Wind of Change, Band of Changes: The BISS List Interview with Chris Harford

*Originally published January 30th, 2021*

By Josh Danson, BISSList Contributing Editor

Growing up in Princeton, New Jersey in the Eighties I remember seeing posters for the band Three Colors, led by a local guy named Chris Harford, tacked up around town. In fact, theirs was the first “real” concert I ever attended – at the Community Park North Bandshell, circa 1985. Fast forward a few years and the band’s lead singer, now a beloved lacrosse coach at Princeton High, was recruited to be the chaperone on my Junior year ski trip to Smuggler’s Notch in Vermont. This was seen by attendees as an excellent arrangement as Chris was happy to ski and then return to apres ski with his then girlfriend in their condo, while all manner of mayhem and shenanigans occurred in the neighboring condos. We all survived and had a fabulous time.

I lost track of Chris for a number of years after that, but recently noticed him popping up on my radar with increasing frequency as he gained a following for his latest musical endeavor, The Band of Changes, in which he plays with the likes of Joe Russo and Scott Metzger of JRAD (Joe Russo’s Almost Dead), as well as Mickey Melchiondo and Dave Dreiwitz of Ween, among others highly esteemed in the Jam band world and beyond. So when I saw that he had recently put out an album of original reggae “dub” music, needless to say, I was intrigued.

I reached out to Chris via Facebook to see if he’d be interested in talking about his latest project and, the true gentleman he is, he agreed without much convincing. Turns out Chris has been something of a musical Zelig since I last saw him with Three Colors, working and collaborating with some of the era’s musical and literary greats. Little did I know that while coaching lacrosse part time he was working for the famed producer Joe Boyd at his record label in Skillman, NJ. He then went on to sign a major label deal with Elektra Records and put out a killer debut album, Be Headed, that featured guest appearances from the likes of Richard Thompson and Loudon Wainright. He had also begun a long-lasting and very fruitful collaboration with the Pulitzer prize-winning Irish poet, Paul Muldoon, who happens to live and teach in Princeton. Together, they formed another all-star band called Rogue Oliphant, frequently playing gigs at places like Joe’s Pub in NYC and touring extensively. To say that Chris is a renaissance man would be an understatement. A painter of some renown with numerous gallery shows to his credit, he is also a much sought after producer, arranger and collaborator. Oh, he’s also a wine expert.

His latest project, the multi-album dub sequence, Blanc du Blanc, is a labor of love that casts Chris in the role of his alter ego, Blanc du Blanc – a mysterious, masked and costumed enigma who, like his dub idol Lee Scratch Perry, may or may not be of this world. Blanc Du Blanc released their first album, The Blanc Album, in October to much acclaim, and just released their latest effort, a four track EP featuring three different dub remixes of the Scorpions “Wind of Change,” including one by the aforementioned Lee Perry, on January 29th. The EP also features a dub cover of Percy Sledge’s “Heart of a Child.”

Of Chris, the New Yorker has said, “A singer, guitarist, and songwriter who rose through the local club scene in the nineteen-eighties, Harford operates in the free zone outside rock’s usual categories. He has a foot in country, a hand in seventies rock, a toe in folk, a finger in post-punk. With his gruff but plaintive voice and his fondness for muddied-up guitars, he sometimes recalls Neil Young…”.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Chris on the phone just a few days before the release of the “Wind of Change” EP – which can be seen as commentary on the recent changing of the guard in the White House and on the changes many of us still hope to see. Chris and I discussed the Blanc du Blanc project, his long working relationship with Paul Muldoon, and the unique conditions that led to our shared hometown of Princeton, New Jersey becoming such a fertile hotbed for music and musicians.

You can purchase the Blanc du Blanc albums on Bandcamp (https://blancdublanc.bandcamp.com/music) and learn more about Blanc du Blanc and Band of Changes on Chris’ record label website: https://soulselects.com/

The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

BISS List: You’re known for wearing a lot of different musical hats, as it were, with Band of Changes and various other projects you’ve worked on. But until now, you haven’t worked in this particular subgenre. So why dub? What was the genesis of the Blanc du Blanc concept?

Chris Harford: I think the original the catalyst was when a friend of mine burned me 12 CDs of his Jamaican 45’s collection and I started to listen to them obsessively – that would be over a decade ago at least, if not two — and it sort of became my soundtrack to everything. I’d always have it on in the car and I was listening to it, like I said, obsessively, over and over. So then, fast forward many years later and my friend Sarah Tate introduced me to Chalkie Davies, the great photographer, and he gave me a hard drive of more dub than I could listen to in a lifetime. So it became sort of my version of what gospel music might be to some people. Then, looking back, I had seen Bob Marley in ’78 at the Spectrum in Philly with my high school buddies, and later I opened up for the English Beat in Boston with my band, Three Colors. So the reggae was in there, and ska, you know? With Bob Marley being probably the greatest show I ever saw live.

BISS List: Yeah, I can’t even imagine.

Chris Harford: Oh man. So anyway, that was all in there. Then finally, I recently got a chance to do some recording at Mickey [Melchiondo]’s studio – Dean Ween’s studio – in Lambertville, New Jersey and I just loved dub music so much that I wanted to try making it, even if only for myself. I really didn’t set out to have much ambition with it. I was just doing it because I loved it. Meanwhile, I had spent a few years working at Trader Joe’s in the wine department, and to entertain myself while I stocked the shelves I created this rap character, Blanc du Blanc, in my mind, and started practicing raps and I would lay them on my coworkers. So when I started to make the dub music and started thinking about it as a real record, I was toying around with names and Joe Russo was like, “You gotta’ call your dub project, “Blanc du Blanc.” It hadn’t occurred to me that it was the perfect name for that project with “duB” being right in the middle! That actually got pointed out to me by the guy who made the album art, and I was like, “Oh, yeah!”

BISS List: That’s funny! I just noticed that.

Chris Harford: Yeah, I hadn’t noticed it either. Then Joe and I were about to do a Band of Changes gig at the local theater and he was like, “Yeah, it’s got to be Blanc du Blanc and you can call the first record The Blanc Album.” And a light went on and I was like, ‘Oh my God, he’s right!’ And then Dave Dreiwitz immediately said, “And your next album can be called Regatta de Blanc du Blanc.” And I was like, ‘OK, there it is! There’s the concept formulated.’

BISS List: So was the name meant as a sort of tongue-in-cheek commentary on its being a traditionally black musical genre being done by a white guy?

Chris Harford: It is. It is, yeah. And that’s how Regatta de Blanc du Blanc also ties back, because you know The Police were getting a lot of grief for being white guys playing reggae when they first started out, and that’s apparently where they got that title for their second album [Reggatta de Blanc]. It’s perfect – like ‘white reggae’. They added the “g” to it [taking it from ‘regatta’ to ‘reggatta’]. It was 1979 when that record came out [while Chris was attending Princeton High School], and the Police were huge for me growing up, so that’s another way it all sort of ties in.

BISS List: I love it. Perfect. Well speaking of wearing different hats, the visuals accompanying this album are really striking, featuring a strange phantasmagorical masked and costumed figure which feels shamanistic or reminiscent of the Cajun Mardi Gras tradition.

Chris Harford: Yeah, I’m glad you picked up on that. I had the concept for the visuals and the masked costumed figure before Covid. So as we were making it that seemed like, “Oh, people are going to be wearing masks now, here’s another mask.” But that idea had already been formed. It’s obviously nothing new, but it’s part of the mystery of the Blanc character. And hopefully with the live band you’ll see the musicians on stage in costume. So you’re not seeing Chris Harford or Marco Benevento, you’ll be seeing these characters.

BISS List: Ooh, that’ll be cool. I know you’re a visual artist as well – I love your painting. Do you tend to come up with different visuals to accompany whatever musical project you’re working on? Is that part and parcel of your creative process, or was this more of a one-off?

Chris Harford: That’s an interesting question. I generally think of the painting and the visual as separate from the music. Obviously, when I’m writing a song or doing the music, a lot of visuals get invoked, but it’s not really like a hand-in-hand process. So I think that the costume character came separately as a concept. And it does incorporate some of the things that I do in my paintings. Sometimes I think there is a relation or a correlation that maybe I can’t even see sometimes, I’m sure it’s there. But I did actually set out to do the two separately in this instance.

BISS List: Yeah, but it certainly works as far as putting on a different musical costume, as it were, like Phish sometimes does for Halloween? Like if you’re covering something, or if you’re with Band of Changes when you’re doing different styles and inhabiting different musical genres, it’s kind of like putting on a costume. And certainly with the dub.

Chris Harford: Yeah, I would say that’s accurate. Yeah.

BISS List: Right on. Well, I read that Lee Scratch Perry has given his thumbs-up on the project and you’ve even got him doing a remix for your brand-new Blanc du Blanc release, the Wind of Change EP. That must be an awesome vote of confidence, seeing that his album, Blackboard Jungle Dub, pretty much started the whole dub thing.

Chris Harford: Yeah, it’s incredible.

BISS List: Have you have you ever worked with him before or had you guys been in touch? How did that connection come about?

Chris Harford: Well, one of the great things about working at Trader Joe’s was the people that I worked with. I met these crazy creative people, one being Ian Everett who had started a band called Solid Bronze, and I ended up producing their record along with Dean Ween at his studio. We got it out on a boutique label in England called Schnitzel Records. And they had a connection to Lee Perry. So he did a remix of a Solid Bronze song, which really brought me to tears when I realized that that was even a possibility. So then we were making this EP of The Scorpions song, “Wind of Change,” and I saw that Lee Perry had posted something, very late at night, that said if anyone needs a remix or a vocalization to reach out. So I did. And the timing was perfect. So indirectly, I had worked with him before via the Solid Bronze thing – not that he would have even known who I was or anything, but at least I knew it was in the realm of possibility. And then when this happened it was just a gorgeous, beautiful thing. Really mind-blowing, just incredible.

So that’s coming out on the 29th of January – it’s an EP, a four track EP, three versions of The Scorpions’ “Wind of Change” done reggae dub style. One straight up mix by Reed Black – who is also from Princeton, went to PDS – and one mix by Lee Perry and one mix by Andrew Weiss, a.k.a. Doktor Weiss. He’s a Ween producer and was in the Rollins Band and he also went to Princeton High.

BISS List: Wow, that sounds amazing. And kind of bizarre, in a cool way.

[Wind of Change, Blanc du Blanc’s second record, is a four-song EP that was just released on January 29, 2021. The album, which spins at 45 RPM, features three versions of Blanc du Blanc performing the Scorpions’ 1990 ballad “Wind of Change,” including mixes by Reed Black, Doktor White, and Lee “Scratch” Perry, as well as a cover of Percy Sledge’s “Heart of a Child.” Musicians include Lee “Scratch” Perry, Chris Harford, Dana Colley (Morphine), Andrew Weiss (Ween, Cafe Tacuba), Scott Metzger (JRAD), Reed Black, Dave Butler (Guster), Constantine Maroulis (American Idol), Jon Shaw (Bob Weir), Hub Moore, Robbie “Seahag” Mangano (Rickie Lee Jones), and Marisa Vero. Check out a first watch of the YouTube video and enter the vinyl giveaway on RootFire.]

Let’s talk about some of the players on the full-length Blanc du Blanc Album. You’ve got some of your frequent Band of Changes collaborators like Dana Colley, the sax player from Morphine, and Kevin Salem on guitar; along with Marco Benevento from JRAD on keys; and Chuck Treece, who played drums with Bad Brains. I even saw a credit for our mutual friend Sarah Tate on there. How did you come to assemble this particular group of musicians for this project?

Chris Harford: Well, as I said, I started out doing it myself and playing all the instruments. And that’s mostly what I did on the first track. Then I had a chance to record with Marco Benevento and that just seemed like a natural choice, going up to Woodstock and having him lay down some of his style on it. Then I went across town and hooked up with my old friend Kevin Salem, who’s a great guitarist and producer who also has a studio in Woodstock, and we created the Joe Harvard tribute track. Joe Harvard was a great musician, artist, producer and engineer from Boston that I had met in Boston and ended up living in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and sadly passed away last year. So, we did a tribute track with Kevin up there. Kevin is an incredible musician who’s been on my records and does all kinds of different stuff, so it was fantastic to work with him again after so many years. And then we have Chuck Treece on drums. Mickey introduced me to him in his studio and we spontaneously just started recording one night. And the tracks you hear was us really meeting for the first time and just laying stuff down, which is pretty cool. I look forward to doing that more with him because he’s so incredible, such an amazing musician, that it felt effortless. And then Sara I’d known for years growing up in Princeton and seeing her around and I knew that she’s done a bunch of voiceover work, so I thought it’d be neat if she could read some lines. And hers is the only voice you’ll hear on the record.

BISS List: Well, there you go. Great lineup. And I love, love, Dana Colley’s saxophone. I think Morphine was one of the most underrated, underappreciated bands. I know some people know and love them, as they should, but they were such an incredible band and it’s such a tragic story how they ended when they did.

Chris Harford: I agree. And I sort of designed the project with him in mind. I call him the linchpin of the Blanc sound. He and I, we met at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and he joined the band Three Colors and was in that for several years before we disbanded and he started Morphine. So to be making music with him again, he’s one of my favorite human beings on Earth. And there’s also another musician, Robbie “Seahag” Mangano, who you’ll hear a lot on the “Winds of Change” EP that comes out on the 29th. There’s also an instrumental with him and Reed Black on the third release, “Reggatta de Blanc du Blanc” that will come out this summer. Scott Metzger [guitarist with JRAD], who’s also from the Princeton area is on “Wind of Change,” as is Jon Shaw, who plays acoustic guitar and keys. So yeah, there’s a coterie of musicians; many of whom are now moving to Hopewell, New Jersey. And we’re starting a thing here. We’re going to have the headquarters of Soul Selects, our record label there, as well as a recording studio. So when you come back to the area, we’re going to have the new the new Motown here. Muscle Shoals will be coming out of Hopewell, New Jersey. [Laughs]

BISS List: Nice! That’s awesome. And that kind of brings me to my next question. I’m really intrigued by this… You reeled off a number of people who are were from Princeton, or went to Princeton High or PDS. I grew up with, as you mentioned, the guys from Blues Traveler. And then we also had Chris Barron from the Spin Doctors, then Tom Osander from God Street Wine, and Trey [Anatasio] both went to PDS. And Ween is from just a few miles away, across the river in New Hope, and used to play some of their earliest gigs in Princeton. You came up a little bit before those guys, with bands like The Groceries playing around in the mid-eighties. What do you think it is about Princeton that makes it such fertile ground for musicians? And why did this little random college town in New Jersey that’s not really known for its music scene, like Austin or someplace with a lot of venues and more of an established reputation, why do you have so many great bands and musicians coming out of this little town in New Jersey?

Chris Harford: Well, from my experience, there’s many factors involved. The main one being that it’s equidistant between Philly and New York City. And then, of course, there’s the University. And as a kid growing up in Princeton that meant you were exposed to music passing through the University, whether they were bands performing at the eating clubs or, you know, seeing Bruce Springsteen at Jadwin Gym in 1978. Or P Funk in Dillon Gym. Or Elvis Costello… You know, I literally went with my friend Jason to see Frank Zappa at Dillon Gym in like 1973. I think maybe his older brother took us? So my memories are just soaked through with these musical experiences… McCoy Tyner at Richardson Auditorium. The Roches at McCarter Theater. And all the hippy bands that came through the eating clubs. Then [W]PRB had such a huge influence as well, you know, the local college radio station.

BISS List: Yeah, yeah. For sure.

Chris Harford: And like you said, I sort of came before all those bands you mentioned. But there were all these great musicians that came before me, including Buddy Miller, the guitarist, who basically leads the Nashville scene, you know? His name is Steve Miller and he grew up in Princeton. The Roth Brothers [Charles and Adam who were part of the downtown NYC music scene of the 70’s]… the list is endless. There’s so many great musicians that come from this town and I think for those reasons that I just mentioned. Sim Cain and Andrew Weiss formed the rhythm section for the Rollins band, I went to high school with those guys. And then to see after me what happened. In the same year I think Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors and Phish were all on the cover of Rolling Stone. So it was like, wow, this is incredible! This IS a scene.

But another cool thing for me [about living in Princeton], for the last… more than a decade, I’ve been writing songs with a Princeton professor. An Irish poet named Paul Muldoon, who’s one of the world’s foremost poets. A Pulitzer Prize winner. He won the Queen’s Award for poetry last year. And that’s been a huge fun thing for me to do, with a monthly gig at the Irish Art Center in New York City called Muldoon’s Picnic. Paul invites some literary and musical friends as guests, and we’re sort of like a house band. We get to play with the likes of Richard Thompson and Loudon Wainright and Rosanne Cash. Steve Earle has joined us. We’ve toured Ireland twice and we backed up Van Morrison and Glen Hansard. So, it’s just been an incredible ride. That’s another thing, growing up as a townie kid I never really thought that I could have a relationship with someone like that. You know what I mean? Because of this tiny town, I’ve actually become friends with this man who’s a world-famous poet, which is mind-blowing to me.

BISS List: That’s amazing. And it’s funny because literally my next question was about your recent album, Shimmering Waste, which I’ve been loving. It’s got a great soundscape and some wonderful wordplay on songs like “Buddy and Billy” and “Jezebel was a Jersey Belle,” the lyrics for both of which were both written by Paul Muldoon. I was going to ask about that relationship, but you beat me to it! On a side note, my parents are good friends with Paul from the English Department at Princeton.

Chris Harford: Oh, awesome. Fantastic. I spoke to Paul yesterday on the phone. I bet they also know Nigel Smith, who’s an English literature professor who was in the previous incarnation of the band, we had. I audited his class on Milton’s Paradise Lost, which of course pretty much went over my head, but I tried.

BISS List: [Laughs] Hah, very cool. And so great that you have that collaboration with Paul Muldoon who I know is a very cool, down-to-earth, amazing guy. And again, I love those songs that feature his lyrics on Shimmering Waste.

Chris Harford: Oh, thank you. I’m so glad that you get it. Most people I talk to it goes over their heads. Like they don’t really understand how cool it is to be collaborating with Paul, so I love that you understand it. It’s remarkable, right? And it’s just been such a fun challenge to get his words into song. It’s such a great exercise in songwriting craft. Like, how am I going to sing all these words? Words you’d never find in your average song. Like, “Jezebel is a Jersey Belle,” you know… it’s a great challenge.

BISS List: Yeah, I was wondering if you had sort of “commissioned him” to write lyrics, or if you were just setting his poems to music. How did that process work?

Chris Harford: That’s another really interesting story. In 1992, I signed a major label deal with Elektra Records, and they let me produce the record, which was incredible. At the time, I was in love with The Waterboys record, Fisherman’s Blues, and I wanted to get a sound like that. So they flew over from Ireland this young engineer named Patrick McCarthy – who had worked on that record as well as some U2 records – and Patrick said, “You know, our national hero poet teaches here in your town, let’s go meet him.” Out of the blue. So, I was like, “What? Yeah, OK.” So, we sought him out. We introduced ourselves and shook his hand. That was my first meeting with Paul. Then I would see him around town and he was always super friendly, you know? I’d see him at Small World Coffee or whatever. And then finally I got the gonads to reach out to him. I wanted to pick his brain, just to learn. And I thought that maybe if I volunteered to, like, empty the garbage in his office or something, I could just start learning things. So I reached out and said, “Hey, could we meet, I have some questions for you?” And he said, “Oh, I’m so glad you reached out because I have some questions for you too. Can I take you out to lunch?” So he took me out to lunch to Teresa’s and he said, “Do you want to go first, or should I go first?” And I was like, “Why don’t you go first.” Because, you know, I didn’t really know how he was going to take my emptying out his garbage concept. So he said, “I’ve come to see you play a bunch and you have a way of selling a song that really appeals to me, and I wondered if you’d like to try writing songs together? …And what was it that you wanted to ask?”

[Laughs] And I was like, “Oh, uh, I forget… But yeah, that sounds cool.”

So he goes on to say, “We have a gig with this band called the Horslips. It’s a video shoot with Nigel in Bethlehem at the steel works in two weeks and we need a guitar player. Could we hire you to come down?” At the time I didn’t know who the Horslips were, and I don’t know if you do, but if you look them up they’re an incredible Irish band from the 70s, a prog rock band, kind of. I’ve since worked with them and they’re amazing people. So here I am in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, like two weeks later playing guitar, meeting the Horslips in this gigantic empty industrial building. And that was the beginning of this relationship. So we started a band, that was the first incarnation of a band which we jokingly referred to as “The band which shall not be named,” but that band was called Rackett, with two T’s. And after Rackett broke up, we started Wayside Shrines and that went for a couple of years and consisted of Nigel, the English professor, and Noriko Manabe who he ended up marrying and who was in the music department at Princeton, and Ray [Kubian] the drummer and me. Ray and I were the only two that survived that band and went on together to form Rogue Oliphant, which is what we call the band now. That lineup’s since expanded to include Cait O’Riordan, who was in The Pogues and played with Elvis Costello – she’s the bass player. And David Mansfield, who played in Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review, he’s the guitar player. Warren Zanes, who was in the Del Fuegos. He’s in it. And Ray Kubian on drums. We’re sort of the house band that I was referring to. So, all of us were sort of lifted to write music for Paul’s lyrics. We all bring what we can and we all have our own style and we’ve been doing it long enough now where we’ve written probably one hundred songs, maybe more.

BISS List: Wow!

Chris Harford: Yeah, we’ve really become a pretty great working live band, too. Paul and I were just talking about looking forward to getting back to it, because we were supposed to be touring England this fall. We had a record release planned for Joe’s Pub in New York City, and all these plans that have obviously been put on hold, so we hope to get back to it.

BISS List: Yeah, hopefully sooner than later. How challenging has it been trying to get your music out there during this past year with no touring, no live music? It must be so frustrating to have all this new stuff that you want to share with people. And I know a lot of that has already started moving online, but this has really had to have been a forcing function for trying to find new ways of getting your music out to people.

Chris Harford: For me, it’s funny. One of the trending words now is “pivoting,” or how you “pivot” out of something. And in my mind, it’s just adapting. But the silver lining for me is how everything has slowed down, which has allowed me to put my record company hat back on and reprise the label I started in Boston in the 80s. Then I could see the bigger picture of what I wanted to try to create, which was that scene in and around Princeton and Hopewell, with all these musicians living here, and then release the dub stuff. So that’s required a lot of different time and creative energy than what playing live requires. And that’s been fine. It’s actually been a great way to spend my time and stay focused on something that can keep me positive and engaged. Creating the Blanc characters and making the albums and having a partner that’s helping me to believe in what we’re up to, it’s given me so much excitement and hope for what’s happening that I’m actually just thrilled, really. And I feel very humbled and grateful to be able to do something like this right now and in these times. So, you know, I’ve missed playing live. But I’m very patient and I’ll be ready. I’ll be ready and even better when it comes time to go back and do it again.

BISS List: That’s a great outlook.

Chris Harford: In the meantime, I’ll just continue to write and record songs.

BISS List: Yeah.

Chris Harford: Get into the studio and get into having fun again marketing the stuff. Because it is really fun to market Blanc du Blanc, much more so than marketing ‘Chris Harford,’ per se. I can get over myself and get back into that, and I will. I haven’t yet. But, you know, I was very ambitious in my late 20s when I got that first record deal. And then through circumstances in the music business, I just sort of shut down that side of my brain. Like, ‘I’m not going to worry about the music business, I’m just going to create.’ And that’s all I could do to just live my life. I was like, ‘All right, I have a daughter to raise. I’m going to have to try to pay the bills, but keep making music. Can’t stop doing that…’ I just didn’t have the extra energy to focus on the marketing of it. And now there’s so much music out there, and so much to do [to stand out], and so much posting that I have to do. But now I’m into it. Now I’m like, “OK, this is fun again.” I have a team of people who are helping me. And like yourself, they’re all doing it for the love of doing it, because they realize that it’s really fun. Gillian Welch really hit the nail on the head when she said, “Everything is free now,” and the big secret is that we’re going to do it anyway, even if it doesn’t pay. I think that’s an amazing song (“Everything is Free”), if you haven’t heard it, it kind of says it all. So, yeah, we have a group of talented people that want to help us get the music out for the love of it. And that’s just joyous.

BISS List: That’s awesome. So the new Hopewell scene, does that include the guys from Ween? I know you play a lot with Mickey and Dave Dreiwitz in the Band of Changes, how did you get to know those guys and how do they fit that whole extended Princeton scene?

Chris Harford: When Three Colors broke up and I returned from Boston, via London and New York City, back to the area, I moved in with Andrew Weiss, Ween’s producer, and he’s still living in the House in Hopewell, up on the mountain there in the Sourland Mountains. He and I went to high school together and he was on my first record for Elektra and he said, “I’m producing this band and they’re going to be one of the biggest bands in the world.” And I was like, “Really? Who’s that?” And he’s like, “Ween.” And I’m like, Hmmm… OK. I was working for a great record label at the time, Hannibal Carthage Records, that was led by Joe Boyd who is also from Princeton. And if you don’t know him, you’ve got to check him out. He’s got a book out (White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960’s).

So anyway, I moved in with Andrew Weiss and he tells me about this band Ween. And at this time they were like 17 years old, I think. And I’m up in my room and I hear him producing this track. I hear it like all day and all night. And I’m like, “What the hell is going on? What is this?” So finally, the third day I’m like “Andrew, what the…” and it was the Ween song “Blackjack”. I don’t know how familiar you are with Ween, but “Blackjack” is just like these crazy sounds [makes guttural sound] and like gurgling, and laughter, and that was my introduction to Ween [laughs]. Then they came over to the house and started talking about what their record cover was going to be and we jammed in the basement. At that time Mickey was really just learning how to play guitar, so to see him go from that moment to being named one of Rolling Stones top one hundred guitar players, I feel very fortunate to have watched the whole thing happen in front of my eyes. So that’s been a special ride. After I got signed to Elektra, that same A&R guy ended up signing Ween. He was definitely on to Ween right away.

Going back to that first record for Elektra – my Be Headed record – on that first record, I had like 35 musicians on it, including Andrew and Sim, and Sean Keenan and Jason Jones from my high school band, Random Joe & the Strillards – we used to play the Hospital Fete and at the YMCA. But we also had Richard Thompson and Loudon Wainwright on that record. We went to Bearsville Studios at Woodstock and we mixed it at Electric Lady in New York. So that was a good time too, getting that started.

BISS List: Amazing. Amazing. We need a whole other interview just to talk about those sessions.

But sadly on that note, I have to stop you there because I know you have to run. But I definitely want to have future conversations with you. I hope you’d be open to chatting again sometime.

Chris Harford: Josh, appreciate it. Thank you so much. What a pleasure to speak with you today. And you can reach out any time.

BISS List: Awesome. Thanks so much, Chris.

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