Harrison chord!
SINGER-SONGWRITER Nick Harrison is supporting Iglu & Hartley at Birmingham Bar Academy on September 28.
The 21-year-old, originally from Folkestone, Kent, dreamt of becoming a drummer but started writing songs when he went to music college. His melodious, ska-tinged songs recall The Police and The Beat, as well as more contemporary bands like Jack Penate and The Kooks.
What’s Folkestone like? Is it a musical town?
It’s really cool actually, there are loads of bands there. When I was young, it seemed even better. There were these promoters there that really got into the UK Ska Punk scene, and you could go to two or three gigs a week. It’s about an hour and a half on the train to London, so it’s not like everyone was looking to London for music, there was a lot going on in Folkestone.
Do you miss the place?
Yeah, I do. I miss the sea, so when I go back I always walk by it. If you’re away from home for too long, I think you definitely miss it. It always draws you back, and I always take the dog for a walk when I get back there to soak it up. But then when I was 17 or 18 I just couldn’t wait to get out, because I thought there was nothing there. It’s the sort of place you can get sucked into a bit.
How long ago did you write the songs for your album?
When I got signed I had about 20 songs behind me that I thought were OK, that was about 18 months ago. After that, the label put me in loads of writing situations with other songwriters, so I was co-writing a lot with different people. I learned so much from them, and took that with me.
Do you still want to be a drummer?
Well yeah! It’s all I wanted to do. I went to college to study music, and I thought to myself ‘Come on Nick, this is it, this is your chance to earn a living playing drums’ but then I started writing songs and things worked out differently. I used to write songs but they were hardcore punk things, and I may have tried shouting rather than singing! So I stopped that.
Have you got a song you’re particularly proud of?
Honey. Lyrically and musically, it makes really good sense for me. When I listen to it, I think about the process of recording it, and how we got there. Paul Epworth recorded it, but he said it was too slow and we had to do it all again. He was right, it’s better faster and I can’t imagine it being slow again.
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