AUSTIN - Thor Harris has created his own wilderness in the middle of
the city. The home he built is invisible from the street, shielded by
trees, shrubs and an imposing gate that warns away visitors. The front
door is open, and Harris emerges bare-chested, wearing boxer briefs and
covered in hair - a shipwreck-survivor quantity of it. He stoops and
glares from the front porch to see what's causing his rescued dogs to
create such a commotion. His frown melts. "Oh, hi!," he says cheerily.
"Come on in."
Harris, a musician, points to some of his creations: a viola
carved from a crape myrtle trunk, handmade wind chimes, a hammered
dulcimer, a table, bookshelves and a spiral stairway that he built
without any nails. Up that stairway is a loft that looks out on
downtown. As an in-demand player, the La Porte native is a modest walk
away from the clubs where he sometimes works, though he hasn't been home
much lately.
Harris is in the middle of one of his busiest years ever, playing
with Swans, the legendary post-punk band. This year Swans released the
remarkable "To Be Kind" - one of 2014's best-reviewed albums, and one
that will land on numerous best-of lists come December.
With dense, varied songs that sometimes unfold over 30
minutes, Swans requires versatile, intuitive players. Few are more
versatile than Harris. His contributions to the album include drums,
percussion, hand bells, vibraphone, viola and wind instruments. Many of
these instruments he plays he made himself. But amid all the touring, he also has built his own little fortress
where he can spend time alone, taking scraps of wood nobody wants and
creating something wonderful.
Harris is a beloved figure in his circle of music and only partly
because of his talent. Warm and sensitive, he once worked for a suicide
hot line, comforting others who struggle with the kind of clinical
depression that nearly killed him.
He has a particular code of decency. Faultlessly friendly, Harris is
uninterested in boorish behavior. He earned renown for two funny, viral
Internet lists: "How to Live Like a King for Very Little" and "How to
Tour in a Band, or Whatever." Both contain blunt, profanity-filled
common sense: "5. If you feel like (expletive) all the time, drink less
beer at the gig. You will play better and feel better. What are you ...
a child? Some have the endurance for self abuse. Most don't."
Harris is part musician, part shaman, part everybody's brother.
"What can you say? Thor is Thor," says Swans founder Michael Gira.
Harris played with Gira's Angels of Light and has been a member of Swans
since Gira revived the band a few years ago. "He's proved himself a
unique figure. I didn't hire Thor for his musical abilities, though he
has tremendous musical ability. People love Thor for his sensibility.
There's not another Thor. That's why I hired Thor."
Green living
Before Thor was Thor, he was Michael. But when four Michaels work at
the same restaurant, the one with the barrel chest, thick arms and long
hair may end up nicknamed "Thor." The name fits, though, a musician who
plays thunderous percussion. Harris often forgoes drumsticks. A trained
plumber, he discovered PEX pipe to be a durable implement for striking
his drums and producing an imposing sound.
But power is just one option Harris, 49, offers. While his work with
Swans builds to stormy crescendos, he applies a lighter hand to
recordings by the folk-leaning Callahan, or Australian composer-producer
Frost's ambient "A-U-R-O-R-A."
Harris picks up his crape myrtle viola and plucks a few notes in a pretty little sequence.
"I usually play these for one tour and then give them away," he says.
Despite the fragments and shards he's collected and integrated into his
home, Harris isn't a hoarder: He selects items that fit his aesthetics.
Harris' eyes light up when he pulls out a box of LPs he recently
rescued from a garbage bin.
His property is a refuge for other people's discards, a minefield of
bones, plants, mannequin parts and any other jetsam that catches his
eye. Yet Harris' world contains virtually no trash. He makes a cup of
coffee, reaches through a kitchen window and dumps the grounds outside.
Harris' primary interest is wood: the sycamore he planted in front;
the crape myrtles that become violas; the pecan wood that is now a
table; the mesquite, cedar and mulberry that sit in his workshop and
provide some of the bones for the house he built over seven years. His
home is about 1,000 square feet; he doesn't need any more.
He points down the street to where a man once tended to a magnolia
tree, which doesn't thrive in this region. "This old black man would go
out and water it every day," he says. "But when he died, there was
nobody to do it. Now the tree is deader than (expletive)."
Harris wants permission to remove the remains for some project. "I guess I just have different parts of the brain that need to be
stimulated," he says. "Sometimes I get to do artistic stuff, and
sometimes I get to work with my hands."
'Human glue'
Harris grew up in La Porte. His first musical memory is of watching
the Jackson 5 on TV at age 5. He saw the group perform at the Astrodome
the following year. "That's what I wanted to grow up to be," Harris
says. "Michael Jackson." Harris took up piano, and at age 9 he began
drum lessons. He immediately started modifying his drums, taking them
apart and reassembling them.
A year later, his father died of cancer. His eyes narrow and his
voice drops when he mentions his father, whom he speaks of reverently as
"a brilliant mechanical engineer and artist."
"It's interesting, man, I'm turning into my dad, and he died when I
was 10. I'll look around my house and think it looks just like our house
when I was 6. Even if a parent dies, you can still turn into him."
Harris threw himself into music and mischief during his teens. "After he died, me and my brother just went feral," he says.
He got deep into exercise, partly to attract girls, partly to combat
his depression. After leaving Stephen F. Austin State University in the
mid-'80s, Harris moved here, where has lived since. He furthered
carpentry and woodworking skills, and took jobs as a drummer and a
plumber.
"Being a plumber is the best job," Harris says, his voice lifting.
"It's more like being a rock star than being a rock star. When you can
make somebody's water work in their house, man, the gratitude ... "
At 27, Harris endured almost a year of what he describes as
"gut-wrenching depression" that kept him indoors, sleepless and
suicidal. He wrote about that period in a grueling graphic novella, "An
Ocean of Despair."
He still takes medication for depression, but he emerged from that
time with a new perspective. He sounds almost thankful for it - and he
certainly doesn't believe in hiding his depression. He calls himself
"something of a straight arrow now." "My way of combating depression is to stay busy all the time."
By the mid-'90s, Harris started a habit that led to his current role
as a sought-after instrumentalist. Swans was his favorite group, so he
wrote to Gira - "just an old-fashioned fan letter sent to an address for
the band." He knew Swans had a lot of turnover, so he also offered his
services. He met Gira in Austin, when he was on the final tour before
Swans broke up. When Gira started a band called Angels of Light, he
invited Harris to join. And when Gira resurrected Swans, he was certain
to include Harris, who lugs around all sorts of instruments, many of his
own design. The group's past two records received excellent reviews, as
have the cathartic shows, with pieces of music twisting and droning on
sometimes in excess of 20 minutes.
"He plays so many different instruments that he's a very important
person to have around," Gira says. "And all that personality that is
Thor, he brings that to the music."
Harris also sent letters to Amanda Palmer, a successful cabaret/rock
performer formerly of the Dresden Dolls, and Bill Callahan, who made
well-regarded albums in the '90s under the moniker Smog and now records
under his own name.
Besides the varied instrumentation Harris can provide - he's
currently learning trumpet - he has a calming effect on those around
him. This is particularly valuable in creative environments that can
turn volatile - even more so when those environments involve a half
dozen people crammed into one vehicle for a month-long tour.
Palmer says Harris "is one of my favorite people to tour with." "He embraces life head on, calls people on their (expletive) and
makes you feel like you're part of a gang," she says. "He plays music
with no ego, just generosity. When you live in a bus with someone it can
either get worse and worse or better and better, and with Thor, he acts
like human glue. He bonds the whole group together."
Harris says he gets that quality from his mother, a retired school teacher. "She's a good person who treats people really well."
A practical man
Harris is currently on the road with Swans. He also can be heard on
"A-U-R-O-R-A," a mesmerizing album released this year by ambient
composer/producer Ben Frost. He'll play on a forthcoming album by
experimental folk artist Chelsea Wolfe. He doesn't know what comes next,
though he suspects Palmer may start recording soon. Each year is a
little different as far as music-related work goes. During quieter
spells, Harris leans on carpentry and plumbing to make money. Between
Swans tours, he zipped to Leadville, Colo., to build a house.
He's working on another graphic book that may be published next year.
He'd like to take up oil painting again, but right now he doesn't have
enough hours in the day. He has abandoned wood to claim and instruments
to carve, as well as obligations to friends, and his own house, which
requires maintenance. He has black spells to keep at arm's length.
Harris' home reflects his personality: dark and playful; full of this
and that; charming, colorful and striking. Like Harris - with his long
beard and hair - it can seem imposing at first glance, what with the
skulls and all, but after a time it suggests a warm personality. Harris'
work takes him all over the world, but he's clearly most comfortable
here.
Working in a type of music that often comes across as stylish,
pretentious and wimpy, Harris is none of that. His wardrobe looks to be
no broader than cut-off jeans and old T-shirts. A practical man, he
isn't too cool for a fanny pack. And in addition to making earth-shaking
percussion, he can start with a piece of wood and end up with something
else, something artistic or practical or both. Behind his home tools
are scattered, wood is piled everywhere, and projects are in varying
states of completion.
"It's a lot of experimentation and necessary failure," he says. "I
think it was that way for my dad, too. I built this huge hammered
dulcimer and used piano strings, but it's just sitting in the shop
rusting. I couldn't find a way to build a good pickup system to plug it
in. I do often start with a goal, but a lot of times it doesn't turn out
how I'd planned. But sometimes an initial disappointment sends you in
another interesting direction."
