JP Harris

Joshua Pless "JP" Harris (born February 13, 1983) is an American country singer, songwriter, guitarist, and clawhammer banjoist based in Nashville, Tennessee.

Career Harris was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1983. He spent much of his early life between Montgomery and Dadeville, AL, where his relatives had lived since the Revolutionary War. His mother was a teacher and his father worked in heavy construction. When he was seven, his family moved to Apple Valley, California, and later to Las Vegas. and later spent a year in Arizona where he worked as a sheep herder for a group of Navajo elders. Throughout this time, Harris freighthopped across the US, eventually finding his way to the town of Halifax, Vermont, where he lived for over a decade. He worked as a sheet metal scrapper, orchard worker, farmer laborer, luthier, heavy equipment operator, logger, and mainly as an historic restoration carpenter.

Despite his busy tour schedule, Harris continues to work as a carpenter within the music community in Nashville.

He has performed at many of the major folk and roots festivals including Newport Folk Festival, The Lowell Folk Festival, FloydFest, and many others.

Influences Harris heard country music growing up in Alabama but didn't start playing the genre until he left home at age 14. He's noted that he didn't appreciate the genre until he lived on his own: "The reason country music became more resonant with me as I got older is that it’s sort of identifiable by anybody. Everybody’s just working to get by, and country music just happens to be the soundtrack to that.”

Discography I'll Keep Calling (JP Harris and the Tough Choices, 2011), Cow Island Music Home Is Where The Hurt Is (JP Harris and the Tough Choices, 2014), Cow Island Music Sometimes Dogs Bark at Nothing (2018), Free Dirt Records Don't You Marry No Railroad Man (JP Harris' Dreadful Wind and Rain, 2021), Free Dirt Records JP Harris is a Trash Fire (2024), Bloodshot Records

with Chance McCoy Two Bad Hombres (2017), self-released

EPs and singles Why Don't We Duet in the Road (2016), Demolition & Removal Records Why Don't We Duet in the Road (Again) (2019), Demolition & Removal Records Take Off Your Tin Foil Hat (2021), Demolition & Removal Records