My Maiden Voyage with Thor and Friends

Thor Harris is a local Austin legend, so much so that it’s easy to forget that his influence stretches far beyond our city limits. While I first came to know his work through the literary indie rock band Shearwater shortly after I moved to Texas, I came to notice his percussion work gracing the oeuvre of a wide variety of artists I dug, such as Swans, Bill Callahan, and — of course — Thor & Friends.

Thor and I have known one another for quite some time, and while we’ve caught each other’s performances over the years, we’ve performed together I believe just once (as part of a large-scale, multi-artist collaboration created by composer Steve Parker last fall). We toyed with the concept of working together here and there, but then performing life would take us in different directions. 

With my departure from Panoramic Voices providing a bit more time for composition, touring, playing, etc., I found myself with a bit more space on the calendar to collaborate with artists I’d always wanted to work with but hadn’t. I was working in my studio last week, and Thor popped into my mind. I got to thinking I should hit him up and see if he’d like to audition me sometime for Thor & Friends. I stood up, did a quick spin while filming a short video of the various instruments hanging on my wall, and dropped it into a text to him. This, along with something jocularly obnoxious like “HEY THOR! YOU KNOW I’M YOUR FRIEND TOO!!!”

Thor wrote back within a few minutes… words to the effect of “eff yeah,” along with some upcoming performance dates… including one happening the following Friday. After agreeing to attend the following week’s rehearsal, I turned to my wife and said: “I am not 100% sure, but I’m pretty sure I’m now a member of Thor & Friends…”

I’m also fairly sure this was the quickest and least painful audition of my entire career.

Thor and I decided I would be on pedal steel, as no one else in the group is currently playing it. After one whirlwind rehearsal in Thor’s musician/instrument-packed living room, we reconvened for the show at Austin’s Far Out Lounge. Performing as support for ITCHY-O, I played three 10-15 minute Thor-penned tunes alongside fifteen-ish instrumentalists. Most of these ridiculously talented peeps were new friends to me, though there were some whose work I’d long admired (composer/violinist Travis Weller, Austin producer Rob Halverson, and Okkervil River’s Scott Brackett, to name a handful)

All of the pieces flow within a structure and dedicated key areas, but also provide the opportunity to take things to new places, to refrain from playing at all, and/or to intuit where, say, the horns or the strings might drift to next and follow them to new and strange places. After decades of performing a lot of experimental music and especially after my most recent Robert Fripp workshop (where this sort of structured flow is practiced on the regular), this all felt natural and good to me. A new experience, and yet one that felt like a musical homecoming of sorts.

BONUS: as we did our soundcheck, I caught a guy at the front of the stage out of the corner of my eye. Keeping focus on getting my effects set, I noticed after a while that he was still there, and took a glance up. Lo and behold, it’s Andrew Linares, one of my former music students from WAY back in my public school teaching days. As bizarre luck would have it, he’s a touring member of ITCHY-O! It was really wonderful catching up after the better part of two decades. 

Oh, and Ichyo totally killed it. If you get the chance to see them live, I do highly recommend.