Jesse Harris: "Borne Away" is "unlike any other record I've done before"
It's been only about 11 months since Jesse Harris released "Sub Rosa," his 2012 album featuring guest appearances by several of his musical friends, including Norah Jones and Conor Oberst. But in the past year, while touring behind "Sub Rosa," Harris entered another creative period. He wrote a new batch of songs -- about 30, to be exact -- and decided he had more than enough good material to record another album.
The result is "Borne Away," a 14-track solo acoustic set released last week, featuring just Harris with his guitar, topped with a few slight overdubs, performed by Harris.
"This album is unlike any other record I've made before. I've never done something like this, which is a solo acoustic record -- super intimate, like what you might call a bedroom record. It's something really personal and intimate," Harris told CBSNews.com prior to his recent record release show at Rockwood Music Hall in New York.
The New York-based singer-songwriter tapped into his own experiences for this latest set of songs. "There was a lot going on in my life last year -- a lot of changes, old things ending and new things beginning," he said. "There was also some tragic things that happened as well, and I had been spending a lot of time outside of New York -- in Rio, and that gave me a different perspective on my life...When I started to get into the process of writing a lot of songs, it broke down barriers. When I started to write a tune, I just wrote the nearest at hand, which was what was happening in my own life. I think I was more open to taking things like that and using them for putting them into my songs."
The lead track is one of those personal tracks; it's an open letter to a departed friend. "It felt like the centerpiece of the record," said Harris. "That recording was made just a few days after I wrote the song. So it had a real freshness to it."
Harris said a lot of the songs on "Borne Away" have that kind of "freshness." "When you first start singing something after you've written it, it has this sort of sparkle to it. And if you capture that, that's lucky," he said.
There's "Stray Dog," a song inspired by the stray dogs Harris saw on the streets of Santiago, Chile, while on tour in South America; and "Black Orchid," a love song described as "in the vein of Edgar Allen Poe."
Harris said he enjoyed stripping things down for "Borne Away," especially coming off of the big sound of "Sub Rosa." "'Sub Rosa was this big production -- string arrangements, horn arrangements, guest singers and lots of travel. And so it was refreshing for me to do something completely on my own this time," he said.
Writing spurts are not necessarily new for the Grammy-wining writer/producer. He may write a lot of material at a time, but realize a track may be a better fit for someone else to sing. That's what happened with "Don't Know Why." Jones ended up recording that song -- along with a few others written by Harris -- for her 2002 breakthrough album, "Come Away With Me." "Don't Know Why" ended up winning both record of the year and song of the year at the Grammys, and also made it on to Top 40 radio.
"That was one of those tunes that when I wrote it, I thought, 'Somebody should sing this song.' I didn't know at the time that it was going to be Norah," said Harris. "But I thought somebody should. It was surprising to see the journey that that song took. It was funny because I saw so many places along the road that it could have gone off -- and not continued on the road that it did. So there was a lot of good fortune and luck. And especially now when I listen to to pop radio, I'm very surprised that that song made it through. It was the right moment for it. I'm not sure that that song would be as popular now, given what's on the radio."
Harris could have more songs kicking around in his notebook to lend to artists. But in the meantime, there's a chance we'll hear more new music from Harris before too long.
"I've written a bunch of other songs that I'd like to record," he said. "I might do a volume 2 like this ["Borne Away"] -- an intimate solo acoustic thing."