Today we’d like to introduce you to Lacey Harris.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Lacey. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
It’s so challenging to quantify a lifetime into a paragraph! I’ll give it my best go. Music was often my only companion growing up a solo kid in rural Texas, so it very quickly became the focus of my attention outside of the usual life stuff. I inherited my parents’ crate of vinyl records and their record player at the age of nine, and quickly became addicted to disco records like Donna Summer – On the Radio (thanks mom and dad!). I went through many phases, as most music people do, but the place where I really landed musically is in the realm of electronic music.
At sixteen in the mid-t0-late ’90s, I snuck out of town to go to a few raves in larger cities nearby–Dallas, Houston, and Austin were the usual hotspots for anything remotely cutting-edge, so that’s where I would end up, in a dark, dusty warehouse on the outskirts of Dallas’ industrial district, or at the Austin Music Hall, or some little underground club in downtown Houston. I fell in love with house music, techno, drum and bass, hip hop, and everything in between at these events, and by the age of seventeen, going on eighteen, I was starting to learn to DJ.
DJing was still such a special, renegade art form at that time, and the entire community of special people surrounding it, and with my immersion into the rave/club/dance music environment, I found my place. This led me down the road of seeking out audio engineering and music production training, which I began at a school in Dallas (a functional pro recording studio where Erykah Badu, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Pantera, and other famous Texan artists had recorded), and then later continued at Musicians Institute in Hollywood–at which, interestingly.
I have now become an educator and the lead administrator/chair of several programs, such as DJ Performance and Production, Independent Artist Program, Artist-Producer-Entrepreneur Program, and soon-to-be Electronic Music Production Program. As far as Concurrent Recordings goes, I recently hatched this record label as a catch-all for my own wide palette of music, and soon to be other artists’ music as well, in the vein of downtempo, ambient and “leftfield” dance music combined.
Between January of 2010 and now, I’ve put out a number of music releases, including two full-length albums as Inquiri (my ambient/downtempo alias) and several dance music releases as Lacey IQ (my general DJ name around LA), and I have DJ’ed in more amazing spots than I can even name… festivals, warehouses, clubs, forest parties, parks, lofts, Beverly Hills rooftops, just everywhere. I always feel really grateful to have had the experiences, teachers, and mentorship I’ve been blessed with over the years, and I can say that even though there’s always room to grow.
I’m pleased with all I’ve had the good fortune to experience in these last couple of decades. It’s amazing what the right drive, support, and vision can really do for our lives… if I had told 16-year-old me that I’d be meeting and sharing stages with my heroes, working with them on music, and generally living this life I thought was only a colorful dream, that kid would be blown away.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Smooth road? What’s that? Ha! Making music, or any kind of art is always an unimaginable, endless grind. Because it’s such a challenge to make a living with art, we often have to juggle day jobs, school, no sleep, being broke and sometimes going to bed hungry, and just general burnout and loss of energy and inspiration at times along the way.
It seems to me that every type of musician (and probably every kind of artist really) has, I want to say, a bi-monthly (or weekly, or annually, depending on the year) “meltdown” where they are so exhausted and discouraged that they think of quitting. It’s a rollercoaster for sure… but the moment you get back into the world and experience something that just breathes life into you, inspires you, and reminds you of the joy that got you into this thing in the first place.
Conversely, it could also be a tragedy, a loss, a great painful event that sends you back to your music, as a coping mechanism (read: the only thing keeping you going really) or a way to express oneself when words just don’t do the trick. (laughs) It really is a crazy ride, but I can’t imagine not doing it. It’s rare that a person can ever “quit” art, really, because it’s just such an inextricable part of you.
Concurrent Recordings – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Concurrent Recordings is my record label, which focuses on several simultaneous veins of electronic music: ambient, downtempo, and leftfield dance music. It’s still in its infancy at the moment, as I develop our target marketing strategy and also collect material from artists who are looking to release music with me; its current release catalogue contains two albums by my downtempo alias which I mentioned, Inquiri.
Walk For Miles, released January 2010, was my first fully-realized musical labor of love. It speaks to my journey through the bumpy roads and beauty that have been my creative journey, and the miles I’ve gone in life. My second release was Inquiri & Mayumi – Semi-Human, which was really a dream project for me; Mayumi is an incredible artist. She’s a classically trained musician and also has a great deal of other incredible work out in the world, and also one of my dearest friends.
I am so proud of that record, because she and I locked ourselves away and started on a very intense journey of finding a way to give form and voice to some really abstract ideas, like spiritual evolution and the beauty of being a vulnerable human, all while trying to elevate beyond what being “human” means. Now, with Concurrent, my goals are to further elevate this process of evolution through music and the bond it creates between the humans of Earth
I realize how “ethereal” this all sounds… ha. But it’s true. I want to connect people and remind them they are not alone. It’s so easy to feel alienated and separate, even as connected as we are now through technology, but I believe that honoring our deepest, most human parts and allowing those to be shared, will bring us all more peace.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I’ve had so many proud moments, too many to count. Honestly, being on stage and seeing people really feeling good in that moment while I am playing music and sharing my heart with them, or when they profess a profound reaction to a piece of music I’ve created–whether it’s giving them comfort, or bringing them energy and power, or anything really–it really brings me the most joy and pride.
There’s also the incredible feeling of overwhelming gratitude when one of my heroes gives me a compliment about a performance or a piece of music. This has happened more and more to me over the last few years, and there’s just nothing like it.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @laceyiq
- Facebook: facebook.com/inquiri
- Twitter: @lacey_iq
- Other: https://soundcloud.com/lacey_iq
Image Credit:
Ilenia Parra, Emily Steigerwald
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