Native Harrow’s first trip to Ireland hasn’t exactly gone to plan. A shattered windscreen in their hired van was inflicted courtesy a of disturbed individual, randomly throwing stones at the oncoming traffic, shortly after their arrival at Dublin Port. Most certainly, not the traditional Emerald Isle welcome. Their arrival also coincided with the best part of two months rainfall crammed into six days. To add insult to injury, they also had to cancel the last date of their tour, due to the arrival of the tail end of Storm Lorenzo, preventing their intended trip to Derry. Despite the unexpected setbacks, both Devin Tuel and Stephen Harmes are in splendid form when we meet for coffee in Alan Hanna’s Bookshop and Bark Coffee in Rathmines, close to where the couple are staying for their few days in Dublin.
An invitation to perform at The Long Road Festival at Stanford Hall in Leicestershire in September, opened the doors for an extended seven week stay on this side of the pond for the duo, playing dates across the U.K and Ireland. It also offered the prospect of performing material from their most recent album Happier Now, which has been enjoying stellar reviews since its release a few months back.
Native Harrow could be the nom de plume for former ballerina and classically trained singer Devin Teul. Equally it could refer to the two-piece band featuring Tuel and her musical partner Harmes. ‘’ It’s both of us but we’re never clear about it! I prefer it to be unclear as I don’t like to be put in a box and maybe having to stay there forever. Since the beginning of Native Harrow I’ve played music by myself and Steve has played music with a bunch of my friends. We started off playing music together in shows around town and eventually we decided we were good together and it worked. So, we came up with Native Harrow. It doesn’t really mean anything, just two words that sounded unique, which we thought would stand up. I simply sing to Stephen and he builds from there. I might say,’ here is what I’m hearing the bass doing’ and he’ll translate that. It’s a joint effort and a duo first and foremost, even if I happen to be the front person. Native Harrow will always be the two of us, even if we add members to it. We’re in it together we do every part of it ourselves’’
The duo had two albums under their belt – Ghost (2015) and Sorores (2017) and had written Happier Now, prior to attracting the attention of Loose Records in the U.K. who subsequently offered them a record deal in support of the excellent Happier Now. ‘’ We knew of Loose for the past couple of years through Carson McHone and Courtney Marie Andrews, who are both signed to the label. We lived in Nashville for a few years and had also heard of them there. We came to the UK in March of this year just to say we’re here and we have a new record. Let’s play some shows and see what happens. Stephen had invited Tom (Bridgeman) and Julia (Grant) to come to our show in London. We played a really quick set in London right before a really loud rock band. Stephen didn’t tell me until after our set that Loose were there and we spoke with them briefly. We played a few more shows in the UK and Tom asked us to come into their offices and chat about a few things which we did. And they offered us a record deal, which I’m still surprised by! So, it’s been a dream come true to come to a place where you’re not from and see your album in record shops and having the most supportive and wonderful people come to our shows’’
A prolific songwriter - thirty-seven songs grace their three albums to date - Teul’s writing especially excels when composing sorrowful and sombre songs, a trait which was influential in securing the deal with Loose. ‘’ Hard to Take is the saddest song on Happier Now and it’s oddly the song that helped to get us signed to Lose Records. It’s Tom Bridgewater’s favourite song!’’
It’s just one of many distressing yet beautiful songs in her back catalogue, using her art to confront testing issues, encounters and relationships. It’s also in contrast to the bubbly and self-confident individual sitting across the table from me. ‘’ It reflects a very private part of my personality. I like sad songs and think that songs are a place where we can grieve things that we aren’t comfortable to grieve openly. Not to say I don’t also write happier songs but I think just being happy in real life is far easier for me than being happy in song. Songs are not for me a place to always portray life as being perfect. A lot of artists that I’ve met and talked to would say they are happy people and music or dance or poems are places they go to when dealing with things that are maybe not so pleasant’’
Notwithstanding the content of her writing, the pace of Tuel’s writing and her ability to practically write on tap is impressive. Hard To Take was written in the studio during the recording of Happier Now when Stephen Harmes and drummer Alex Hall were on a coffee break! Harmes explains ‘’ What I’ve noticed with some of Devin’s songwriting and that song and a few more songs than usual on Happy Now, is how she writes songs very quickly. I’ve actually never seen her take more than literally twenty minutes to write a song. She’s experiencing something and attempting to deal with it and uses the song as a method to deal with it. Once she’s written the song, she no longer feels that way, but the song exists forever after that. And in one sense it may be funny to get up on stage and deal with these emotions every night and maybe that’s where actor training comes in. Then the other thing that I think is that if anyone else has to deal with their version of how it feels in that particular situation it can be very useful that that song exists and happy people or indeed people that tend to be sad most of the time can experience how she felt at the time that she wrote that’’
Tuel considers this, sips her peppermint tea and replies ‘’ I’m comforted by that; I think that’s why many people like music. There’s an element of feeling a bit hurt and misunderstood with something you felt totally alone in. That’s why some songs just hit me and I feel wow how am I able to capture that feeling thinking perfectly that I’m the only person that ever felt that way. And I like the idea of something existing that people can just go and be honest with themselves and feel sad or whatever’’
It’s not too easy to categorise Native Harrow’s sound. Comparisons to early Laura Marling, Judee Sill and Laurel Canyon are reasonable benchmarks. ‘’ The Laura Marling and indeed Laurel Canyon references are high praise as I’m highly influence by the 60’s and early 70’s so its high praise that those influences come through.’’
They’ve even found shelter under that widening umbrella which is Americana ‘’ No harm having The Americana tag - it’s a catchall for the underdogs, we don’t make the same music as a lot of artists that are considered Americana, but we may end in the same box.’’ They lived in East Nashville for a while. Currently celebrated for its burgeoning Americana scene, I somehow wondered if their sound might not have been the best fit there. ‘’ Stephen plays double bass, that’s his first instrument and we moved there as Stephen was doing a bunch of studio work there and was touring with other musicians living there. I found it really difficult in Nashville based on my sound and different tunings. I didn’t feel intimidated just sad that I didn’t feel accepted. I felt like an outsider. I would go to peoples shows and tried to branch out but it’s a hard nut to crack. The sound there is often Americana or country and the stuff that is not those is psychedelic rock and punk. Its highly competitive there which also drives a lot of the social situations and I struggled with that. I had so much competition in the dance world growing up that I thought ‘I’m done with that’. I just don’t have a competitive mindset. There’s room for everybody in my mind, music is for good and competition creates bad.’’
Music and dance have been foremost in Tuel’s world since an early age and despite the frustrations and challenges a career in the Arts entails, it appears impossible for her to shake off.
‘’I started ballet when I was three and danced all through elementary school and High School and even a little bit in University afterwards. I studied ballet and modern dance mostly. The singing came into play in High School, I started doing choir and taking voice lessons and doing musical theatre as well. I got tired of in being in a rigorous ‘you have to do it this way’ sort of thing and I wanted to do it on my own terms. When I started taking voice lessons I definitely wanted to be on Broadway and wanted to do musical theatre’’
Her vocal training is clearly in evidence when Native Harrow perform at their Dublin gig in The Underground later that day. Each song is delivered note perfect and true to the studio recordings. There’s also a discipline and symmetry to her vocals, coupled with intense concentration, that bears witness to her proficiency to record in a couple of takes in the studio environment. I wondered if her dance training had also been beneficial to her now chosen career.
‘’Yes. You know I really have accepted that the training is so imbedded in me as a person. Because I started so young, I have a lot of discipline, I have become a perfectionist which sometimes is a problem but I think now as an adult I’m trying to bring more of the dance skills to my performances, whether it be the grace or more movement around the stage. Before I would have stood still on stage where now I’m letting myself relax more. Dance has allowed me get to a point where I can master my craft more freely and be more present in my body than beforehand. From an early age learning to be on time, work really hard at things, get things done and be your own critic but also perform. It let me know that I can do anything I really want to do.’’
That discipline and structure also factors in dealing with the downside of the musical career. Rejections, unanswered emails, self-management and torturous touring, all the obstacles facing the professional musician. ‘’I’ve written about being absolutely exhausted from touring and choosing the life of a performer a number of times. I feel I’m almost destined to do as if I don’t really have a choice. No matter how many times I quit touring I’m just drawn back in. And on a really long tour you get to the point where you just feel absolutely isolated from everyone and everything other than the road and it’s a lonely and tiring place. It happens at every level, we have friends playing arenas and we have friends playing coffee shops and they say the same, it’s a really hard life. We know, we toured for a year living in our van sleeping in Walmart parking lots. It’s not something that we dwell on a lot but when things improve and you get signed to a record label you think about the nights not been able to sleep because of the cold But it’s what we have to do to make money and there’s day that really go well, where you feel on top of the world and this is why I do this and you have a run of days that are just awful, the highs are so high and the lows so low, but you’re just pulled back in every time.’’
So how has the touring experience in U.K. and Ireland been. ‘’ On this tour we had people come up to us and ask why we were playing at certain venues and that this is the worst place for you to play. But we’d never been here before and nobody else would answer our emails so it’s hard. Also knowing that there are other people making thousands of dollars when we are struggling. This is our first time here so we’re learning this time, travelling four thousand miles from our home. So, on the first time over we just go to the gigs hoping for the best and often expecting the worst. The flip side is people often come to the gig, they’re excited to see us, they dislike the venue, they tell us where we should play, their friend is a promoter and put us in touch. We had to come here this first time make the contacts and prove that we will come and do the work.’’
Some artists have long term goals, others survive by avoiding looking beyond the next tour or album. I get the impression that both Tuel and Harmes probably favour the former. ‘’Short term game plan is we go home from this and this is the first time we’ve been home for fall which is my favourite season. I’m looking forward to silly things at home, pumpkins and eating apple cider doughnuts and hanging out with my family. We’re also in the process of working on a new record, writing songs and figuring that out. Stay local for shows during the rest of the year and back to the UK/Europe twice next year.’’ Harmes considers her response, scratches his chin and replies. ‘’I have a ten-year kind of plan, with different options depending on how things go. We’re at the point where we want to be working with other people more, maybe not doing all of the booking ourselves and all of the other admin. In the UK we now have Loose to support us. In the States we self-released our records and we work with record stores there otherwise it’s all us. We’ve done over two hundred shows in both 2017 and 2018 and the booking takes a lot of time, it leaves very little time for anything else.’’
Written by Declan Culliton