Ever since their orientation show in Alumnae Lounge this fall, Harry and the Potters (also known as Paul and Joe DeGeorge) have enchanted the Tufts community. When we learned that the brother-brother duo who, as you might expect, perform rock songs about the popular J. K. Rowling series were coming to the Middle East on Feb. 19, we nearly fell off our Nimbus 2000s. I got a chance to talk with Paul (a Tufts grad, E'01) and, since there were no owls or fireplaces around, I settled for a phone call.
Question: What was the impetus for starting this band?
Paul DeGeorge: Well, back when I was at Tufts, I used to book a lot of shows. And my brother was, like, 12 years old at the time and he had started a band and I was like, "Aw, this is great!" So I started booking him shows, and he played a few times at Tufts and he continued with his band. And I always thought, wow, it would be great to play in a band with my brother but you know we were both playing our own separate bands at the time. And the band I was in broke up, and I had nothing to do, and I had been kicking around this idea for Harry and the Potters for a while at that point.
Just on a whim one day, we just really decided, okay, well, let's write some songs. And we decided to do it together and this would be our band together and we'd at least try it out and maybe we could book a show down at the library or something and play in our hometown library or something like that. And we thought maybe that will be it, or maybe we'll keep booking shows in libraries. And that's sort of more what turned out to happen was we just kept booking more and more shows, because it became kind of ridiculously fun to go to a library and get dressed up and play a rock show.
Q: What is the breakdown of your fans, in terms of children versus adults?
PD: Well, I think it's a lot of teenagers and college kids, mostly because people your age have sort of grown up with the books and they have this sort of deep-seated affection for Harry Potter and his friends ... reading is a very private thing and it's a personal thing, but you get so involved. ... just coming to one of our shows, you know you're going to be with a couple other hundred really hardcore Harry Potter fans. And you can just geek out amongst like-minded people, so it's almost like a social gathering of sorts, you know, to sort of get away from the private personal reading experience and actually share it with other people. That's totally not answering your question. Yeah, it's a lot of teenagers and college kids (laughs). And parents and their little kids - hip parents will take their little kids out and there's also some older folks, like in their twenties, who also enjoy the books.
Q: What you were saying about the dynamic at shows, I totally noticed at the orientation show, people were kind of crazy; it was much different than any other rock show I've ever been to where people are just standing there nodding.
PD: Yeah, well, I got tired of going to shows that were like that. I got tired of going to a show and standing there nodding and I did that a lot, and I realized that the shows that I really enjoyed and remembered were the ones that were just unique experiences and we try to make our show a unique experience. I mean, the band itself is kind of ridiculous conceptually to begin with, so why not go over the top with it, and why not dump balloons on the audience and why not, you know, whatever, have a dance party or climb on furniture?
Q: Do you ever feel limited at all by the concept you're dealing with?
PD: I don't think we do, because I almost feel like, in some senses, it sort of sets you free in a way, because you're already putting yourself out on a limb and saying, look, I'm getting dressed up as Harry Potter in a ridiculous band so pretty much, anything goes after that point. Like if we want to rip off a Manowar song, there's no one to stop us, you know? ... When you're playing in another band with other people, you're very focused on being a unique artist, and you're almost very cautious in the way you conduct yourself. And we're kind of just like throw caution to the wind and do whatever seems like it could be fun or ridiculous or... I'm using the word ridiculous a lot, but that describes our band pretty well, I think.
Q: Are you guys going to keep going on after the books are done, because there's only one more left? Are you going to keep making music?
PD: Yeah, that's a good question, and we don't really know the answer. I think we're definitely going to stick around until the new book comes out, whenever that would be. And we're going to have, we're already thinking, where can we have the biggest party ever in Boston. Because the last time, we were on the road for the book release, and that wasn't nearly as fun as it would be if we were in Boston with all our friends, so we're already thinking what to do for that big party. But after that, I really don't know. I mean, what if Harry dies? Then... well, whatever. We're a band that's blessed with the fortune of time travel as a means of existence so I guess we could always figure out a time travel joke to get around that.
Q: What was the weirdest show you played?
PD: There's this pedestrian bridge in Austin, Texas, and somebody had emailed me and told me all these hardcore bands... they have these outlets in the middle of the bridge that are live, so there's electricity in the middle of the bridge. And so all these hardcore bands will just organize a show, and they'll show up and have three or four bands play, and they'll basically just play until cops show up and tell them to leave. So this kid told me about it and I was like, "Wow! That's great!" so we had a free night while we were in Austin, so we were like, "All right, we're going to play on the bridge." So we put it up on the website, and emailed all our email list and whatever, and showed up a couple hours ahead of time and, sure enough, there's like maybe a dozen outlets up on that bridge - there was one that worked (laughs). So we brought all our gear up, we lugged all our equipment maybe a quarter of a mile or something to get it up on the bridge, and then set up, and seventy or eighty people showed up and we played... so we played at like eight o'clock - it was November, it was gorgeous out, and we were just sort of overlooking the city just as it was nighttime - it was so cool. And it was just totally illegal as well and no cops showed up, and we had a great time and we blew out a speaker... it was a good time all around [laughs].
