John Hardin: Off-Grid, Solar-Powered, and Playing Music for the Trees

Welcome to the Money Gigs Podcast. Listen up kids. I know it's hard, I know you're busy. But if you're enjoying this podcast, if this is the second or third or fourth, God forbid, fifth episode that you're listening to and you're getting some benefit from it, you're enjoying listening to real musicians. Either as a musician or someone who appreciates musicians. Can I ask you to support the show? I hate doing that. I'm the worst salesman possible. But in the description of the show, you're going to find a link that says something like Support Money Gigs podcast. If you click that, it's going to take you to a page. You can do it one time donation, you can do a monthly subscription donation. And I think I have for the monthly. I'll put the episode out a few days earlier or something like that so that you can have access to it with the exception of this one because it's late, but looking for ways to gain support. Another way you can support if money's not your thing is you can go to whatever you're listening. Like if you're listening on this Apple or Spotify, you can rate this podcast five star rating, comments, etc, that really helps. Also pushes me up in the algorithms, if you will. And another way that you can support the show and actually I'm supporting you, it's a wash here, is that you can go to trifloral.com themoneygigs and get a 10% discount off of any of their fine beverage offer. They have THC beverage packs of all different flavors, varieties, 2.55 and 10 milligram varieties. I have one before every gig and things are just so smooth where I do that. So lots of ways of support would appreciate it. Okay, let's go. Hey guys, it's Cliff. Welcome to the August 15th episode. Guess what? It is August 15th. I'm producing this right now. I'm sitting in my recliner watching Cincinnati, Orlando Startup on Apple tv. I just got back from Nashville where I was in this sort of group thing that Kaden Gordon down there put together and it was great. Met a lot of musicians, got a couple subscribers, got a chance to pick up the app, talked to people about their pain points and met just a lot of really great creative people. And I'll probably talk more about that. I've got a couple podcast guests out of that as well. But my week was nuts. Tuesday, Wednesday we had a basic tornado in Cincinnati. Almost tornado, maybe it was a tornado, but it knocked the power out of my house and I was out for two days, and then I packed up all my meat on the third day in the morning and refrigerator stuff, and went over 20 minutes to my mom's house. And just a few hours after I'd done that, of course, the power comes back on. And then I packed up and got ready to go to Nashville. So I'm scrambling to put this together. This is the John Harden episode. Go to johnharden bandcamp.com to find his stuff. This is an episode that's not without controversy. A little bit of politics in this one, but I kind of leave it all hanging out. There's a little bit of COVID a little bit of John getting canceled, evidently, in Cincinnati, my town. And I just let it. I just let it play. You make your decision. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna. I'll say this. I know John Harden is a good guy. He's a good guy, and I think. Well, I'm not going to say what I think, but putting this together, I'm going to throw some snippets of his stuff in with the episode so you can get a listen as well. So enjoy. John Harden. Wow. Who's running the motorcycle behind you?

Oh, they're mowing the grass or blowing meat. Blower. It's a leaf blower.

That's okay. That's okay. That's part of the charm of this.

You.

I'm so excited, and I'm happy to meet you, and I want to thank you for taking some time to talk to me. I'm really excited to talk to you right now because two days ago, I saw backrooms, and I don't know if you've seen that movie yet, but you would have lent a lot of talent to that particular film. A lot of ethereal music. So that's a nice little serendipitous convergence. Well, let's. How are.

Let's let her. How are you? Where are you? Okay. I am in Wadsworth, Ohio. I just said goodbye to my mother, who I've visited for the last couple of days, and I'm off to a show in Milwaukee on Tuesday.

So who is John Hardin, and what is he out here doing?

I'm out here making space music with theremin and electric didgeridoo. It's very different music, and I'm testing it out on audiences around the country. I would say that's what I'm doing on this particular tour. I've done a lot of different kinds of art. Music is always central to it, but I don't always have Live music. I make a lot of music in studio that I release digitally or in other mediums, but I also write. I also make films. You know, like most creative people, you end up doing a lot of things, like you're making podcasts and apps right now. I think the discipline of the musician is a good starting place for a whole lot of creative activities, but it's psychedelic space music. I'm trying to lean in on that more. It is very psychedelic and it is very spacey. I'd say that's. That's my niche musically on this project.

John, you mentioned in the show questions that the promoters don't really know what to do with you because your music resists categorization. Meanwhile, AI is generating perfectly categorized music at scale a million streams for quote band that doesn't really exist. Does the fact that you're impossible to pigeonhole feel like a liability right now or a superpower?

It feels like animal that needs to go for a walk. You know what I mean? Like, this is something that I've been nurturing at home for a long time, and it's become restless. It needs to get out and see the world. I feel like I'm out here as an ambassador for this music. I love this music deeply. And I'm also out here because I don't trust the Internet at all. You know, I feel like we're in a very weaponized environment when we're online. And this became really apparent to me after Covid. I was just ready to go out on tour for the first time in a long time in 2020, and everything got shut down because of COVID I realized during COVID that the things that they were doing, the lockdowns, the masking, the. All of that was much more effective at isolating us and separating us from each other and connecting us to an online feed than it was at preventing the spread of a disease. You know that strategically, if you're. If you're trying to prevent the spread of the disease and save people's lives, you would have taken a completely different strategy than they did. And the strategy that they did was very good at creating social isolation and dependence on digital feed. And they did it long enough to create all new habits in the whole. In the population. It was a. It was a major undertaking, and it made me realize that. And I also found myself censored online, that things that I had written disappeared from Google searches, and there was a lot of manipulation of. Of online content. And I realized that the only way to really have control over my Music is to. And again, my music isn't the way to put it. The music that I am an ambassador for, that I owed it to the music to get it out to people directly and to talk to them and to have face to face interactions with them. Because I think that's where music lives, that there's more to music than just the notes that are played or the sounds that, you know. The sounds reflect the nervous system of the player. And the player has to be in a relaxed state and a state of high awareness. It's a state of high functioning. And in that state of high functioning, the vibe of your nervous system becomes contagious. And so other people pick up that vibe. And that's kind of the essence of musical communication. There's more that goes on than meets the eye or the ear. The whole Covid situation just convinced me more than ever that it was worth the effort to get out and play for people. It was that was a really essential part of the future.

You've played salt caves, thrift stores, ecstatic dance nights, botanical shops. Big indie acts are canceling tours because they can't break even. But you've built something enduring, maybe not sustainable, in rooms of 30 people. What does the touring circuit look like from where you stand and what makes it worth it?

Okay, it sustains me on a soul level. There's something miraculous about music. Music, it has influence over the course of events. And what happens out on tour isn't always like, you know, the show. The shows are not paying enough to make the tour work. I budget money to come and visit my mother in Wadsworth, Ohio every year. But I can turn that. The amount of money that I spent to visit my mother will give me with the money that I make from the 20 gigs that I play while I'm on that tour. I don't spend any more money than it would be to visit my mother, but I get to play 20 gigs across the country.

Most musicians I talked to have a whole checklist, pay load in guarantee, green room. You said if you can get there, you're going to play. Where does that philosophy come from?

It comes from the. I really learned a lot on a tour that I did back in, right around the turn of the century. And this was another time when music came to me that I had nurtured to the point that it needed to go for a walk. And this was all these were solar powered electric guitar solos. Previous to this, I worked for Greenpeace and I did a lot of film work, like video work for Organizations that were battling nuclear power facilities in their neighborhoods. And I did a really deep dive on energy policy in the 90s. And I realized that the utility companies are an enormous ripoff and that they're manipulating people in really terrible ways. I recognized that global climate change was a. Was a real thing, so I did something about it. I didn't have a lot of money, but I bought some solar panels and the stuff that I needed to move my studio off grid that I felt like at least if I could get. Because I love electric music, I love electronic music, but I didn't want to be window dressing for nuclear power plants, if you catch my drill right, that I didn't. I didn't want to feel like, you know, I didn't want to encourage people to use more grid electricity to do this. So I got enough gear that I could run a limited amount. Yeah, I got enough solar panel that I could run a small studio. I was working with that and I started playing outside because it was solar powered. I didn't have to be in a building that had power and I could play these kind of events that were like really off grid. And I found myself improvising to the sounds of nature and building a relationship, a musical relationship with nature and actually having a feeling that the places that I was at really loved having me play for them. And I still feel that way, that it's more than the people that the places that the land wants to be played for, the trees want to be played for, and they're all making noise. You know, the wind through the trees, the birds, everything out there is making noise. Well, it's not really noise that there is something going on there. So on this tour, I didn't have any pre lined up gig. I needed to leave the apartment that I had and I was being priced out of the market in New England. I couldn't find a place to live and so I bought a little camper and I mounted the solar panels on the roof and I moved my studio into the camper. And I went across country playing music in outdoor locations, attracting whatever attention I could at whatever places I was at. Sometimes I played at rest areas, sometimes I played at campgrounds, and sometimes just at remote places and videotaped it and made an album out of this tour. And I didn't make very much money at it, but I landed at a radio station in Humboldt County, California and stopped in there. And I was like, at this time, I was like running out of money and running out of enthusiasm and just wondering what I was going to do. And I got to this radio station and the music director listened to my CD and said, oh yeah, this sounds good. There's a DJ who's on at 10 o' clock tonight who likes to have people play live in the studio. Come back then, I'll bet I'll have you on. So I came back at 10 o' clock and I met the guy and he says, yeah, come on in and set up. I set up and I played on the air on his show. And at the end of the show is one o' clock in the morning. I said, hey, is it okay if I crash in the parking lot of the radio station here? You know, because I had my camper there. It was like, you know, I can just stay in a parking space and I'm not, you know, I'm very self contained that way. And he said, well, why don't you come back to my place? So he invited me back to his place and the guy like had this great redwood chalet way back in the woods, way out in the sticks, right? And so went back, we listened back to the radio show, hung out. I woke up there the next morning and I got out of my camper and I looked around and it was just like, I couldn't see another house. There was just like, there was meadow and there were trees along the horizon and there were some buzzards drying their wings on the fence out nearby. And it was just a beautiful place. And I just got a real warm vibe about it. And the guy invited me to stay for a while and kind of hired me to trim his weed for him, you know. So they put money in my pocket and introduced me to his friends. And his friends all say, oh, if you like it here, why don't you stay? So, you know, that tour opened up a whole world for me and Humboldt county became my home after that. Already having the solar panels, I was equipped to live off grid. So that tour was not sustainable. It didn't make any money, but it landed me right where I needed to be, right at the right time. And life has been good to me in Humboldt County. It's like part of being a musician. It's playing the right note at the right time, but it extends to your whole life. It's about being in the right place at the right time because you're there with the right attitude and you're paying attention and you're relaxed and you're in the position to do what needs to be done at the time that it needs to be done. And because you're listening, you know what's coming right. You know what to do at the right time. Does that make sense to you as a musician?

Absolutely, that makes sense. You've built a synth out of an 80s toy, a harp out of a bunk cake pan. Tell me about making music from recycling junk. Does the constraint make you a better musician or just a more stubborn one?

I don't know. I've been touring now for the last three years, so I see a lot of other acts that are sort of in my niche. And there's a lot of great music gear out there right now. This whole world of modular synthesizers and boutique guitar pedals, and there's a lot of that gear. But I learned back in the 80s, back. Back when the digital synthesizers first came out and sequencers that I like playing. I don't like sitting at a desk punching in numbers or, you know, making calculations or that side of music. I think we have a culture that is hyper intellectual, that we spend too much of our time thinking conceptually. And designing synthesizers is very much a conceptual kind of a. An activity. And there's a lot of conceptual music. But I think musicianship, the discipline of playing an instrument every day, whatever kind of instrument it is, that is really kind of the heart of music. Music has to resonate with a human nervous system in order to communicate. A lot of synthesizers sound great right out of the box. The music that comes out of them. I think, at least listening to it, I think it's. It reflects good instrument design more than it reflects good musical technique. So I see people with enormous pedal boards and not a lot of technique sometimes. And as a musician who's working off grid, I love to play. And the music that I make comes largely from, like, my didgeridoo technique is. I play differently than. I don't know anybody who plays didgeridoo the way I do, but I play it a lot. So anybody who plays didgeridoo can at least appreciate that I play the didgeridoo. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

You know, I play the bass well enough that I can blow people's minds just busking. Right? And I think in this day and age, like, we have so much technology, and the technology is so. It's so disempowering. I don't want to. I don't want to be mistaken for a technician. I don't want to have my opportunity to be. To play music interrupted or degraded by Having to become a technician and diagnose what's wrong with my equipment at this particular time, which. The more gear you have, the more often that happens. The music that I'm playing now is very gesture controlled. The theremin I play by waving my hand in front of it. I use technology to shape the sound that comes out of the speaker, but the playing is. It's all gesture. The way I play didgeridoo. What I love about the didgeridoo is that you can change timbre in so many different ways just by how you shape your mouth. Whereas most instruments, they have one timbre and they can play two octaves or three octaves. The didgeridoo plays one note, but you can make a lot of different tones. It's more like a synthesizer that way. But I'm a firm believer in musicianship, in the practice of playing an instrument every day. And you can find, like, I can make music with anything. If I put enough time and energy into it. I can make music with practically anything that makes sound. The thing that makes sound will actually influence the kind of music that I make. And so I like using unusual instruments or instruments that I made myself because they make a sound that isn't like anything else. And it will draw a new kind of music out of me. You know, I'm listening for what. What is the voice of this thing? What kind of music does it want to make? I think that the sound that the instruments make really influence what kind of music? The music the musicians make with it. Which is why instruments that are mass produced, the musicians tend to make music that is also kind of similar enough in sound that it becomes a genre that there's a mass of. Of music that reflects the sounds of this particular cadre of instruments. In the same way that, like rock and roll was shaped by tube amplifiers and distortion devices and feedback. That's what it took to fill a stadium with sound in those days. And that's what was available. Today. Music is shaped by computers. I can't tell you how many people I've seen who like their act was sitting down at a laptop computer. Maybe they had some little control device, but it mostly happened on a laptop. You know, these are the. This is the equipment that's available. But I'm an old guy and I still believe in practicing. And I think that the heart of. I. I don't like sitting at the. If I wanted to sit at a computer, I'd be an insurance representative or something. You know, I like playing musical instruments. I like the way they feel in my hand. And I like the. The feel of fluency when your fingers can make the sound that you hear in your head, when the sound that you hear in your head is what your fingers produce as second nature. That's a great feeling. And that to me is liberation. I think that's what keeps. The music that I'm making now is really fun to play. It's because it is all based in the gestures that I'm making at the moment. It's improvised music and I'm fluent at the instrument and so I can do whatever feels right in the moment. And sound systems and rooms all sound different, so they encourage different things in my music. And, and so every night's different and I'm having a great time doing it. It's probably the most rewarding. Yeah.

A really good time to mention. John harden.bandcamp.com A huge body of work that is just great to listen to. Just put it on and chill out. Good stuff. So, John, you mentioned in our notes that you had a bit of a cancellation issue. You mentioned a hater threatened promoters on this tour and killed a gig for you. That's a side of this life most people don't see. What happened?

It was somebody who was a friend on Facebook. In fact, I met him playing. He's a promoter. He sets up shows. I posted a link to a study by the British Psychological association published in the British Journal of Psychology. And it was a study of beliefs and judgments of American people. The findings of the study were actually pretty stark. And what they found is that people on the political left have much less diversity of opinion than people on the right now. Which people? I'm used to thinking of liberals as being people who are so broad minded that they can relate to every perspective except their own, right? I worked for Greenpeace in the 90s. I told you about that. I'm a tree hugger. Environmentalist. I don't deny climate change. I did something about it 20, 30 years ago, right? I'm a union guy, right? I worked the phones for the DNC during Al Gore's campaign, right? And I grew up in a union family. I'm like, I'm as left as they come and I walk the talk. I was one of the founders of the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition. I work for legalization. I'm. I'm a tree hugger. I believe in civil rights, free speech especially. I live and die by free speech. You know, the reason buskers can go out and play is because the Supreme Court has Broadly interpreted free speech as to include freedom of expression of all forms of music. You know, your right to make a living as a musician playing on the street is guaranteed in the Constitution. I cannot stress this enough. This is important. You know, during COVID I heard so many people talk about, oh, that's disinformation, or, you know, that it's dangerous to say things. There was a lot of censorship. So anyways, this study has found that people on the left have a narrower bandwidth of opinion than people on the right. And I have noticed this in real life. And that's what I posted. A link to the study and a note that I have found this in real life. And this guy took such offense at this that he called me all sorts of names, you know, let me know that he regretted having me at the show that I played at and threatened that I. He would never have me play at a show again. Like, how should I have that? All those people were lefty people and they were nice to you, and so how could you know, say this such a thing? Anyways, I thought the reaction was really over the top. And that happened last summer when I was on tour. But this year I went on tour again and I posted the link to the places was going to play, I posted my tour schedule, and he contacted promoters on the tour schedule and presented me as. I don't know how he presented me, right? But I got a note from a promoter saying, we regret to inform you that we don't believe that your values are in line with. With ours. Right? And I was like, well, why? Like, what are you talking about? Like what values are you talking about? Right? I'm not applying for to play, you know, churches or anything. You know what I mean? This was a rock and rol at a bar, right? So I didn't know what the value system was. But then I did get a call from one promoter who said, hey, man, this guy is like contacting everybody. And in fact, he contacted the other two artists who were scheduled to play with me and got them to cancel their appearance. Yeah. And tried to get the promoter and the venue not to host my show. There's nothing political in my show. Like, it's instrumental music, right? I don't. I don't say anything from the beginning of the set to the end. My political opinions are not. They're not malicious. Like, okay, I live in Humboldt County, California. My community center is called the Meteill Community Center. They sponsor a big reggae show called Reggae on the River. Maybe you've heard of it. If you're into reggae, it's one of the big reggae shows. The community of Southern Humboldt established this like 20 years ago. It had a great run and then it got like other music shows that even if it sells out, it doesn't make money. Right. And there was a big controversy about it. The community center sued the promoter and it was all ugly. And the community center ended up really in debt from putting on this show that used to be really profitable and used to pay for like all of our volunteer fire departments and every nonprofit organization. Like it was a, a moneymaker for the community. And in a short period of time, it became a big debt. Well, they made the decision a few years ago to hire Sizzler to headline Reggae on the River. And Sizzler had not toured the U.S. he's a superstar in the reggae world. He had not toured the US in several years because gay activists especially had put out that some of his songs call for killing of gay people. You know, I don't understand reggae lyrics well enough to know what of his lyrics are so offensive. But I have read articles in which his lyrics have been explained in terms of, you know, being very anti homosexual and the belief that homosexuals are evil and that it's a very bad thing and that those people, that violence against them is justified because it's such a horrible thing. I don't, you know, I don't agree with this. I have friends who are gay. I believe in civil rights. I don't buy this at all. I wrote an editorial, you know, that I thought this was a bad idea because having him headline that show made it possible for him tour the U.S. the difference was he was calling for violence against people. It was the fact that, you know, he's whipping people up into a frenzy and calling for violence against another group that I think is something that you don't have tolerate. Right. But if you're not calling, and I've worked in, you know, community radio too, like there are things that are acceptable, free speech, but you're. And, and almost everything is. You can say it. But if you're calling for violence against somebody and dehumanizing somebody, that's not something that should be encouraged. Differences in opinions I think should be encouraged. There's plenty of room for differences of opinions, but whipping up a lynch mob is not anything that you want to be responsible for.

Well, John, you've told me that music sustains you through the challenges and given everything you just Described. I don't think you meant that metaphorically. What does music actually do for you that nothing else does? And do you think that transmits outward? Do you think that this type of music, this thing that you're doing, kind of represents a medicine for the people who are listening to it?

Yes. I couldn't have put it better myself. I don't think how it sustains me when I play. I feel connected to something larger, that there's a spirit in music. And like I say, it's connected. It has clout in this world. The universe is alive. I think that the Internet is. It's a cheap imitation of the connection that we have, that we really have with every living creature and every living creature that has ever lived and every living creature that. That will ever live, that we are connected directly to something larger than all of us, that knows us better than we know ourselves and know it. And there is tremendous comfort in feeling connected that way. And music is the thing that makes that connection, that makes me feel the most transparent to that spirit. And that's my goal musically, is to be transparent to that spirit, to allow that spirit to manifest in the real world through me without my ego or my lack of technique getting in the way. I want to have the fluidity to be transparent to that spirit. That's what I try to do in you.

That's beautiful. It reminds me of when. When my thoughts are rambling and scattered and I can't focus after a short meditation. You know, focus on the breath. The thoughts after that meditative session are always better. And I think your music facilitates and I. I think. I hope people check it out. John hardin.bandcamp.com John, I want to thank you for coming on. I think this has been a wonderful conversation. I'm going to go ahead and consider you a friend. So there is a place for you here in Cincinnati for Sure. Sure.

I want to say I love Cincinnati. Like, I have. I have a lot of friends in Cincinnati and I have some really good friends in Cincinnati and. And I had a great gig in Cincinnati this past tour. Fuse Box was a great place to play and I love Cincinnati. It's actually one of the first. Like I've been playing Cincinnati probably longer than. Than almost any. Any. At least any place else on my touring circuit. I know more people in Cincinnati. I can't wait to get back.

So.

Cool.

Well, good talking with you.

My pleasure. Thank you very much. And I enjoyed your. I listened to an episode of your show. I think you've got a great thing going And I encourage you to keep it up.

Thank you, sir. Have a good one.

Thanks for your time. Thank you very much. Bye bye.

And that's John Harden. I came in expecting to talk theremins and didgeridoos and instruments built out of bundt pancakes things. And we did. But what stuck with me was bigger than the gear. John doesn't trust the Internet, so he put solar panels on the roof of a camper and drove his music across the country to play it for people face to face. He talks about music as a nervous system you can feel in a room a spirit you become transparent to. He called his music animal that needs to go for a walk. I use that all the time.

Time.

And he's out there walking it. One salt cave, one thrift shop, one room of 30 people at a time, doing 40 gigs a year on a budget most touring acts would take one look at and go home. That's the real thing. That's what we're all chasing. If any of that moved you, and I hope it did, go listen@johnharden.bandcamp.com I've played two dozen of his tracks and never once regretted hitting the button. Psychedelic space music made out of sunlight. Worth your time. And if you're a gigging musician trying to keep the real thing going, trying to make the math work the way John does. That's exactly why I built the money. Gigs. Know your worth. Track your gigs. Find the venues that'll treat you right. From the musicians who've already played them. There's a code in the show notes to get you in. No algorithm, no middleman. Just musicians helping musicians book the next real one. Thanks for listening. I'm Cliff. Go play for somebody. Sam.