Cover photo © 2024 Laura Carbone

During various points in our lives, many of us think about what kind of legacy we’ll leave behind and how we might someday be remembered. Blues musicians, particularly those with a long and colorful career, can point to the music they’ve created and recorded and the many gigs they’ve played as their lasting legacy. For bluesman Zac Harmon, who certainly has had a long and illustrious career as a musician, a songwriter, and a producer, however, his family, his roots, his music, and his enduring friendships are all key components to how he wants to be remembered both as a man and as a musician.

In mid-February, Harmon had just wrapped up his latest album, titled Floreada’s Boy. As Harmon put it, he was “just at the end of finishing my new record…and I’m pretty excited about that and that (recording the new album) has been my focus for the last four months.”

Floreada’s Boy—scheduled to be released in August—will include twelve new songs that Harmon called a “record of what’s really on my heart…it’s not pretentious at all (and) it has nothing in there that I wrote because I said, ‘Well, I need to satisfy this, or I need to do this for this person.’ It’s none of that.”

Obviously, the album’s title is personal and certainly close to Harmon’s heart. His online bio states that growing up he was exposed to a lot of music in his home, neighborhood, and local culture. His dad, a pharmacist, played harmonica and his mom played piano. “My mom (Floreada) was just so important in my life…(and) so important to my whole musical existence. She was the one (who) was always pushing for me and picking me up when I doubted myself.”

Floreada’s Boy will be released through Catfood Records, a Texas-based label that Harmon has been with since 2018 and where he released his last two albums: Mississippi BarBQ and 2021’s Long As I Got My Guitar. For this latest album, Harmon again teamed up with Catfood owner Bob Trenchard.

“The difference between this record and all the other records we’ve done with Catfood is that…Bob told me ‘Hey, man, I want you to do you. Just deliver me the record. That’s it.’ And I was like, yeah, cool, let’s do it. And that’s what I did.”

With Trenchard’s blessing, Harmon shelved the label’s boiler plate session standards, and, instead, collaborated with old friends whom he had never worked with before on a studio album. Friends, such as Caleb Quaye, an English rock guitarist and session musician, best known for his work with Elton John in the late 1960s and 1970s. “He (Quaye) is a friend and he came in and did some stuff with me that was just fun music(ally).”

The new album also features The Texas Horns, a three-piece blues and soul horn section, who have appeared live and on recordings with Marcia Ball, John Nemeth, Ronnie Earl, Carolyn Wonderland, Sue Foley, Curtis Salgado, and many others. Collaborating with The Horns grew out of a prior European tour, when the trio played with Harmon and his band. At some point, he realized, “Man, we ought to record together.”

“This was a really fun record,” Harmon said of his time spent with old friends. He also reflected on how he grew to know many of these musicians. “I spent a lot of years out in California…a lot of my adult years, so I had a lot of musical relationships with ‘A’ level session players. So, a lot of those guys are playing on this record (Floreada’s Boy).”

Harmon paused and then added, “And you know I can’t afford ’em.” He laughed.

Nonetheless, those friends traveled to Texas to help Harmon make the album—a testament to Harmon’s close relationships with his fellow musicians. As Harmon put it, there was no question (from his friends) about helping out on his latest project.

“’Zac, what do you need, man? What do you want?’ (We) just hung out and played…and it was wonderful.”

Many of those close relationships were forged way back in the early eighties, when Harmon, who was just 21 at the time, moved to Los Angeles to try his luck in the music business. According to his online bio, he worked as a studio musician at first and, eventually, established a successful career as a songwriter and producer. Harmon worked on major films, television shows, and well-known national commercials. At one point, Harmon was hired by Michael Jackson as a staff writer for his publishing company, ATV Music. Harmon also wrote songs for Karyn White, Evelyn “Champagne” King, Freddie Jackson, the Whispers, and the O’Jays. He also wrote and produced songs for reggae band Black Uhuru’s Mystical Truth album, which received a Grammy nomination in 1994.

“Before COVID, I used to go out there (California) and play, at least once a year. I have some endearing friendships…with family members, close personal friends from the music industry…and close personal church relationships.”

California was where Harmon’s blues career started, but launching that career involved a combination of factors that came together over time: satisfying a longing for his musical roots, the changing landscape of popular music, and encouragement from a different mama.

After more than twenty years as a successful session musician, songwriter, and producer, Harmon, who was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, continued to feel the tug of playing Mississippi blues. “(Originally) I went to L.A. to be the next Albert King, but those record companies out there were like ‘This is too small for us…that’s a boutique business and we don’t (do that).’”

During those years of playing and making music for others, Harmon’s connection to the blues, or “lifeline,” as he called it, was a historic L.A. club called Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn, where, after spending a day in the studio, Harmon would sit in with local blues musicians and, at times, visiting blue luminaries. “Everybody from Lowell Fulson to Keb’ Mo’ was hanging out there, jamming. So that was my real connection to the blues (while) in L.A.”

Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn, which closed its doors in 2009 after more than 40 years, was not only a Los Angeles institution, but well known both nationally and internationally. A documentary film (Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn) was released in 2013, featuring Harmon in several scenes.

Harmon recalled those early days of hanging out at Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn when he first encountered the owner and matriarch, Laura Mae Gross, better known as Mama Laura to the musicians and her club’s patrons.

Harmon told Mama Laura (who hailed from Vicksburg, Mississippi) that, being from Jackson, of course he played the blues. Sometime later, Mama Laura asked him, “Well, if you play, why don’t you get up on the stage?” Harmon didn’t have his guitar with him at that time, which was no excuse to Mama Laura, who pointed to a Gibson 335 hanging on the club’s wall. “Uh, there’s the guitar,” Mama Laura said. “Get my guitar down and go on up there and play.”

Which Harmon did and continued to do for several years. For Harmon, Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn was like a family and “you never knew who you were going to run into. Those guys who were touring at the time…Smokey Wilson, Guitar Shorty, King Ernest (Baker), Barbara Morrison…you’d see all those guys there…it was just a family, man.”

For Harmon, playing at Babe’s and Ricky’s was a way to get “recharged” after a long day of creating music for others.

Harmon’s recording colleagues, however, didn’t get it. “The guys used to ask me all the time, ‘Man, why are you rushing to leave…why you gotta leave?’” When Harmon responded that he had to go down to Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn, his session-mates said, “You’re just sitting in” and “You’re not even getting paid.” His response was always the same, “Yeah, you’re right, I am going to play for free because that is my heart. You got to pay me for what I’m doing here, but that’s my heart down there.”

While jamming at Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn helped Harmon satisfy some of that Mississippi Blues longing, he still wanted to record blues and be known as a blues artist. By the mid to late 90s, changing musical tastes, along with a different music industry focus, spurred Harmon to make a definitive career change. He realized at the time that “this (the new industry focus) is not for me and I need to figure out something else.”

In a way, Harmon had reached his own personal crossroads. It was now time to focus on Zac Harmon. So, he started looking back over his career and realized there was no Zac Harmon, Blues Artist. “Wait a minute, I came out here to be a blues artist. I came out here to be the next Albert King. I’d done all of this stuff, but I had not done what I came to do. I had not recorded a record (of) myself. There was nothing out there that you could get that said ‘Zac Harmon.’”

He decided his first album would be a live recording at Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn, which Harmon hoped would satisfy that Mississippi Blues longing. The result was Live at Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn, which was released in 2003. Harmon was not concerned with the album’s success or whether or not anyone liked it. He simply wanted to make a “Zac Harmon” record and say that he did it.

Essentially, his career as a blues musician started with that album and his legacy as a talented artist continues to this day.

In 2004, Zac with and his then band, the Mid South Blues Revue, won the Blues Foundation’s prestigious International Blues Challenge (IBC) in Memphis, TN. Accolades and recognition soon followed, along with European tours and several more albums. Harmon, however, remains both humble and philosophical about his career.

“I’m like the Energizer Bunny…as long as I can breathe, I’m going to keep doing this music (blues), because it’s basically who I am.”

Harmon, who now makes his home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, is also a bit philosophical about continuing to play and perform live. “I have played the big stages with fifteen to twenty thousand people and I have played little tiny mom and pop clubs with maybe twenty people in the audience…I’m just happy for anybody (who’s) going to sit in front of me and listen to me.” Then Harmon laughed. “That’s really what it boils down to…there’s nothing pretentious about this, man.” He paused and added, “from the outside looking in, it seems like, ‘Wow, you get to go here, you get to go there’ but it’s not really what you think. We always say amongst the musicians (that) ‘We don’t get paid for playing. We get paid for carrying equipment around.’ The show is free.” Harmon laughs, again.

“Nobody plays the blues to get rich. Playing blues music is truly a labor of love. You truly have to love what you’re doing.”

Playing from the heart and contributing to his legacy by fulfilling that desire to be a true Mississippi bluesman, Floreada’s son puts it all into perspective by stating, “just being able to play is what I like. You know, I’m sixty-seven now, and I’m at a stage in my life and my career…it’s kind of like time for whatever’s going to be my legacy to be my legacy.”

Friendships and close relationships are also important to Harmon and a key reason he wanted this latest album to include his friends. “I’ve lost so many friends and colleagues and so forth over the last two years. You know, I’m looking at my own mortality…and I might not get a chance to make another record. God might call me home, you know.”

For Harmon, contemplating his own mortality—and his legacy—means that it’s past the time “for doing stuff because I want to satisfy somebody, it’s kind of time to do what’s really on my heart. And that’s what I did (with Floreada’s Boy).”

Zac Harmon, Blues Artist…loving son, creative force, and devoted friend.

That’s quite a legacy.

Visit Zac’s website at https://zacharmon.com/