Musical Auteur Alexis Harte Talks Songwriting, Composing & His Latest EP: Briefcase

With musical roots extending into acoustic folk, British invasion, Americana, and even electrified afro-pop, Alexis Harte's songwriting has never been monochromatic. A unifying element to his writing is the examination of smaller moments, in which his sharply drawn details loom larger than life.  It’s this cinematic effect that landed Harte a publishing deal with Lionsgate Entertainment.

Through Lionsgate, Harte met Pollen co-founder JJ Wiesler who produced his track “Mayflies” from Big Red Sun. Though completely self-released, “Mayflies” unexpectedly reached #1 on commercial station KOHO/Washington, edging out latest from Wilco, Norah Jones and U2 that week. The CD made numerous critics lists and gained traction on AAA stations across the US, including his hometown KFOG, where he is a staple on Acoustic Sunrise/Sunset.

Though he finds himself more often in the studio than on stage these days, Harte’s performing career has included top Bay Area venues like the legendary Fillmore (with Taj Mahal), Mystic Theater (with Dar Williams on several occasions), Uptown Theater (with Cat Power) and Slim’s, as well as world/folk festivals on the East Coast and Europe.

Harte’s songs have also slipped into mainstream consciousness through placements in literally dozens of national television shows (including CW’s Heart of Dixie, ABC’s Castle, and What About Brian, UPN’s Jack And Bobby, WB’s Jake 2.0, PBS’s Now with Bill Moyers, Fox’s The Loop and many more). He recently penned the lyrics and co-wrote the music along with JJ Wiesler to the song “No Wrong Way Home” for Patrick Osborne’s short animated VR film “Pearl, which received an Oscar nomination and Emmy win.

Alexis Harte is a rare multi-dimensional talent that suceeds in many diverse musical challenges and environments. A singer-songwriter, composer, and musician with incredible chops, he was born and raised in Berkeley, CA and continues to reside in the Bay Area.

I had the good fortune of receiving some pearls of wisdom from him in the interview below. Read on and share if you enjoyed!

How does Briefcase differ from your past releases?

Well in some ways, it's pretty similar.  I closely worked with Jon Evans (Tori Amos/G-Love), the same producer who has joined me on several previous albums.  I'd say Briefcase is more of a deepening and widening of my past sound. I think I've covered an album's worth of themes, tones, moods in the space of 5 songs. I've never liked adding filler songs, but since this was an EP,  I was very intent on making every song standout and clamor for the listener's attention. Whether I achieved that or not, who knows! I just wanted it to be a very satisfying and diverse ride for 16 minutes.

I did not really sit down and write these songs sequentially. Thematically and lyrically. they were sculpted pretty slowly and more like microphones left on in 5 different rooms of my house 24/7 over the winter, catching the conversations, arguments, jokes, hand-wringing, rough-housing etc. The “songwriting” was more about editing this live feed down to the typical song format, with verses and choruses as needed. The songs are kind of 3-minute mini plays from scenes taken from my life over the last year. 

How would you describe its musical identity? What instruments are we hearing?

This collection fits pretty squarely in the singer-songwriter world, but with influences ranging from British invasion, Americana, and Afropop. The bands I most admired growing up listening to (The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, etc) always made genre-agnostic records, so I think that rubbed off on me early.  I try and figure out what the song is about and then decide what style and instruments best suits it, rather than saying,  "I'm a folk musician, so the song has to be a folk song." A lot of the instrumentation is fairly standard stuff: acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums, percussion, rhodes, synths, some strings, lots of vocal harmonies. 

Talk to us more about the music video you created for this EP release. Who were your collaborators and how did the idea arise?

I'll let the Director, Josh Peterson, field this one!

"Listening to the song several times evoked a general mood and the idea that Alexis should be alone for the most part, to set an intimate and subjective tone. It seemed best to film as a one-man crew, using natural light, freeing me to improvise and discover the video from moment to moment. Only after the first shoot in Tilden Regional Park did I think of the central recurring image of the tumbling shoes, and that, along with the song’s abrupt ending, led to the final shot of Alexis standing barefoot in the street. This guerrilla process felt right from the beginning. I would think of nearby locations I knew, the two of us would go there, and I’d let myself be inspired by what we found. (The only planning involved was choosing times of day when the sunlight would look best.) Then I’d head to the editing room, where new ideas emerged as the piece came together. We’d meet again and shoot some more, I’d edit again, and so forth and so on until it was done. The video grew organically from this iterative process. It was like sculpting with clay – flexible, intuitive, exploratory. And because I kept coming back to the song, the video evolved as my own familiarity with the music and lyrics deepened.

How does your work as an indie musician inform your composing work, and vice versa?

Great question.  My favorite scoring jobs are obviously those that involve writing an original song, which is why Pearl (2017 Oscar Nom/Emmy Winner) was such a plum gig.  For the right scene, nothing satisfies like a good lyric, convincingly sung. That said, you have to pick your moments of course. Not every film can be "The Graduate" or "Harold and Maude." 

Being a professional composer, and facing tough deadlines daily, has helped my studio workflow and production chops. It has allowed me to take some risks in the studio that I might not have done otherwise. It has also really helped me figure out and commit to arrangement ideas pretty quickly. 

How do you hope people react to Briefcase? 

I hope that people can enjoy on different levels. Ideally, a listener would stop what they are doing and sit down and listen top to tail on a really good system, but I realize not everyone will do that.

Lyrically this is an important record for me.  I wrote the song, "Night of My Death" to help me confront one of my most favorite anxieties: kicking the bucket unexpectedly. But I wanted to do it in a calm, non-hysterical way, with the absence of violence. If you knew the moment of your death and could freeze it (just before the truck hit you, etc), what would you do with your last evening? The song is about gently broaching the subject of death, mainly to see how we prioritize our lives. 

If this song helps others do that, I'd be very pleased.

Are there any particular fun anecdotes from the creative process behind this work? 

Mainly it was just a long slog, but toward the end I brought my 13 year old daughter (who has been singing all her life) out to my studio to to help me temp in a female harmony part on "Minor Birds." I just loved the youth and innocence she brought to it and left it as the permanent harmony part. That whole experience gave me a good second wind to finish up.

Where can we listen/download, and what else is exciting for you in the near future? 

Briefcase is available to download at Itunes or CDbaby and available to stream on Spotify. I hope to do some select live shows around this new release, but mainly I'll be going to back to my producing and composing duties at Pollen Music Group. We've got a cool Netflix series coming up that we are scoring (....which I can't talk about yet!)