sketches from high school 3: never before heard

Dave and I put 2 and 2 together on this one this past weekend (Literally. We overlaid 2 vocal tracks to 2 music tracks in Audacity) and came up with a song neither of us had ever heard before. Dave thinks Harris may have written this for a particular musician from the All State Jazz Band sometime around 1990? I think you can hear some Paul Simon influence in it. We’re 100% certain it’s an original and for now have called it “For Her.”
 

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Sketches From High School 3: Never Before Heard

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world on a string band

wosb
Harris Wulfson with the World on a String Band at the Ukrainian National Home restaurant, December 6, 2007, New York City. I love this photo and these amazingly talented people!

left to right: Sarah Alden, Patrick Farrell, Benjy Fox-Rosen, Ljova, Harris Wulfson, Photographed by Anna Rozenblat.

This was one of the last bands Harris played with. The last time I saw him, he told me he couldn’t wait for Sarah to get back from tour so they could all get together and play! I took the audio clips from Flickr and added the fades to make the clips less choppy. If anyone has any recordings, let me know. They may not exist.

I’ve included the links to the Flickr movie clips below as well as the mp3 clip I made of their audio.

01.flikr clip 1
Freddy’s Backroom, 2007. Here is the moment during the jam where they played “world on a string” ! Harris played the ukulele for this one.

02.flikr clip 2
Freddy’s Backroom, 2007. World on a String played and then there was this fantastic jam. Pure joy. A magical night. The movie is really dark but we can see (and hear!) Harris behind Patrick.

03.flikr clip 3
At Banjo Jim’s, June 08, 2007.

04.flikr clip 4
At Banjo Jim’s, June 08, 2007.

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projects with astrograss

I came across this email from Harris in my email archives:

Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 18:11:20 -0400
Subject: astrograss session
From: “harris wulfson”
To: “Javier Garcia”, “Juliana Trivers”, “Matt Donahue”, “Ben Herzog”, “Emily Gardiner”, “David M Sollors”, “Mark Yokoyama”, “Michelle Wulfson”

this actually came out all right. just for fun i went into the studio with astrograss (not really a traditional recording studio, but rather a special reverberant room designed for practice and recitals). it’s the five tracks at the bottom. i’m only really on 1,2, and 5.

astrograss plays straight up “newgrass” music (sam bush is their hero).

-h.

I forwarded it to Jordan who sent me back the mp3 tracks as they are no longer on the Astrograss website. The following note is snipped from his email:

So, we had those files on our website for maybe a year or so, but they were taken down a while ago. Anyhow, I just found them on my computer and yes, that’s Harris’ amazing fiddle all over it. So the tracks are:

“Jerusalem Ridge” (Bill Monroe)
“Cherokee Shuffle” (trad.)
“Dirtiest Man in the World” (w: Shel Silverstein, m: Jordan Shapiro)

The musicians are myself on guitar/vocals, Dennis Lichtman on mandolin, Tim Kiah and bass/vocals and Harris on fiddle.

From the looks of Harris’ email it was July 2004, which seems accurate in my mind. We went into that weird recording/per space a couple times, although I don’t remember it ever being in the summer, but I know we did a festival gig in upstate NY with Harris on June 19, 2004, so it seems like we were doing some playing with Harris in summer 2004.

http://www.astrograssmusic.com
 

Update: I found the full CD the other day and asked Jordan, again, to fill in the blanks. Here is his response and 7 additional tracks:

So the deal with this room was this: It was a ‘demo’/showroom for this Concertinio product in midtown NYC.
The product was a complete installation of a high-end music performance system installed into wealthy people’s homes. The walls of the room get completely covered in speakers and there are small microphones all over the ceiling. When you play music with the system on, it suddenly sounds like you’re playing in a huge auditorium, rather than a small room. It was pretty amazing. There were different settings to use with the system, hence the ‘introductions’ by the technician at the beginning of each track. I think Dennis went to college with the guy who was working for the inventor. They hired us to demo the room throughout the day while interested people checked it out. It was very interesting to play there.

 

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Projects With Astrograss 2004

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harris ‘n’ dave at levels, june 19th, 1993

I wonder if anyone still has a poster from this event? If I’ve left anyone off the performer list, please let me know!

Harris Wulfson – Violin, Mandolin, Guitar, Vocals
Dave Sollors – Guitar, Vocals
Jamie Forrest – bass
Russell Gellman – drums
Dan Horwitz – keyboards

The Brass Holes:
Alex Feinman
Ben Whitney
Mike Kohan
 

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Harris 'n' Dave at LEVELS, June 19th, 1993

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projects with rowland stebbins

Harris played with Freyja Balmer Gallagher on Rowland Stebbins’ EP titled Hook, Line & Sinker, 2002. Rowland graciously allowed me to post all the tracks from the album as well as track 7 from Rowland’s album, All Over, which Harris played with Rowland at Merlefest in 2003.

https://rowlandstebbins.bandcamp.com/music
 

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With Rowland Stebbins

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sketches from high school 2: covers

What did YOU do with your high school weekend afternoons? Harris played with his 4-track. And taught himself to play the accordion. His covers lend some insight to some of his musical influences.

Again, this post will be updated further as I discover more recordings. Or better/more complete versions.

 

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Sketches From High School 2: Covers

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sketches from high school 1: tchatzkies

Ok I admit I haven’t a clue what to name this post so I kind of went literal. Here are a collection of sketches, baubles, trinkets or what have you that Harris recorded in high school. This is the post where he’d be rolling his eyes at me and saying “oh no! what are you DOING!?! Don’t post that up there!!” So Harris, I’m sorry. But some of the folks really DO want to hear these things.

I expect this post will be updated with more later as I find them – or find more complete versions of them.

In the meantime, I bring you:

01. The Quadratic Roots Song – A bluegrass song.

02. Someday When I’m Famous – Judy Penner, someday when you’re famous this will be worth a lot of money.

03. Silver Staff – A “New Wave” song. Harris and Alex Feinman set out to write an ’80’s pop song using every cliche in the book one night during a holiday party.

04. Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man – Well, Rex Harrison really WAS an early rap star, wasn’t he?
 

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Sketches From High School 1: Tchatzkies

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nyu music department: bach on 2000

Perhaps someone can fill me in on the details of this concert and CD?

Here are two tracks from the concert. The first is Bach’s Partita in E Major with Harris on mandolin. The second is Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor (aka “The Bach Double”) with Juliana Trivers (I believe playing first violin?) Harris (playing second violin?), Wynn Yamami and Ryan Dorin on piano.

 

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NYU Music Department: Bach on 2000

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calarts: bluegrass

Harris and banjo player Wes Corbett cobbled together a bluegrass group at Cal Arts. The other two performers were jazz musicians Nick Rosen (bass) and Storm Neilson (guitar).
 

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Calarts Bluegrass 2006(?)

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rhythm ranch

I found this CD in Harris’ collection. The .cda files are dated 12/31/1994.

Rhythm Ranch
Jen Larson, guital and vocals
Tony DeLello, guitar and vocals
Todd Collins, mandolin
Harris Wulfson, fiddle
Ken Forrest, bass and vocals

A note from Jen Larson:
Rhythm Ranch was the name that I came up with for that configuration and that recording date for WKCR. Tony Dilello (guitarist in NYC) made those CD’s for everyone in the group, it was never commercially released. So, in other words, that CD is one of a few copies, and a snapshot of all of us on that particular day.

https://www.facebook.com/JenLarsonMusic/
http://www.myspace.com/jenlarsonnycbluegrass

 

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Rhythm Ranch 1994

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