Black Deer Live Presents...JP Harris

Brighthelmstone Promotions and Black Deer Live are delighted to present one of the hottest live acts on the Honky Tonk, Americana and Country Scene.

JP Harris was born shortly before Valentine’s Day 1983 in Montgomery, Alabama. Within a FEW of years he was wearing a green velour tracksuit and leading a large Doberman around for street credibility, at the young age of three. He would leave his family’s home late one summer night, never to return.

Spending most of his teenage years traveling by freight train, thumb, or foot, he would set down his rucksack for what he thought was the last time in rural northern New England, it was there Harris honed the many trades he’d learned: sheepherder, logger, heavy equipment operator, farm laborer, restoration carpenter, and sometimes as contraband handler, while his musical palette expanded beyond the punk rock of his youth to include blues, old time, and early country recordings.

JP had long fashioned himself a carpenter who did halfway-decent campfire renditions of old country tunes, but turned suddenly to songwriting in his mid twenties after years without the slightest ambition toward “music business” of any sort.

In 2011, Harris loaded his van and trailer with every tool, guitar, and keepsake he could cram and moved to Nashville TN, shortly before the release of his debut album “I’ll Keep Calling,” which would win him countless accolades from various outlets and entities unheard of by the general masses. It was enough praise to keep him on the road, even if his largest reward garnered at the time was a sizable box of Taco Bell gift cards.

He would go on to record 2014’s “Home Is Where The Hurt Is,” 2018’s “Sometimes Dogs Bark At Nothing,” and 2021’s Appalachian banjo-centric side project album “Don’t You Marry No Railroad Man,” under the moniker JP Harris’ Dreadful Wind & Rain.

JP’s historic restoration carpentry has continued to be a baseline for his relationship to music. It was through this concurrent line of work that he met another twice-initialed singer with a penchant for old Americana music, obscure film, and overly elaborate ethnic meal preparations: one JD McPherson. The two became fast friends and would eventually enter a modest studio in Nashville to record Harris’ latest album “JP Harris Is A Trash Fire.”

In a musical landscape of period-correct reproduction, “outlaw” internet posturing, and flavor-of-the-month variants on country, “JP Harris Is A Trash Fire” burns bright as a dumpster ablaze in a Walmart parking lot on a moonless night; some will fear it, some will gravitate to its acrid warmth, and most will have no idea what to make of the situation.

Even within the rapidly growing world of “underground” country music, Harris still considers himself an outsider, content to inhabit a gray area where punk rock ethos, folk art aesthetic, and the workingman’s ballad mingle.