Hey, this is Paul Martin and Ray the Roadie for the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. Well, look at you, Ray. I see you.

I see you, too. We haven't seen each other in a studio in over a year. I know.

And we're here. We're here back at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum at our at our facilities here at the Joliet. And it's great to be here.

Yes, it is. It's it's been a long time, you know, and you look different than you do on Zoom. I do.

Yeah, you you actually have depth. You're just flat. Oh, I see.

You know, on the screen. Yeah. So it's but yeah, I mean, I haven't seen you in a year.

Well, thank goodness for Zoom, though, because it's kept us going all this time. Yeah, we wouldn't we wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for that. I don't know what we would have done.

I don't know. But we've got Episode 90 coming up, right? Yes. I'm just heading down that yellow brick road.

Oh, yeah. It leads us right to Simply Elton. Oh, OK.

Well, yes, I'm Simply Elton. We talked to Brian Harris, who is Simply Elton. Well, he's got some great stories.

He's got he likes to talk. Yeah. And he's a finely educated musician.

Yes, he is. Yes, he is. I really love to go see him sometime soon.

Unfortunately, he's playing right across the street from where we're at tonight. But but I'm not going to be able to make it today. Neither will I. We'll have to check him out sometime soon.

But we'll check about right now on the rock and roll Chicago podcast. Head on down the yellow brick road. Everybody, welcome to the show today.

We're talking with Brian Harris, who is simply Elton. How are you doing, Brian? Good. Thanks for having me in, guys.

I appreciate it. Thanks for coming. No problem.

So it's so you're playing across the street today. We're at the Rock and Roll Museum or back here at the Rock and Roll Museum after doing a podcast for for almost a while over a year, right? Right. Over a year via Zoom.

We're back here at the Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66 in Joliet. And you're playing at the Forge today across the street. Yeah, we're really looking forward to it.

We've been playing some of the larger clubs. We play Piers in Fort Wayne last week and the Forge here. And we've got the Hobart Theater coming up and a bunch of festivals and things like that.

So it's really great to see things come back like they have. It's it's really good. Yeah.

Did you did you have some time off there for a while? How did you survive this COVID thing? Well, you know, fortunately, I work also as an IT consultant, and it was a strange coincidence that in March of last year, in 2020, we had all our gigs canceled, both my my solo performances and as well as band and everything just fell through. And right about the same time, I got a call. I was I was not working currently at the time at UnitedHealthcare.

And I got a call from the director I work with. And she said, we need you to come help with a COVID related project. So it was sort of, you know, the the virus taketh and then the virus giveth.

But then things started to open up a little bit. We did some shows and we did one band show last year in June. I think it was at CD and Me.

Then we had I had some solo things that were coming up that which works very well with the limited capacity that they would have for the for the venues. I played the restaurants and that kind of thing. And then up through September, that went.

But then everything got crazy again after that. And so everything dried up. And it's been slow in coming through the beginning of this year.

But the summer is just jam packed with everything. So it's great to see it really. That's great to hear.

Good to hear that you're back out there playing again. So so tell us a little bit. Well, let's start with your early years.

How did you get in? You play piano, obviously. Right. And and how did you how'd you get started in the music business? I started.

Well, let's put it this way. I started when I was five years old and then I quit and I didn't really look at it. I was very into baseball and, you know, that kind of thing.

Sure, as every kid is. Yeah, sure. Especially when I was growing up, that was the thing, you know.

And what I found then, I asked my sister because my sister used to play piano and I was about 12. And I said, can you teach me just one song? And she was happy to teach me one song. And I thought, maybe I'll do another one.

And of course, my parents were always very supportive. And they got me into music. And they said, we'll give you lessons if you want.

You just ask and we'll we'll get them. And so I did that and I got more and more and more and more into it. So I kind of had a dual thing.

I was I loved rock and roll. I actually grew up really loving like progressive rock with Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman of Yes and Genesis and all these groups, you know, that I really liked a lot. And yet I also really was working classical music a great deal and and some jazz as well.

So I ended up going to Hart School of Music in the University of Hartford for a classical piano degree, a bachelor's in classical piano performance. And I got out of school and I wanted to keep playing. I wasn't as much as I like teaching.

I did some teaching here and there and that kind of thing. But I was really always a player. And so I did that for a number.

That's the piano, you mean? Yes. Yeah, definitely. I shouldn't say that.

Yeah, well, the interesting thing is because I always knew Elton John's music. I mean, who didn't share? And I knew a lot of the songs and I would play them when I play little piano bar things and that kind of thing. But I never imagined that it would ever lead to that.

We didn't know what the tribute thing was going to be about back then. So I went through the years. I was in the army band for three years for Sheridan here in Illinois.

And I spent a good three years there. But I got out of that after I was ready to move into the corporate world. And my my sons were growing up.

My wife and I have four sons. One of my sons is he has an act called Gold House and he has some national exposure with that. He was signed to Capitol Records for a time.

What does he play? He plays a variety of different things. He does. He can play the keyboards, but he's not a piano player per se.

But he can he does a lot of producing and that kind of thing, a lot of remixing. He's been in L.A. right now. He's in Nashville.

But I have all my sons are musical. My one of my sons is really the piano player out of the four. And he can I watch him play and think, well, there's not much more I can do on that piece than he's doing.

He's he's really talented. Another son is a bass player and got a music degree also. And he's doing well.

And then my son, one of my other sons, musically talented. But he's gone kind of a different way. He's a Starbucks manager on the rise and that kind of thing.

So my wife and I are very proud of all of this. I came back to music about 15, 20 years in in the sense that, well, I kept playing through the years. I never let my chops get away from me.

But I started to sing more because I'd never been a singer. I was always a piano guy. And the big thing about 10 years ago, 2010, 2011, was that I decided I wanted to try this Elton thing.

I had backed up. I'd gotten with a group that had played. It backed up Elvis guys, Elvis tribute artists, and they were fun gigs.

We I wasn't necessarily an Elvis fan, but we played all over the country on weekends and that kind of thing. And they were they were fun shows to play. And I learned a lot about the tribute industry.

And then that led to the Elton thing to where I've come today with it. What was the name of that band? That was called the E.A.S. band. Oh, OK.

It's a play on where it's a play on words. Expense account show band. But it's expense because there was a guy named Spence and they call it the expense account.

Oh, OK. And we had a lot of fun. We went all over the place.

They're still they still are playing and backing up all this guys all over the place. And I worked with some other bands. There's a band called Change of Habit.

And they're they're both based in the Chicago area. But we rarely play in the Chicago area. It's always playing festivals for the for the most part.

But I stopped doing that in 2010 when I really started to want to get to my own thing. I also still will do progressive rock things like there's a group we call Fan Fanfare, and it does Emerson, like in Palmer, which is a real challenge to have that kind of stuff down. And then a group called Grand Parade, which does the music of early Genesis, Peter Gabriel and early Phil Collins stuff.

So those things are, you know, I do that for the love of just playing it because I grew up loving that music. It sounds like you're pretty busy. Yeah, it's I always find something.

I always find a project and the Elton thing trying to, you know, Elton is so unbelievably popular. I knew that going in, but I don't know that I knew how popular Elton is. I think I backed the right horse when I picked a tribute to, you know.

Now, I saw you were doing something I saw on your website that you were doing something where you're you're playing full albums of Elton's at Reggie's or something. It was it. That was a number of years ago.

Oh, I don't know what I did. And, you know, that was a great project. It was great to work with Reggie's that way because I would just go in and do a solo performance, but do the entire album.

And that was at a period when I was really working on learning just taking the 1970s and immersing myself in those albums. And in that project to have to play them was a great way to like kick me in the kick me in the ass out there and learn the songs. One of the one of the observations I had from it was because I knew the Elton hits like everybody does growing up, but I didn't know a lot of the deep tracks that he had on some of these things, some of these albums.

And it just struck me as like, wow, what what I missed. There was there were so many great songs written. And the songwriting is amazing.

And so I that was that was a very fun experience to go through and learn them all and do that. So so you do you read music? Yes. Yes.

Do you pick these songs up by reading them or do you mostly by listening or both? Both, mostly by listening. But if I if I have, you know, a book, I mean, I've purchased Billy Joel and Elton John books and that kind of thing. Those are helpful, but sometimes they're not as refined as when you listen to the the actual recording.

There's things they're doing that are not notated in those kind of bare bones music charts. And to get anything more, it's almost like, you know what? Just listen to it and figure it out. And so that was most of it.

But but, you know, I still keep my reading up. I'll still work on Rachmaninoff and things like that when I'm, you know, just just to try to keep my chops up and not lose, you know, what I have with with reading and that kind of thing. So after the.

Full albums you're doing, is that when Simply Elton came to fruition? Actually, Simply Elton started, I see I'd done a couple. A couple acts or a couple performances, just short little things in like 2010 and 2011. And then it was the end of 2011, I kind of said, am I going to be able to do this? And it was not a question of the piano because, you know, I can I can play the piano and that was that was always a given.

It was can I sing a full night like tonight is a is a, you know, two long Elton sets. And in 2011, I at the end of it, I went and said, look, I'm going to try to do this. So I what I did, too, I had to pick a name and everything under the sun was picked, you know, you know, Captain Fantastic.

Yeah. Rocket Man. Everything's going to be.

So I looked for something and I just said Simply Elton. And it just I mean, and I I feel good about that decision. It seems it's very easy to remember and everything.

We originally called the the band the Brown Dirt Cowboys band because of Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. Then we found out, you know, a lot of people don't necessarily know that, you know, even if they like Elton, they may not be, you know, they didn't grow up with it and that kind of thing. And then when we did our Billy Joel act and call it simply Billy and the Brown Dirt Cowboys, it didn't sound like a Billy Joel act.

It sounded like, you know, a shit kicking band, you know, which is good. I mean, that's that's a great kind of band. It's just that that was not what we did.

So we changed the name and I said, you know, Mad Hatters. I like that. And that really seems to fit, obviously, with Mona Lisa's and Mad Hatters and that kind of thing.

So what worked out great is you already had all the outfits in your closet at home, right? Yeah. Right. No, I've dressed more like I am right now with, you know, kind of just a T-shirt and jeans on.

What I had to do, that's where the the working with all the Elvis guys that I came in handy. Yeah. Yeah, because I learned backstage, you see, we had a broad spectrum of of different Elvis artists that we worked with.

We were hired. The band, the band was hired by Elvis Presley Enterprises to come in. And so those are considered like huge major shows in that little cottage industry that is Elvis.

I worked with some of the I mean, the top guys in the world, if not the top guys in the world. And because some of them are, you know, all over the place and travel all over the world. And we also played with some guys who were, you know, just doing it because they loved it and had really, you know, they just love trying to do it, you know, that kind of thing.

And but I saw the the detail that they went in to purchase their outfits. You know, I mean, they might be twenty five hundred, three thousand dollars for some of those jumpsuits because they're so bedazzled with all that stuff. And it's a lot of piecework.

And when they do contests, they get graded on the accuracy of their outfits. You know, it's really intense. So for me, it was like the first thing I did then was I went online and I found out and I looked at Elton, you know, through the years.

And I saw the 1984 Wembley Stadium concert. He had this it's it's a it's a kind of a tux with tails and it's black and white on the jacket and then white and black opposite on the pants. And I looked at it with a straw boater kind of hat.

And I said, you know what? I could wear that. So I went out and found a company that could create it for me. You know, it's just over a grand to get it.

So I had to invest some money to do that. And, you know, and I and I got that. And then I went out and played the show, the first show in this little little bar in Chicago.

And I go into the men's room to change it, you know, just starting right from there. And I looked in there in the mirror and I'm seeing myself in this outfit and thinking, are you really going to do that? But but, you know, what I what I found was that people would smile when I came out and they'd say, holy crap, look at this guy. But it wasn't it wasn't laughing.

It was like, oh, that's really cool. And now let's see, can he really play? Right. You know, because I think people are thinking, you know, Elton's really good.

You know, I mean, you know, you I'd like to you know, they want to see if you can really pull it off. So so and after that, then when it seemed to be going well, I said, OK, let me see if I can get another outfit. I haven't bought spent money on having every every outfit match something Elton wore, but I will get, you know, you know, like a sequined jacket or something like that.

Something similar to what Elton might wear and those kind of things and hats and glasses and everything. I was going to say, you'd have to have a seamstress and and and staff. You know, I do.

The outfit I'll wear tonight to start with and the outfit that the forge has listed, that's an outfit I made with this seamstress in town. I mean, she makes wedding dresses and stuff like that. But I bought a shark skin suit, a shiny blue shark skin suit, and then just we designed how we're going to put, you know, all over the arm with all this bedazzling and everything.

So we got kind of creative. And then I wore this. I bought this crazy, like a generalissimo hat, which is all dazzled also and stuff.

So it's kind of fun, you know, to to go out with that. People people seem to gravitate towards it. That adds a lot to the performance, too.

I mean, really, it does. You know, when you're dressing like he did, people actually feel like you're him. Yeah.

Yeah, they do. And I'm close and I don't look exactly like Elton, but I'm close enough where, you know, you put a hat and glasses on. There is, you know, that kind of thing.

And then it's then it's just up to me. Can I round glasses or star glasses or something? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. He has the ones he wears now, and I've got like a boatload of them. And, you know, I can choose, you know, one of them and that kind of thing.

Another thing is I haven't seen him wear them lately, but I picked up some men's platform disco shoes. And they're all glittered and everything. And the women, they really love them.

They're like impossible to walk in, though, aren't they? I thought I was. I thought it was going to be a problem. It hasn't been really a problem.

I've never fallen. Yeah. So, yeah, it's really crazy for me to go there with all that stuff.

I think my wife thought I was like, OK, whatever, Brian, whatever. But it's been it's been fun. I mean, even when I was doing progressive rock, when I was in my teens and 20s playing with progressive rock bands, I liked the idea of like Rick Wakeman, you know, having a cape on and all that silly stuff.

So it wasn't that big of a stretch for me to do an Elton. For me, it's you know, I'm not going to get into the dresses and he'll dress like Marie Antoinette stuff. That's not something I want to do.

But I like to focus, do the show for what it is with Elton in a in a really cool, crazy outfit. And then it's it's about the music. And, you know, because Elton has all these great songs that are such a great vehicle for a piano player, singer.

And I just love it. You know, attacking those, you know, and really going at the piano every night. It's just an absolute blast.

I have the time of my life doing it. So once you get dressed up, go out on stage, you sit down. Do you become Elton? Do you channel him? You know, I I'll say it this way.

I don't think of it that way. But what I do is I do go into kind of a zone. And I know that when I play a performance.

Over the years in clubs and things where people can come right up to me and people who know me will come up to me, and it's like I'm looking right through them, I realize after the fact that they they said they came up like my cousin's kids came up one time and and I was like talking to them, not even realizing who they were, you know, that kind of thing. And so it's it's interesting. But but there are times to, you know, I'll be on stage looking like in a theater and looking out.

And, you know, there's you know, especially if there's there's a really nice crowd out there, you look out. And it's almost like, boy, am I lucky to be able to do this? Because for a couple hours, you get to actually you you get to live the life of what Elton John, you know. I don't know if the numbers are the same, certainly, but you've got a huge crowd packed in and they're going crazy for the music.

And I'm getting to lead, you know, lead the show. And I'm very fortunate to be able to to do that. And I go with it and just appreciate it.

You know, for one thing, after the show, I take it off off the outfit and I'm dressed like I am now. People don't even know who I am. And that's also not a bad thing.

I think, you know, you see what Elton's gone through in his life. It's been very good. He's worked things out now at the end.

But for me, it's it's like I get to spend a couple hours up there and live in the life and then just go back to, you know, sort of like when you see Ozzy Osbourne at home. You know, it is a show that's kind of me forgetting to take out the garbage and stuff like that. Have you ever done a show with like an actual grand piano doing Elton? Yeah, there's a only literally only once.

There is a theater in Wisconsin called the Century Theater. And it's in Stevens. I think that's Stevens Point.

It's owned by an insurance company, and they only allow use of it free. It's a great theater for for for events that are, you know, for charitable reasons and things like that. So it's a nice thing that they have there.

And they have a couple grand pianos, full nine foot. And we got to use one for it. And it was really cool.

So I definitely got some pics of that, you know, because it's a great look. But also just to be able to play it, it was it was really a blast because, you know, I used to do that all the time when I was in college and that kind of thing. We had nine foot grand pianos all over the place.

You use you've got an electronic keyboard that you use now, right? Yeah, I I bought a lot of a lot of piano bars will buy a piano shell or they'll have a piano that's been, you know, gutted and they'll put an electronic keyboard in there. They don't have to have it tuned in that kind of thing. So I looked online.

Back in 2011 and found that I could purchase a piano shell, which is made with lighter wood so you can bring it around. So literally in my van, that piano shell is in there. It's about it's about five feet.

And, you know, you put it up on stage. It has metal legs, but you put sleeves over it. So it really looks like a grand piano.

People think it's a grand piano, which is great. Then I just put a Roland RD-2000 and it really dresses it up. And I use it whenever I can.

Sometimes smaller venues, you know, or if the stage is pretty small, it's you know, it would really, you know, jumble the band into a tight little corner. So so you said that you were never a singer. Some of Elton's stuff is pretty high.

Did you manage to overcome all that and get to get some of those notes that Elton hits? Fortunately, Elton's more like a tenor, not a tenor like Steve Perry or anything like that. You know, not a high tenor. But and especially when he was young, he was hitting those higher notes.

So I do it through a combination. I mean, I'm like a high baritone close to a tenor. And what's happened is over the years, it with all the singing that I have been doing, it has helped my range for one thing.

My falsetto is stronger so that with a little bit of mic technique, I can be singing in full voice. And then if I go to falsetto for a couple of notes or whatever, depending on the song, I'll kind of, you know, eat the mic a little more so that I'll get a little more volume out of it. And, you know, it seems to have gone pretty well that way.

When I when I first started at the end of 2011, like I said, I was trying to figure out how to, you know, if I could be really sing this. I remember my wife went out for she went to visit her mother for a couple for a weekend. And I was I was left home.

And I thought, well, I'm going to treat this like two nights playing two 75 minute sets each night, sing the whole thing. It was not a problem vocally. Elton has these songs like like something like sad songs or something where it's doesn't hit any ridiculously high notes.

It just hangs way up there for the whole song. And those kind of songs will be, you know, over the course of a full night. Those will can be taxing on you.

What what I ran into was I did that the first night and I didn't realize when I was singing because I was up there. I had my shoulders really, you know, clenched, you know, for most of the two nights and I got my back. So I had to go to a chiropractor.

And he told me, you know, just just by spending a couple, three or four hours, you know, each night, you know, like like that. And it really clenched me up. And he said, well, dude, I can help you, but you it's really bad what you got.

So it finally worked out. But what I learned from that was I relaxed then when I went back to it and I never had the problem again. So I just had to be cognizant of it, not to tense up when I'm trying to hit those notes.

So so you mentioned simply Billy or Billy Joel. Do you do any Billy Joel in your Elton set or do you just do strictly Elton? Yeah, well, I typically will do a little bit of each in in either act like like tonight, actually tonight, it's a longer night tonight. So we're actually doing several Billy Joel songs, which is less usual for us.

Typically, I'll do Piano Man because nobody's going to complain about hearing Piano Man. And, you know, the tie in is so direct because they've done their you know, their dual duo shows together and all that kind of thing. So tonight we'll throw in some things.

I mean, you might also hear it's still rock and roll to me and that kind of thing just to, you know, since it is a longer night and I may also stretch out on piano a little bit more. It's a we we are careful about how we approach the set list when it's a 45 minute set for a festival or a 90 minute set versus, you know, a full night of, you know, a couple to full 75 minute sets or something like that when you and you have to watch. You know, if you're playing for a festival crowd, you have just a lot of people that you know, you focus on the hits and that kind of thing mostly.

But for, you know, other nights, you can go into, you know, some deep tracks and kind of things like whether you play Madman Across the Water or, you know, I would love to play those kind of songs, you know, and have, you know, half the night Madman Across the Water and Empty Garden and, you know, tonight and all these great Elton songs. But, you know, it is a tribute and people are there and you want to I want to give them, you know, what they want with it. So there's a balance there.

Should have stayed on the farm I should have lived on my own You know you can't hold me forever Inside out with you Not a present for your friends to roam And it's always too young to be singing Then you do a Billy Joel show as well, correct? Yes. You say you're saying Elton's costume? No, what I'll do is, well, first of all, I don't really look like Billy, obviously. I mean, if you look like one of them, you don't look like the other, right? You know, because they're they're very, you know, they look very different, obviously.

So Billy Joel, for me, is more like an homage to his music and that kind of thing. And I will wear something similar to what he'll wear. Like sometimes he would wear like a blazer with jeans and sneakers.

Right. I might do that. But I almost sometimes I have other shark skin suits, which I haven't made into Elton outfits, like a purple one, a black one and a silver one.

And I'll wear that for a Billy Joel for a Simply Billy show, you know, and it's a, you know, just a really snappy suit and a nice look and everything like that. He might have done more of that like later with, you know, some of the later music that he did and some of the videos. So I'm not so worried about that because the focus on Billy Joel show is really isn't about, you know, crazy outfits, right? You know, he's just very dressed down for the most part.

But we don't do nearly as many Billy Joel shows. It came about later in the first in the in the first place. I didn't start it till about three or four years later.

But it's a really nice addition. We can sometimes open with Billy and then close with Elton or like I have Green Bay Botanical Gardens on July 16th, I think, and we're going up and just playing a full night of Billy Joel's up there. And like I say, we'll throw in things tonight, you know, and other nights.

But when we play the Billy Joel show, we'll probably throw Benny in the Jetson or something like that too. Right. Do you do any solo stuff? Come out and just play by yourself without the band.

When you have a band with you? Not typically, but tonight I may do because we're kind of stretching out and doing some it's a longer night. Like I might play a little snippet of a Chopin thing. I might do.

You know, one of his movie era songs or something just on my own kind of thing, just, you know, to kind of change things up a little bit. So tell us about about the band. Who's who's in your band? Well, I've got people that I've worked with a long time.

Our singer is a terrific singer. I'm kind of humbled that someone with a voice like that would sing backing vocals for myself, not having been a singer my whole life. And her name is Sharma Callister.

And Char is I met her when I was playing with the group Deacon Blues. But Char was a singer in that band. And we just, you know, had a nice connection.

And we were still good friends. And we enjoy, you know, singing and working together. So and, you know, so she she has her original music.

She's doing all her things, too. On drums, we've got a guy, Jason Parks. And I met Jason in the band, the EAS band that I was talking about earlier.

And Jason was running that band with the the drummer of the band. Jason is my drummer, but he was also playing backing. He's a very versatile guy.

He's owned his own studios. He's owned his own sound and lighting companies. And he's done.

So it's very helpful to have a drummer that has that production and the technical side down to on top of that. He's wonderful backing vocalist. And he absolutely nails it with, you know, and knows all the parts.

And he's been doing it for decades, you know, so he's really terrific at it. And then on guitar, we have Bill Dalton. And Bill and I met in the Elvis world.

Bill is actually really in demand. He gets calls all the time for to do some Elvis shows and that kind of thing. So we're we're working on that, you know, to, you know, make sure we were in sync with our schedules and that kind of thing.

Occasionally I'll have to book a sub, but that's not that often. And then on bass, we have a longtime Chicago guy named Gordon Patriarca. Gordon's just a rock solid bass player.

Good friend of mine. I think I met him originally with Jason in the band. He was he did a few gigs with us or something like that.

And so he's rock solid on that. And what we've also done now is add a non playing member this year. We've got a guy named Jim Richards.

And Jim is just a top notch sound reinforcement lighting video kind of guy. And he's a super guy. And it's taking a lot of the pressure off of me to have to be doing everything on these shows.

And keeping track of all details. Now, Jim's there to, you know, take care of that kind of thing and also to observe what's going on when we're on stage, because that's been a problem, not not being able to know always what's what's going on out there. Sure.

It's a good, good, good guy to have. Oh, absolutely. We also when we do Billy Joel shows, we'll call on a good friend I met in Deacon Blues as well.

He goes by Cash Michaels is his stage name. And he's a just a has a magnificent sound on sax. So with a Billy Joel show, you really need to have, you know, sax.

Obviously, it's such a huge part of it. Have you written any music? Yeah, I have. I do have music on Spotify.

It's just under Brian Harris. And actually, I just released a song on a piano piece that I did on Simply Brian. So if you search Brian, Brian Harris artist on Spotify, you'll find the playlist of a lot of my most of my music.

And what is in what vein is that? You know, I would say some of it is perhaps closer to like Steely Dan, probably, but there's a good bit of instrumental, which is more like jazz. I don't want to say fusion might not be the right term because that gives a certain impression. But it's it's it's jazz with, you know, kind of rocking to sonic, that kind of thing.

So, you know, I always keep dabbling on on on those kind of things. And I don't have huge expectations. But it's I think it's great for any musician to write music, even if you don't do anything with it or if you do, that's even better.

But it's it's a good thing to go through the act of trying to write music. And, you know, it expands your your musical horizons a little bit, so to speak. I sound like a music teacher saying that.

But but I think it's really true. You know, whatever you can do. And even for musicians that don't consider themselves singers, trying to sing, trying to sound like, you know, at least do backing vocals, that kind of thing, a lot of people just close their mind to it.

But it really expands your whole musical nature when you try to do things that, you know, you may not have done before. I've tried to do that my whole life, you know, over time. Do you have your own studio at home that you record in? Or do you have my own equipment? I wouldn't call it a studio per se.

But we do have when when my son Grant, you know, was doing Breathe Electric and then which turned into Gold House, when we redid the downstairs, we had it finished as a basement and he definitely wanted included a vocal room. So we do have that and I can use that. And I have, you know, a lot of equipment.

I use Apple Logic for recording and that kind of thing. You know, that's because I own Macintosh that that was an easy choice for me for me to make. I think the biggest problem for me with recording is that I just don't have the time.

To focus on all the things that a producer, I mean, there's just so much that I don't know, but if I spend time doing that, that I'm not spending time working on my Elton act or on my originals, writing or whatever it is I'm trying to do. So there's you know, there comes a point where there's only so much time in a day. But I try to be at least functional in recording.

I can come up with a demo that. OK, maybe when we get somebody who really knows the ropes, they can make it better. Sure.

Now, you said your parents were very supportive in getting you lessons. Were they musically inclined or the day playing? You said your sister did, right? Yeah. Everybody in the family was my brother and two sisters, both musical and my parents.

I can still remember when we'd have people over and we had a home, a family organ. And my dad would play it. And, you know, he would, you know, with with the rhythm box played.

I mean, this is we're talking like 70s and that kind of thing. You know, they were not what they are now. But he was he was a good player.

He always told me, learn how to read because he didn't read. And he always he was really he was really he regretted that he'd never learned how to read music. But he would tell me he would play guitar and sing on a radio station, a local radio station in like 1932 or so.

My dad was older when I was born and he would tell me all that. So he had a nice voice and he played. And my mom is now 98.

And she is still going to the piano in her assisted living place and and playing. God bless her. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She she's doing well. And, you know, you can talk with her and she, you know, it's great. My sister, my sister on a Canadian now who in Connecticut now is would play the harp and did some flute.

My other sister, piano. My brother also guitar, and he grew up with the Beatles. So he was just an absolute Beatles freak.

That's great. And you're passing it on to your children, too, as well. That's yeah, it's true.

Yeah, there is a lot of a lot of musicians in the Harris family. That's very cool. Very cool.

So how do we find where Simply Elton will be playing? Or do you have a website or a Facebook or? Yes, you can go to Simply Elton dot com, just as you would normally spell it, Simply Elton dot com. There's a schedule page on there and you can see videos of, you know, the performances. And then, of course, there's a Facebook page, just Simply Elton on Facebook.

If you search on that, you'll find it. And there's a lot of videos. You know, I've got videos of live shows.

I've got videos of last year when I was doing some free online events. I would just I was going to say, did you do any Sam McKay or I guess live streaming, I guess? Yeah, I just did them on Facebook. And I did I was doing I think I probably did eight, eight or ten, something like that.

All told over time. And people just seem to especially at the beginning, like when I was doing that in April and May or whatever it was, people were just they were starving for something to do. Those are some dark days, as we all can remember.

And, you know, so it it was good. I did. I was not going to try to monetize it or anything like that.

I just I think we did some benefits for Feed America or something like that. We tried to encourage things. But I did have a lot of fun doing it.

It was what was really weird was just being playing this song and, you know, really big ending and go back at the end. And it's absolutely quiet. You're in your basement.

There's no sound. And it's like, OK, next song, just a white feeling. Are you almost done? Well, actually, she became she's not like a technical person that way, but she was great manning the she would be upstairs and she would be manning the Facebook, you know, the Simply Elton Facebook page.

And, you know, we did some all request shows and she would she would come down and she would hold up the, you know, the the song. You know, she would write it big enough. So to make sure I could read it and she would, you know, monitor that and respond to people and, you know, whatever their requests were.

There weren't too many. I couldn't play. I do know a lot of the songs, but he's also got like four or five hundred songs or something like that.

So I'm not going to know all of them. But, you know, I can always say, well, if I don't know it now, I can play next time. And I'm sure Bernie Taupin is writing more.

I'm sure. Yeah. It's really it's really amazing to to actually learn more about those guys, you know, over time doing it and doing the act and you get drawn into it more.

And yeah, they were like the Lennon and McCartney of of the 70s. I mean, yeah, yeah, for sure. But but the way the way that he would write Bernie would write the lyrics and Elton would just he I mean, I read where he feels the music.

He could not even be through to the poem or through the through all the lyrics. And he's already got the song working in his head. Yeah.

I mean, that's amazing to me. It's interesting, too, that how transactional it was, like Bernie wrote the lyrics and gave him the paper and off Elton went. That was that was the interaction.

Right. But it's a brilliant. I mean, if it works, it's brilliant.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's great. I find Elton's songwriting style after having learned so many of them and the way he uses his harmony, but also his use of inversions on chords and things like that.

It's it's quite unique to his music, which is really not a whole lot going on like that during the 70s, where people were getting into that kind of thing. But I think that shows Elton's training to in its very best light, you know, because sometimes people think that, you know, you know, learning to read music or this kind of thing will, you know, oh, it might spoil something. And it's like, no, I don't believe that myself.

And I think Elton's a good example of is he just had such a wide such a broad musical experience early on, and he brought it in his own unique style. I when we play now this year, someone saved my life tonight. The way I talk about that song, I think that is one of the most original and unique piano intros in rock and roll history.

It is so cool. And he starts off with a with an inverted chord with that first first chord. And it's so cool.

And people just know it. And I mean, it's it's just so it's like I say, it's unique and identifiable as Elton. That's that's him all the way.

Right. I think, you know, from from performing them to it's not easy to just add an Elton song to your list. Not so much for me, not so much the piano playing, you know, the piano playing and the chords and everything like that.

That's the the unique style in which he fits words into a phrase. It's not there's nothing quite like it. And and it's not something that necessarily comes intuitively to you.

But that's part of its brilliance is because it's it's so original and the way he fits the words in. And, you know, you almost feel like sometimes, oh, well, I got to put these all in here. So he just kind of would improvise and find the way he'd want to sing it.

And then he did. And then once it's on vinyl, I mean, it's just forever now. You know, it's just, you know, incredible.

And but but it is it's it's a challenge to learn it, to sing it right and phrase it right. But like I said, that's why it's so good, because it is unique that way. Well, we thank you for joining us today.

Yeah, thanks a lot. I appreciate it, guys. Nice talking with you.

And good luck with continuing success with you, simply Elton and in any of your other projects in your own writing and whatever. I appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Thanks. See you soon. See you soon.

Thanks. You are right, Ray. I was.

Yeah, he is a educated musician. Yes, he is. Very much so.

And a very nice guy. And very talented. Yes.

And a very nice guy. And he's got simply Elton. He's got Billy.

Yeah. Well, he's got I mean, he's used to play with all the Melvis guys. And I mean, he's he's still in demand.

Yes. Yes, he is. You know, they still want him to play with a bunch of bands.

And, you know, he talked about the difficulty in playing Elton John material and stuff. And but, you know, he said he was with Deacon Blues. You know, that music isn't the easiest stuff either.

No, no, it certainly isn't. Certainly isn't. So you have to have you have to be quite talented to be able to play that stuff.

And that he is that he is. And he's got he's he's quite he's playing quite a bit. He says he's got about two thirds, two thirds solo shows.

And about a third of his shows are with the band. And he said he'd like to flip flop that. But but if you get a chance, get out there and see simply whether it's solo or whether it's with this whole band.

Right. If it's a venue near your home, tell him you want to see simply Elton with the band. Let him know.

Tell him that's what you want to see. That's right. And maybe they'll come to your town.

OK. He said he's booked all every weekend through the rest of the year. So that's fantastic news.

Things are opening up. Is it? Yes, they are. Yeah, it's it's thank goodness there.

That's right. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66 in beautiful downtown Joliet in our podcast studio. Yes.

Well, thanks for listening, everybody. And go out there and check out simply Elton or or just give get in touch with us. Yeah, go get in touch with us via our rock and roll Chicago group page, the group page.

We have our on Facebook. We've got our website. You can send us an email and tell us who you'd like us to interview.

That's right. So send it to Paul at rock and roll. Chicago dot net or Ray at rock and roll.

Chicago dot net. Or just send us a message on Facebook. That's it works, too.

Yeah, it works, too. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody.

We'll we'll see you next week. See you next week. Bye bye now.

Rock and Roll Chicago podcast does not own the rights to any of the music that's played on this podcast. The music is used to promote the band or musicians that are interviewed.