GREG HARRIS (Part 1)

Greg started playing music when he was eight years old.
A few years later Greg played in front of an audience. In September 1976 he played every Thursday with his band "Greg Harris & Company" in a place called "Brewery" in San Jose and every Wednesday and Saturday at the "Mtn. Charlie's" in Los Gatos.

Greg Harris & Company

Members of "Greg Harris & Company" were Tim McWhirk on bass, Brett Jackson on drums, Bruce Bowers on fiddle and flute and Dana Gibbs.
Greg also played solo gigs with just his guitar including shows as opening act for "The Grateful Dead".

Later the same year he was playing at a solo artists outdoor concert in the bay area and a guy named Chick Rains saw him play and asked him to form a group.

Chick Rains was good friends with Jim Ed Norman (ex-member of Shiloh, a Texas band, which also included Al Perkins, Michael Bowden & future Eagle Don Henley,) and they invited Greg to record some demos with them in Los Angeles. Pleased with the results Jim took the demos to RCA and soon they had a big time record deal.

The self-titled album for RCA was also produced by Jim Ed Norman and released 1977.

Chick & Greg shared the vocal duties and Greg also wrote one of the songs together with Chick "You've got to give love". The remaining 9 songs were all written by Chick Rains.

Among the musicians on the album in addition to Greg on guitar, mandolin, banjo were Al Perkins (ex-Flying Burrito Brothers) on pedal steel guitar and Michael Bowden (ex-Cold Steel - a group with Sneaky Pete Kleinow and Gib Guilbeau and a member of Emmylou Harris' Hot Band in 1980's).
 

	RAINS & HARRIS
	- RAINS & HARRIS: Rains & Harris (RCA APL 1-2422) Produced by Jim Ed Norman. with Greg Harris, Chick Rains, Michael Bowden, Buzz Buchanon, Brian Whitcomb, John Hug, Al Perkins, Tricia Johns, Cathy Ward, Charles Merriam. Side A: Hot summer in a small town/I'm not ashamed/Easy/I love the way/New Mexico sunrise Side B: One in a million/You've got to give love/Spending all my time with you/Lay it all on the line/Dreaming is easy.

Two singles from that album were released, the first 1977 and a second one 1978:

The album started to get plenty of airplay on the biggest radio stations in L.A. but fate intervened with the death of Elvis Presley. RCA decided to forget about "Rains & Harris" along with most of it's other acts to concentrate solely on marketing Presley records because RCA at the time was just about to go broke.
At that point they duo split up and Chick moved to Nashville becoming a successful songwriter and Greg moved with his family down to Los Angeles.