Thin Places Jason Hawk Harris

• 1 Jordan And The Nile 04:10
• 2 Bring Out the Lillies 05:20
• 3 Shine A Little Light 03:11
• 4 Roll 04:27
• 5 The Abyss 04:39
• 6 I'm Getting By 03:01
• 7 So Damn Good 04:14
• 8 Keep Me In Your Heart For A While 05:34
• 9 White Berets 05:50
• Total Runtime 40:26

Info for Thin Places

In Celtic folklore, places in this world where the veil between Heaven and Earth is permeable are known as "thin places" And if you're open to something greater than yourself, a thin place comes to you.

Jason Hawk Harris knows; he's been living in one for the last five years. "The process of grieving my mother's death, of watching my life kind of fall apart around me brought me to this weird sort of nirvana," he explains. "In those moments, I could feel these different worlds colliding around me, and I knew I wanted to find a way to capture it."

With his extraordinary new album, Thin Places, Harris has done precisely that. Written from start to finish as one continuous artistic statement, the nine-track collection draws on Harris’ extensive background in classical music to create a genre-defying work of beauty, pain, and catharsis, one that blurs the lines between roots, country, rockabilly, gospel, soul, and chamber folk as it reckons with forces far beyond our control. The songs here are deeply personal, staring down loss, self-destruction, and recovery with unflinching honesty, and the arrangements are similarly bold and cinematic, conjuring up immersive sonic worlds that can feel at once familiar and unsettling, comforting and eerie. Add it all up and you’ve got a bold, bittersweet testament to the complicated legacies we inevitably leave behind, a profoundly moving exploration of the gray areas and liminal spaces—between light and dark, between hope and despair, between life and death—that shape us all.

A Houston native, Harris moved to Los Angeles at 18 to study classical theory and composition before embarking on a stint playing guitar in folky five-piece The Show Ponies. When the band parted ways, Harris released his first solo EP, 2017’s Formaldehyde, Tobacco and Tulips, which helped land him a deal with renowned indie label Bloodshot Records for his widely celebrated 2019 full-length debut, Love & The Dark, which garnered praise everywhere from Rolling Stone to Billboard.

Jason Hawk Harris, vocals, guitars, harmonium
Phil Glenn, strings, piano
Kevin Brown, drums, percussion
Andy Freeman, bass, percussion
Adam “Ditch” Kurtz, pedal steel
Leeann Skoda, backing vocals
Natalie Nicoles, backing vocals
Kristina Murray, backing vocals
Nick Beaudoing, cajun, accordion

Jason Hawk Harris
hit rock bottom during the writing and recording of his debut full-length Love & the Dark. In the last few years, the Houston-born-and-raised, Los Angeles-based musician endured life-altering hardships—illness, death, familial strife, and addiction—yet from these trials, a luxuriant and confident vision of art country emerged.

Bloodshot first caught Jason at Folk Alliance in Kansas City in 2018, when he gave goosebumps to everyone within the dingy walls of a tiny hotel room with his evocative, powerful, and unrestrained live duo set. Later in the year, he opened up for our own Sarah Shook & the Disarmers on a run of tour dates, after which Sarah relayed her wholehearted approval. With an unlikely background, Harris is a singer/guitarist/songwriter who walks his own line, one that touches on Lyle Lovett’s lyrical frankness, John Moreland’s punk cerebralism and Judee Sill’s mysticism and orchestral sensibility. There’s even the literary and sonic audacity of an early Steve Earle, an outlaw unafraid to embrace harmony.

After writing thousands of measures of classical music, though, Harris found himself drawn back to the country, folk, and rock music that had soundtracked his early childhood. He'd grown up listening to classic crooners like Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, Jim Croce, Patsy Cline, and Elvis. Harris's music draws a distinct bridge between his country and classical roots and reaches far beyond rootsy influence. There are complex chords, acrobatic arrangements, and unexpected intervals, results of a stirring and compelling musical culture clash.

Jason’s grandfather exposed him to country music at an early age, and his family celebrated holidays with group sing-alongs. In his teens, Harris began listening to punk, indie rock, and, notably, Queen. In some part inspired by the instrumental flair of Freddie Mercury & Co., he later took the educational plunge into classical composition and was eventually wait-listed for the master’s program at UCLA, when things took a turn. While touring and performing in the indie folk band The Show Ponies, Jason started writing his own songs, intuitively returning to his country roots but incorporating his classical and rock ‘n’ roll performance skills. He released his first solo offering, the Formaldehyde, Tobacco and Tulips EP in 2017 and hit the road.

Meanwhile, his world fell apart: his mother died from complications of alcoholism; his father went bankrupt after being sued by the King of Morocco; his sister was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and gave birth to a premature son with cerebral palsy; and—subsequently—Jason got sidetracked by his own vices. While his music acknowledges mortality, pain, and hardship, it’s also Jason Hawk Harris’s way of working through it. Love & The Dark is a hypnotically convincing album; you can feel the unknown, but you need not fear it.

This album contains no booklet.