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<h3><img src="images/stories/guinness harper.jpg" border="0" alt="George Harper Issue 2" title="George Harper Issue II" style="float: left; margin: 10px; border: 1px solid black;" /></h3>
<h3><strong>Good Music is Good Music  ***</strong></h3>
<p><strong>Th:</strong> And you said you started playing guitar at the age of 12. Are there any other instruments that you play?</p>
<p><strong>George Harper: </strong>Oh, yeah, man. I play all the brass instruments and I  play fiddle and banjo and mandolin and – y’know, just – I try to get my  hands on anything that… If you’re a musician then you figure out what to  do, how to do something with any instrument. Y’know, you figure it out.  You might not ever become a great player on any of them, but you figure  it out.</p>
<p><strong>Th:</strong> And why did you decide to start playing a guitar at 12?  Was it the family… a family thing or...?</p>
<p><strong>GH:</strong> Oh, yeah, man. When I was a kid we listened to Flatt and Scruggs.  They had a show on TV and we would listen to that and my brother was  really my major influence. He loved the way Uncle Josh played that dobro  and it was… it was Flatt and Scruggs until the Beatles came out. And  when the Beatles came out everything else stopped. And from then on it  was rock and roll in our house. And it wasn’t until I became an adult  that I started realizing the beauty back of that bluegrass and roots  sound. And it wasn’t until I was in my… probably I was in my 40s when I  decided that that’s what I wanna to do. And I wanna put down the big  amplifiers and I don’t wanna haul that heavy stuff and I wanna bring a  guitar and a small P.A. and that’s what I wanna do and I don’t want all  those loud drums and I don’t wanna hurt people’s ears. I wanna… I wanna  do something pleasant, more pleasant, and easier to listen to, which I  think acoustic music offers, yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Th:</strong> How would you describe your music now? I mean, I guess you could  describe it as Americana, bluegrass, country. But from whatI’ve heard of  your I’ll Be Back album and the No Smokin’ in Here album is the wide  variety of influences from rock to country to bluegrass and Americana.  How would you yourself describe the type of music that you play?</p>
<p><strong>GH:</strong> Man – y’know – when I write songs sometimes I’m in the mood to  write…I won’t never know until I start to write it, but sometimes I come  up with a bluegrass jig or a rock-and-roll ditty or a country idea and  if I start to strum and have a chord progression that I like it doesn’t  matter to me what it sounds like. To me good music is good music. I had  just as soon sit and listen to an orchestra as I had listened to Led  Zeppelin or go over here and listen to The Grascals or go over here and  listen to Vince Gill. If it’s good it’s good and I try… I try not to  write anything that I don’t like. And I feel that if I like it somebody  else is gonna like it.</p>
<p><strong>Th:</strong> Sure.</p>
<p><strong>GH:</strong> There’s… there’s a lot of songs that I’ve started and it’ll be  middle-of-the-road and mediocre and nothing special and I will lay  itdown and wait for something else that comes along that has more  of…maybe more of a catchy melody,catchy chord progression, catchy  chorus. Y’know, as long as it’s a catchy something that draws people in,  it doesn’t matter to me what genre it fits in. So, therefore, I would  say that what I do is Americana because it definitely includes blues,  rock and roll, bluegrass, country…easy-listening.</p>
<p><strong>Th:</strong> But it’s not something you’re thinking about before you write the song?</p>
<p><strong>GH:</strong> No, I’m not conscious about it. No, I’m just trying to do  something… original and when I come up with something that I think is a  little bit different than anything else I’ve heard, then I’ll expand on  it, I’ll keep writin’ on it. It might take me five years to finish a  song. I might set it down and pick it up and, case in point, I had this  No Smokin’ in Here record on my mind and there’s… there’s a couple of  songs on there that I started a couple years ago. One of them I started  five years ago. And right at the last minute I decided, well, you’ve  gotta get up off the couch and finish these songs. And so one of them is  the end of the record and it’s You Better Think. And it’s probably my  favorite song on the record. It’s finally a song that maybe tells a  story about something that we need to be doin’ instead of something  that’s just mush and about a woman or about a relationship. It’s about  something that we all need to be doin’ and that’s thinking about…  thinking about our future.</p>
<address><strong>Permissions obtained from Think in English. Transcripts from Think in English Issue 143</strong></address> 
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<h2 style="text-align: center;"><strong> www.GeorgeHarper.com</strong></h2>
<h2 style="text-align: center;"><strong>Americana, Roots, Bluegrass, Country, and Rock.</strong></h2>
<h2 style="text-align: center;"><strong>Nashville Tennessee George Harper Band</strong></h2>