Need No Reason to Rock (Update: Concert Postponed Until Aug. 26 Due to Rain)

Editor's Note: This concert was postponed until Thursday, Aug. 26, due to rain.

The Scotch Plains Summer Concert Series returns tonight with a performance by the Eric Harrison Crash Chorus. Harrison, a local lawyer and a slightly-older-than-teenage-garage-band-lead-singer, believes in the free concert series, so he's doing it for free. Just don't try to praise him for it.

"I'm not Saint Bob Geldof here," he said in a telephone interview. "I have a healthy amount of ego. I want to help people, but I'm a trial attorney and a lead singer. I have an infantile need for the spotlight."

It doesn't quite ring true. Apart from giving this concert for free, Harrison has shown a real community spirit in the past.

"In February, my wife and I put together a fundraising concert for a guy, Winchell Alce, who worked as a crossing guard here in the area who lost family members in Haiti. He wanted to bring people to the states."

That night, Harrison and his Crash Chorus joined McGinn band instructor Charlie Jackson (who plays in his own band, 'Bored of Education'), local father Don Tobey ('One Brick Short') and a handful of other local performers at the Crossroads in Garwood. The venue then donated all the money it collected at the door.

"We made $4,000," Harrison said.

Harrison grew up in East Brunswick and formed the Crash Chorus in the summer of 1990, between graduation from Princeton and the start of law school at Georgetown.

"We recorded our first albums on tape cassette because it's all we could afford," he said. "I never harboured any realistic hope of doing music as a career."

The original line-up featured Matt Krajewski on guitar, Matt's brother Mike on drums, and Eric's brother Evan on bass guitar. Matt now lives and works in Rochester, N.Y., but he still makes it to a few gigs with the Crash Chorus.

The band now includes Mike Doktorski on bass, and Dominick Randazzo on drums. "He's a very successful cardiologist who also happens to have perfect rhythm," Harrison said.

Harrison, himself, plays the acoustic bass. And he describes his sound "as a cross between Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan. They're both heroes of mine."

And the band itself? "I'd call [our music] three-chord witty pop folk music with an emphasis on lyrics," Harrison said. "It's not ground-breaking music. You'll listen to it and think, 'Damn this is derivative,' but derivative is okay by me."

The Crash Chorus is clearly the garage band that Harrison could never leave behind. And while they never got signed to a major record label, that didn't stop Harrison from putting out records.

"We've put out five albums on cassette. In 1999 we put a full length CD, then we put out one more full length CD. But I've got about 500 CDs sitting in my garage."

Despite all those records, Harrison, in true garage band fashion, never had a big hit. Nor did he ever make the big time.

Most garage bands have a story about how they almost made it: how they were being scouted by an A&R man, or how a big name musician came to see them play and nearly offered them a spot on a world tour. Not the Eric Harrison Crash Chorus. 

"I have never almost-made-it," he said. "I can't say I've ever had a brush with fame. I once gave a cassette to Edie Brickell," he said. But he admitted that he did not harbour any real hopes that giving a cassette to the singer-songwriter would actually break the band into the big time. "I was just a nervous fan with a crush. I was so nervous I couldn't even get a word out."

That's not to say his songs have never been heard. "I'm a huge Yankees fan. I wrote a song called 'Opening Day'. A few years ago they picked it up and they now they play it on the YES network. I make a couple of hundred dollars every time they play it because people go to iTunes to buy it."

But, he cautions, "I've spent thousands of dollars more down the years."

That's his one big hit and, other than the Yankees, he admits that the muse has deserted him somewhat in recent years. "I haven't written a good song in years. I keep telling my wife to have an affair so I can get the angst back."

Mostly, though, Harrison is in it for the same reasons that any 15-year-old joins a rock band. To rock out.

The Eric Harrison Crash Chorus will play classic rock covers and original songs tonight in Alan M. Augustine Park, the "Village Green" next to the Scotch Plains Municipal Building. The concert starts at 7:30.