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Mic Harrison steps out of the shadows

by Joe Tarr

Mic Harrison swears he didn’t feel much pressure striking out on his own, after years of being a sideman to two of the city’s greatest songwriters and musicians: Scott Miller and John Davis, in first the V-roys, and later Superdrag.

But his friend and bandmate, Don Coffey Jr., who helped produced the record, knew what was at stake.

“I think you left most of the agonizing to me,” says Coffey, the longtime Superdrag drummer turned producer and engineer. “At least around here it’s a big thing to step out on your own. I felt the pressure. I knew those guys have made records everyway there is. Whatever we did had to stand up to that. Sonically, it was going to have to stand up. Obviously, those were the first guys to hear it, so I felt a lot of pressure.”

But Coffey felt confident about one thing. Harrison had recorded demos of his songs on a boombox before going into the studio. “More than anything you could hear on the boombox that Mic had great songs. Some people say some of the songs would have been better off left that way,” Coffey says. “I think it’s the best stuff Mic’s ever done.”

It’s 3 p.m. in the afternoon, and the two sit at the Urban Bar in the Old City, downing Budweisers.

They can relax a little bit. The album they made together—Pallbearer’s Shoes—stands up against anything Harrison’s old bands have done. On it, Harrison took more care than usual crafting the songs, and Coffey strove to produce a record that is solid, yet varied. Released this week, it’s already gotten raves from their old friends and registered on the Americana and Triple-A radio charts.

Lyrically the album is something of a concept album—thankfully, without any pretensions.

“I had a whole plan on this record as far as lyrics,” Harrison says. “Most of the songs are about somebody in my family. If it’s not about a person, it’s about something that happened to me as a kid. It sounds corny, I guess. The next one will be all about beer.”

“Well, they say write about what you know,” Coffey adds.

“It’ll be a double album, with one song about pretzels,” Harrison jokes.

His favorite song is “Back to Knoxville,” which is also where the album title comes from. It’s a song about coming back from his grandfather’s funeral. It’s poignant and sad, with the lines, “When I’m going back to Knoxville/ You know I’ll be alright.”

It was one of those moments when Harrison knew his home was no longer where he’d grown up. “Knoxville’s not nearly as depressing as West Tennessee,” he says.

Harrison grew up in the town of Skullbone, about 120 miles north of Memphis. He always wrote music, but mostly he just played in cover bands. He never really dreamed of being a rock star. “Back then I’d hear if you just get Alan Jackson to cover one of your songs, you’d make a buttload of money. I didn’t even want to play live back then.”

His life changed when his old friend Jeff Bills called him up in the mid-’90s and asked if he wanted to play in his band, the V-roys. They needed someone to take the place of John Paul Keith (currently playing with Stateside), who had departed for Nashville. “It was like, stay in Skullbone or go play in a rock band in Knoxville,” Harrison says of the choice.

Lead singer and songwriter Scott Miller grabbed most of the spotlight in the V-roys, but Harrison proved to be his peer and sometimes managed to steal the show, as with “Amy ’88.” His voice is more haggard and cynical than Miller’s. On tracks where they traded verses—like “What She’s Found”—it was pure magic.

When the band split up at the end of the century, Harrison joined the short-lived group the Faults, and then played with Superdrag for more than a year.

Since he joined the V-roys, Harrison has been hooked on the rush of live performance. “Even if it’s a shitty crowd, ‘Journey’s End’ gets a good reaction. That’s the drug of it. It’s like, ‘Holy shit, I wrote this song. They like it.’ The reactions are what I like best,” he says.

He learned a lot watching his more famous bandmates—Miller and Davis—take the lead. “Scott’s banter is the best in the world. Sometimes he does a little too much, but that’s just me. John’s just a killer performer,” he says. “It’s really cool to watch other bands. I pay more attention to how they perform than the songs. Mainly I learn what not to do—talking too much or going too fast. You’ve got to be somewhere in-between.”

With his latest release, Harrison changed his songwriting approach. “Instead of sitting down and writing a song, I sit down and think about what I want to write about and all the details I want to put into it,” he says.

He also took more care to rewrite and refine. “In this record, I went back and rewrote a little bit. Every once in a while a line could be better or a part. I don’t think anything on this record popped out. That’s cool when it happens. But when people say, ‘Shit, this song popped out in 10 minutes,’ usually it means they’re too lazy to work on it any longer.”

It took more than a year to record Pallbearer’s Shoes—most of it was done on breaks in Superdrag’s final tours. An all-star Knoxville cast played on the CD—Coffey drummed on all the tracks, and Stewart Pack, Paxton Sellars, Davis, Peggy Hambright, Todd Steed, and Sam Powers all pitched in. Doug Gillard—of Cobra Verde and Guided By Voices—also played on several tracks.

Harrison has done some small acoustic tours and will venture out on the road with a full band soon. Harrison still cuts lawns now and then for cash, but he’s hoping to finally make a living in the music business.

“I know I’m starting over,” Harrison says. “I’m not the V-roys; I’m not Superdag.”

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to be. He’s damn good all on his own.

June 3, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 23 © 2004 Metro Pulse