s, when he was just a kid
out of Wheaton College and one half of the folk duo Harrod & Funck.
He and Brian Funck moved from Illinois to Boston, when the folk scene
was experiencing something of a renaissance; Patty Griffin, Tracy
Chapman, and Peter Mulvey all got their start busking Beantown's streets
and subways. While Harrod lives in New York now, playing in Boston is a
kind of homecoming.
I was a freshman at Gordon College when I first heard Jason Harrod in
1999, right around the time Harrod & Funck were getting ready to
call it quits. If you're familiar with Harrod & Funck, there's a
good chance that you were a Christian college student when you first
heard them. They were that kind of group—the kind that attracts young
Christians who don't listen to much Christian music.
Maybe that's because on each of their two studio albums, as well as on
their final recording (a live album), the duo sang casually about
smoking and committing "murder in the first," and imagined life (and
death) as a member of the Heaven's Gate cult. Still, Christian record
labels came knocking. Harrod tells me that they turned down several
Christian labels, including Michael W. Smith's Rocketown Records as well
as a subsidiary of Word Records.
Probably, though, their lyrics—as well as the ones that Harrod writes
today—aren't the reason Harrod eschews the "Christian singer-songwriter"
label. Rather, it's because Harrod's songs reveal a personal anguish
rarely spoken of among Christian artists, even those on the fringes who
openly struggle with institutional faith. His lyrics betray a
deep-seated insecurity, about his own abilities, about his value, and,
ultimately, about his belief.
"For a long time I wasn't sure if I was [a Christian] or not," Harrod
says. "And I flirted with the idea of 'taking a leap of doubt,' that is,
living as if there was no God."
These are bold words from a man who currently serves as a church music
director at a Christian Reformed Church on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
But, Harrod tells me, Dwell Church leaders knew what they were getting
into. It's his lack of "slickness," he says, that got him the job.
Still, even when leading worship, Harrod wrestles with doubts. "There
are times when I'm singing a hymn in front of the congregation and I
think, I need to quit this job."
Harrod's doubts extend beyond his faith, however; he often wrestles
with personal insecurities as well. Concerts, especially, have long
proved challenging for Harrod. Ever since Harrod & Funck split up,
in part because Brian Funck hated performing live, Harrod has faced
extreme performance anxiety.
"It's just a feeling of ugliness," he tells me. "I think partly my
singing has always been, in a way, combating that—trying to make a
beautiful sound, trying to make beauty."
That moment at Club Passim when Harrod lost the lyrics of "39," a track
from Harrod & Funck's self-titled second record (1997), perfectly
exemplifies Harrod's ongoing struggle. He recovered when the room full
of fans picked up the lyrics where he left off. "My songs are so
personal because they really are a part of me," he says. "To make this
beautiful thing come out of me is a way of combating that feeling [of
ugliness]."
Coming Off the Mountain
Harrod's latest record marks the latest stop, the furthest outpost, in his struggle toward a more grounded faith.
Highliner sounds much like his previous records: a hybrid of
twangy folk, superb guitar work, and catchy hooks. But this record is
more polished, in part because it was funded by a very successful
Kickstarter campaign. The record interchanges stories from Harrod's
personal life with fantastical tales and folk romps. For example, in
back-to-back tracks, "Moon Mission" and "Grandma," he memorializes the
underappreciated last man on the moon, astronaut Eugene Cernan, and pays
tribute to his grandmother.
On "One of These Days," Harrod promises to "get it right," but then
counters, "until then I want to get so gone, I want to be so wrong, I
want to see what damage I can do." He refers to himself as a "bitter old
batch" and "a filthy old rat" who is "sinking down to a deep dark
place." Still, he invites the listener along: "I'm thinking when I'm
sinking I don't want to sink alone."
"Mountain," the third song on Highliner, neatly describes Harrod's lifetime experience with faith:
When I came down off the mountain
I was breaking like a wave, rolling over everything in sight
Shining like a silver-plated nickel in the sun
I was dispersed across the universe of light.
Scannin' the horizon looking for a sign of you
When I saw your silhouette my heart stopped
But then I got up close and found out it was just a ghost
And I was sad that I had left the mountaintop.
"I knew vaguely that it was a 'God song' when I wrote 'Mountain,' "
says Harrod. "But when I was asked to talk with a youth group at a
Detroit church about how my faith affects my songwriting, it became very
clear to me that the song is autobiographical.
"The last verse of 'Mountain' isn't about resting in God's arms or
about resting in faith," Harrod tells me. "It's about climbing a
mountain looking for God. So there's an element of dissatisfaction and
searching."
There's reason to be hopeful for Harrod, however. In "Chains," the
eighth track on "Highliner," he sings, "I'm not old / I'm not young / I
been down / but I'm not done / I believe, I don't know why / Only you
can make me shine."
And shining is almost literally what Harrod does after his show at Club
Passim. He was in the middle of a national tour that brought him into
people's homes and backyards in small towns and suburbs, as well as onto
stages of music clubs in major cities. He had, for the most part,
managed to keep his performance anxiety and persistent insecurities at
bay while doing what he loves. And, at each stop, he was surrounded by
people who love him for doing it.
Writing and singing over the past two decades has been, for Harrod, his
literal lifeblood. As a professional musician, the songs pay the bills,
but more than that, they connect Harrod with God. "For all my doubts
and for all my periodic profligacy and dissolution, I can't escape the
kernel of faith that is in me," Harrod tells me.
"I'm happy when I sing, Praise God. I believe when I sing. I might be a
tired, angry guy, with an underlying suspicion of futility. But when I
sing, I believe."
When he sings, his fans believe too.
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