Terms of success: Missoula singer-songwriter Andrea Harsell is exploring what it takes to have it all- Missoulian 2008
Andrea Harsell picks her New Year's resolutions like she writes her songs.
She doesn't dictate what they're supposed to be; they come to her just as they are.
For six months, the Missoula singer-songwriter has been amping up her music career; not with obvious things like hiring a publicist, buying a lot of expensive equipment and auditioning drummers, but with a deep and steady personal resolve.
Harsell's resolution, or motto as she puts it, for 2007 was, "Accept the Challenge," part of which included participating in two triathlons and revving up her musical ambitions.
"It pushed me to get over some of my fears, to take on things like a bulldozer," Harsell says of her '07 motto. "I would think, 'Oh, I can't do that, it's too big, too much,' but you have to commit to it, to work hard for it."
Harsell's 2008 motto or resolution is a combination of the last two years and more.
Harsell's resolution for 2008 is "Create The Eight."
Eight what?
"Harmony and balance, courage, generosity," Harsell said. "Happiness, wisdom, cleanliness and beauty."
The throaty diva of Nine Pound Hammer and The Andrea Harsell Experiment knows she'll need to work for all of those to create the musical life she wants in Missoula and beyond.
"We've got it all here," Harsell said as she sat with her guitar outside Butterfly Herbs last summer. "A lot of it isn't visible on the surface."
She breaks into song as unexpectedly loud as a voice through an intercom speaker.
Passers-by stop to listen, and you still can hear her voice over the rumble of a Harley Davidson motorcycle that zooms by.
Harsell likes to play where she's accessible to people.
"We really lack for musical venues," Harsell said. "Especially for acoustic music."
Harsell wouldn't mind if a few enterprising music lovers came to town.
"Oh, yeah, come to town, buy a bar and hire me," she said.
The venues that do promote acoustic music are deceiving, Harsell said.
"They're across a dance floor from the audience," she said. "It's got to have its own place, something more intimate."
An intimate acoustic setting for Harsell might be playing a set while sitting in your lap, her on one knee and guitarist Louie Bond on the other.
"I just love to connect with people and having them connect with you," Harsell said.
The 35-year-old musician, wife and mother of two has more music flowing through her veins than most people have in their 80-gig iPods.
"My dad was in a rock band, and I grew up with him being a record producer," Harsell said. "He would always listen to the radio or to tapes while watching television with the sound turned down."
Harsell got her first guitar when she was 9.
"I played both the saxophone and bass, I played drums in high school, then I went back to playing guitar because I started writing more seriously," Harsell said. "I made up songs as a kid, little blues songs."
Her dad, Rod Harsell, the station manager for three Missoula radio stations, The Trail 103.3, Fresh 104.5 and JackFM, took the budding musician along to all kinds of shows.
"I got to meet Huey Lewis as a kid," Harsell said. "In third grade ZZ Top came, and I had the keychain access; I was in the third row."
Harsell, who is married to Jaren Behunin, has been writing songs for as long as she can remember.
She enrolled at the University of Montana in 1994, in the Japanese program, and went to Japan in 1996 to teach and to perfect her own Japanese language skills.
"Speaking Japanese all day can hurt your brain, so it's just a good outlet to take myself out of that world for a bit," Harsell said of the songwriting she did in Japan. "I was 24 and the first song I wrote was about home. I wrote it in like 10 minutes on my lunch break."
Songwriting, it seemed, was a natural fit for Harsell.
"I was like, 'Wow, I wrote a song,' " she said. "It was so heartfelt it just sort of fell out of me."
After Japan, Harsell lived in Hawaii for
18 months, an experience that left a lasting impression on her.
"I named my daughter Leia," Harsell said, and to this day she speaks fondly of those tropical trade winds and that warm Aloha spirit.
"It was a pivotal point in my life," Harsell said about leaving Missoula. "Just getting out of there and seeing the rest of the world, deciding what I wanted to do."
What she wanted to do was write songs and perform them for people.
"My first band performance, I was 18 years old wearing purple Wranglers and a 'Bull Riders Only' T-shirt," Harsell said. "We played at the fair, and I was doing Shania Twain songs before anybody knew who she was."
Before Japan, Harsell was in a rock band that rented halls because they were too young to play in bars.
"It changed so much for me after Japan," she said. "My first solo gig was Jan. 5, 1999, at the Ritz."
She only knew 12 songs at the time, but the manager told her he didn't care if she just played them all over again.
"I saw it in the Independent," Harsell said. "It said Acoustic Tuesday Superstar Andrea. Well, I didn't know any other Andreas, so I went in and asked. It was me."
But Andrea knew 12 songs wouldn't do for a three-hour set.
"I learned 22 songs in two days," she said. "I pulled every song off the Internet that I could play, three-chord songs that I had a feel for."
For two years, Harsell played the Candle Light Acoustic show on Sundays, and in 2000 she and others formed Nine Pound Hammer.
"It was a fast and furious thing," Harsell remembers. "I was going to the bluegrass picking circle at the Top Hat, and that's where I met the others.
"Being folky and meeting up with these bluegrass guys gave our music, collectively, a new-grass sound," Harsell said.
Nine Pound Hammer produced a CD on short notice and entered the Telluride Band Competition, where they placed second.
A short while later, Harsell became pregnant with her first child, Leia.
"Everybody decided to go their own directions, and I took some time off." Harsell said.
Family life would provide a huge challenge for Harsell, but after each child she would claw her way back into the music scene with her catchy melodies and the Joplin-like crackle in her voice.
"During that time I just kept writing," Harsell said. "I started a new band because I missed being on stage."
Harsell ventured away from bluegrass at this time.
"I just didn't feel bluegrass every day," Harsell said. "Sometimes I just wanted to rock. I really went extreme with this other band doing '60s covers of Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin."
The Andrea Harsell Experiment produced a live CD and played several New Year's Eve shows, but it was relatively short-lived.
"I was pregnant with Django then," Harsell said. "I guess that's what happened to the Andrea Harsell Experiment."
With a growing family, Harsell went to work as a marketing consultant at the radio station her father manages.
Harsell, who defines her style as American roots music like folk, bluegrass, blues and rock, won't contain herself to one genre.
"Oh, people have said, 'You need to pick one style of music and just stick with it,' " Harsell said. "But it's a snowball effect. I probably could have stuck with bluegrass and been higher up in the rank of musicians, making more money, possibly."
But that isn't her style.
"I'm just really into the craft of music, and I just have to take it all with me like a giant snowball collecting all this stuff."
She hasn't even tapped into jazz, yet, she reminds anyone who questions her musical concoction.
"I struggle with it," Harsell said. "I'm a whole person, but I think music is so cross-genred now. Everybody enjoys it because it's music, and everybody enjoys it if it is good music."
During the warmer, but not warmest parts of summer, Harsell sometimes finds herself playing to a street crowd.
After a meeting at Butterfly Herbs, she sent this note:
"After we parted ways I went to the Rhino for a cold one and ended up playing on the front steps to a small crowd," Harsell wrote. "It was awesome, made $10 in four songs. It's not about the money ya know, it's that they would give me their money, a sign that they really enjoyed my music. It makes me happy."
Harsell spends most of her time being mom, working and writing more songs.
Her own songwriting is sort of organic and something she struggles with as she looks toward building a more solid musical career.
"I sit down with a guitar and start strumming something out," Harsell said. "Sometimes words and music come out at the same time."
Sometimes Harsell doesn't know what a song means for many years.
"I hate directing songs where they need to be," Harsell said. "I'd rather them just come out and flow and be what they're going to be."
Click here to listen to Andrea's second audio clip
Lately, Harsell's been talking to producers to find out what it takes to write commercially viable music.
"I'd like to think the songs I've written could be that on their own," Harsell said. "It's an inner struggle; am I writing music to please somebody else?"
If she makes it to the world of commercially produced music, Harsell doesn't see herself as one of those young, constantly touring acts with no time for anything but meteoric fame.
"If I could just focus on my music, write, play with my kids, get some sleep before the night's show. What a life. That would be great," Harsell said.
At the fall equinox, Harsell played the Rhino with guitarist Louie Bond.
She played with leaves in her hair, and she played the crowd as if they were old friends.
And they were.
Her mom and dad sat at the nearest table, adoring and supporting her.
Her own form of balance revolves around the music.
"I work really hard one week; rehearsals, studio time gigs," she said. "Sometimes it's six nights a week, then I try to make up next week by taking a break."
Harsell says she's extremely grateful to her parents and her husband for their support of her musical ambitions and for her kids' participation in the musical lifestyle.
"We rehearse at my house sometimes, and they dance around and want to be involved," she said of Leia and Django.
It's hard not to see the impression Missoula has made on Harsell as she struggles to go from playing bars to a higher level.
She's currently searching for the right band, the kind of band that can believe in her eclectic mix of Americana.
"It's hard to find band members who want to play your music, who want to back you up and accentuate your songs and who can go on the road," Harsell said. "You want people who are really committed to the music."
Harsell is spending January cutting a CD with some of her 30 songs that have not been published.
"You get old, you get kids, you kind of lose the dream a little bit, reality sets in," Harsell said. "I don't know; I'm a dreamer. I think I'm just really up front with people about what I want to do."
Making it big won't be done on some record company's terms, Harsell admits.
"I'm not talking about sleeping on couches and doing that whole crazy, young tour thing," Harsell said. "I have a family, so I have to do it differently."
Reporter Timothy Alex Akimoff can be reached at 523-5246 or tim.akimoff@lee.net.
TIMOTHY AKIMOFF - MISSOULIAN/ENTERTAINER (Jan 3, 2008)