O.K....I’m told I should write a bio for this website... maybe augment the sparse content at www.chrisharrismusic.com. I must admit, as I learn a bit more about promotion, publicity, and marketing myself, my hatred of this necessary process continues to swell. Plus, it’s a lot of work. And I like sparse websites. Websites with a multitude of hyperlinks always confuse me, and I always seem to get diverted to places I never intended (at least not consciously). Thus, I’m choosing the path of the simple as a central running theme throughout this website, which I hope will not be misconstrued as unprofessional or lazy, but rather as a clever, advanced, artistic choice. And I will not deviate from this accounting.

Anyway, whatever...I grew up in Mesquite, Texas, which happens to be a Dallas, Texas suburb. In fact, I can never find it on maps anymore as it’s been engulfed by what is the Metroplex. In Mesquite we had the Mesquite Rodeo (every weekend, April through September) and Devil’s Bowl Speedway (the pinnacle of midget car dirt track racing). In the 1970’s, when you told someone from Dallas you were from Mesquite, it was an admission of your hickness, simpletoness, unsophisticated, un-urban, Pearl beer drinkin’, pot smokin’, marginally employed, non-Sanger Harris shoppin’ self....all of which was more or less true, at least in my circles. I seem to remember spending a lot of time out at Lake Ray Hubbard, listening to BW Stevenson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Willie, Waylon, ZZ Top, Skynyrd, David Allan Coe, Hoyt Axton, etc. Some of you may relate. The first concert I ever went to was ‘Gary Lewis and the Playboys’ (This Diamond Ring) with my two older sisters, performed at the Cotton Bowl (at least one side of it). I was 7 years old. Later that year I saw the Cowsill’s at Will Rogers Coliseum in Ft. Worth (again with my sisters). The sound at both shows was atrocious, and when combined with the unremitting screams from the audience, you really couldn’t hear anything at all. But I thought it was cool...and I wanted to figure out how to play me one of them guit-fiddles.

I got my first opportunity when I was 11 years old, when my Grandma Harris (b.1893-1989) signed me up for guitar lessons at the Mesquite Music Company. She had come down from Oregon for a visit. My great grandparents had moved out from upstate New York after the Civil War to homestead a place in Fossil, Oregon which was where she grew up. I mention that because, besides riding horses, music was the next most important thing to her. She used to play the piano in Fossil at the picture show downtown, before they had talkies. Seriously...when they would ship the new movie to the local theater, they would also ship a musical score to be played in conjunction with the movie. That way, when the bad guys were chasing the stage coach down in order to capture the strongbox, which quite possibly contained the payroll for some huge, multi-national conglomerate (or the early 1900’s equivalent), the piano player in the theater could bang away feverishly, while during the love scenes, she could play something from ‘Splendor in the Grass’ (or whatever they had...but you get the point).

O.K., back to my story ...