FLIPSIDE Online

School of Rock...and jazz and bluegrass and funk

By Marleen Shepherd, The Southern

Broken Grass Reunion Show 10 p.m., Friday, August 5; Hangar 9; 511 S. Illinois, Ave., (618) 549-0511; $5.

CARBONDALE - After spending his last dime in 1997, Zacc Harris and the guitar his parents gave him for his 16th birthday, landed in Carbondale. The 18-year-old "hippie" had traveled from his home in Virginia to the West Coast and he was making his way back.

"I had a buddy living here and I was just stopping here for a minute," Harris says.

By the end of the week, Harris was already in a band, only the second in his life. And he didn't know much more than how to play rock chords he'd learned from a high school friend.

It was an unlikely beginning for a musician whose name would become synonymous with great original sounds, fun and funky dance tunes, and a large regional following.

"Carbondale has essentially nurtured me from nothing to the musician I am today," Harris says.

This week, after eight years in the Carbondale music scene, Harris is earning an SIUC diploma in music studies with a specialty in jazz and theory and moving to Minneapolis next week.

It has taken Harris awhile to pull through the curriculum - especially because he took off three years touring with his Carbondale new grass band, Broken Grass, which gained a national following with fans of the genre.

Harris has even outlasted some of his original instructors in the SIUC music program. But that's cool with him because Harris' SIUC education stretched beyond the classroom to hundreds of bars and festivals in towns across the country.

"I had the right approach at the university because I always saw it as a source for what I want to do. A lot of times, you get a degree for the sake of getting a degree."

Harris' training, as most anyone who has stopped by a Carbondale bar can tell you, has paid off extraordinarily well.

Let's see, there's Madcap, a wildly popular jam band; Caravan, his first experiment with jazz; Mercy, his eventual invite into Carbondale's longest-running jazz group, which has been playing since 1972; Broken Grass, which disbanded in December 2004; and the two bands he started this spring, funk band The Mothership Funk Orchestra and bluegrass-jazz hybrid G-String Hypothesis.

That's not even mentioning all the little side projects that Harris has been a part of. How did he find the time to do all this and occasionally fit in some classes?

"Music is my life," Harris says. "Everything falls secondary to it."

Besides playing, Harris was also instrumental in helping other musicians succeed. Roger Flatt, a 26-year-old SIUC music graduate, recalls how in his college days, Harris helped Flatt's area band get a booking.

"He gave us a shot," says Flatt, now a trombonist in post-graduate studies at the New England Conservatory and a Boston Pops contributor. "He was one of the guys who if you've got a demo, you give it to him and he'll try to help."

Flatt also remembers Harris before he learned to master so many genres, and he marvels at his peer's ability to adapt to new styles of play, mix it up, and make it his own.

"The thing about Zacc is he always does his homework," Flatt says. "He listens to this, comes back and tries that. It's something as musicians we strive to do, be well-versed in many styles of music."

No matter what style Harris attempted, or what new concept he came up with, area music venues learned to trust him.

"If it's Zacc calling and he has a new band and wants a book, it's like 'yeah, I want it,'" says Sally Carter, owner of the Hangar 9. "It's pretty much a given that it will be good, and it will be popular, and it will be a good draw for business."

Upon graduation, Harris is taking his talent to Minneapolis with his longtime girlfriend, Samantha Baker. Harris hopes the larger city will allow him to make a business of playing music without the rigors of the road, which broke up Broken Grass.

"I wanted to go to a city where there are more opportunities to play and a greater diversity of musicians to play with," Harris says. "Really, I want to move on to the next place in life."

While Harris hopes to graduate to a bigger schoolyard, Carbondale was the kind of musical playground he knows he couldn't have found anywhere else.

"Carbondale, per capita, has the best music scene that I've encountered and hands down the best audience there is," he says. "I don't know what it is about this town that makes it that way. People here do a phenomenal job of inspiring the musicians and supporting the music scene."

After "wood-shedding" a while in Minneapolis where Harris and Baker have friends and family, Harris hopes to restart Mothership - a band he'd wanted to create for years. Caravan and Mercy will continue without him. But, as Carter says, "We'll be hearing from Zacc Harris."

Whether through news of his next success, Broken Grass reunion shows (there's one Friday at the Hangar) or visits from Mothership - it's pretty clear that Harris won't be able to stay away for long.

After all, Harris says of Carbondale "it's one of the nexuses of the universe," and the spot he will always claim as his musical birthplace.

marleen.shepherd@thesouthern.com

618-351-5074