A main gig playing keys in the Richmond-based, Concord Jazz-signed fusion band Butcher Brown. A string of successful solo albums on Stone’s Throw Records, including a feature-filled new one titled “ElectroSoul,” due out Friday, Jan. 23. A list of high-profile past colleagues, from Phonte and Steve Arrington to Pink Siifu and Jack White. A well-appointed home studio. The ability to play a wide variety of instruments. Perfect pitch. Music-making comes naturally to some lucky souls, but Devonne Harris, known more commonly as DJ Harrison, must have it especially easy, right?
“This year has been a tough one for me,” says the former Virginia Commonwealth University jazz standout in a recent phone conversation touching on his new album, ongoing health struggles and an ill-fated prescription that precipitated an extended hospital stay two years ago. Harris has dealt with eczema throughout his life, but his issues were compounded when he visited the dermatologist and was given a new medication around Christmas of 2023.
“After getting the shot, I played this gig with R4ND4ZZO BIGB4ND and stayed the night at my mom’s house on Christmas night,” he remembers. “I had been having these side effects. I pretty much had an allergic reaction to this medication.”
Harris was hospitalized for more than a week then sent home with ointments, antibiotics and instructions to take it easy and let his previous prescription clear his system. However, he’d earned an invitation to that year’s Grammy awards, having contributed to the Kurt Elling-voiced album “SuperBlue: The Iridescent Spree” alongside hybrid bass-guitarist Charlie Hunter and Butcher Brown drummer Corey Fonville. The ceremony took place less than a month after Harris left the hospital; that trip to California was complicated by his condition — “It was a lot to deal with,” he remembers — but it was also an important turning point.
“When I got back from the Grammys, it was like, ‘Alright, [I’m] still kind of in healing mode,” he says. “Let me put a lot of stuff on canvas and see what I can channel in the sense of songs and writing and getting ideas out there.’” Those ideas coalesced, with the help of a loaded lineup of featured vocalists and instrumentals, into his fourth full-length for Stone’s Throw, “ElectroSoul.”
It’s Harris’ most collaborative album yet. After planting the seed for each track by creating a series of instrumental backdrops, he sought complementary contributions from trusted singers and instrumentalists from near and far orbits of his musical universe. He dialed up Richmond-affiliated artists like rapper Fly Anakin and pop auteur Angélica Garcia, as well as leading lights in the worlds of funk, jazz and soul, including Pink Siifu, Lettuce vocalist Nigel Hall, R&B artist Yaya Bey, jazz keyboardist Keifer and genre-crossing violinist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, among others.
“Just being able to have a greater sense of community — I needed that more than ever to help me heal,” he says.
Healing also meant playing it safe when it came to touring. Harris sat out Butcher Brown’s European touring in 2025, with North Carolinian organ ace Sam Fribush filling in. “As much as I wanted to go, I had to stay at home to make sure I could keep everything monitored,” Harris says. “If something were to really go down, I’m a whole ocean away from home. I needed to be able to be close to my doctors and be close to my family to be able to keep everything under control.”
That sense of feeling sidelined comes across in an “ElectroSoul” single called “NeverFold,” in which Harris sings about patience, being out of sight and out of mind and about missing the sunshine before an echoing chorus repeats the song’s defiant title. There’s a compelling vein of vulnerability in his own singing on the album, which gives listeners a line of sight into this uncertain time in his life. It makes “ElectroSoul” a profound statement — perhaps the musician’s most personal yet.
“To put yourself out there — that vulnerability — you can hear that in the tone, and you can hear that in the voice,” he says. “That’s a characteristic of it, to the point where, to have a listener hear that and feel that, it makes it a thing of its own.”
[Here’s the rest of our recent Q&A with DJ Harris]:
Style Weekly: Was it difficult having to miss Butcher Brown’s overseas touring in 2025? Was there any pride knowing that Butcher Brown is such a well-built band that a tour like that can still happen with a guest musician?
Devonne Harris (DJ Harrison): Even early on in the year, in the U.S., I wasn’t doing a lot of those tours. I happened to notice when I went overseas a few years ago that my skin got worse, [so] I was trying to be super-cautious and taking different medicines and doing different regimens and whatnot…
Sam [Fribush] is the man. He’s a great player, a great human. It’s one of those things where, due to my situation, it just is what it is. At this point, I have to be able to take care of myself. If I’m not taking care of myself, I’m not gonna be able to get there and be able to join my fellow bandmates whenever it is time to join. But there are times I see videos and everyone’s having fun, and everybody’s getting to the groove of things, and in my head I was like, “Damn, I should be out there.” But at the end of the day, I’ve been going through this feeling for a little while now, to the point where I realized I have to be healthy, and I gotta take care of me first before I can start doing anything else outside of that.
Did having a health scare clarify how important collaboration is to you?
Yeah, just having the homies around — people in Richmond, but also people outside of Richmond, too… It became this thing of like, “Oh man, I want to write this song, but this backdrop sounds good for — maybe it can have Fly Anakin on this, or have Angélica Garcia on this.” I’ve done collabs before, but there’s a lot of features on this album, and it’s like that because it’s a chance for me to actually reach out and connect with other people through music — people I look up to, and people that I’ve collabed with before. It’s extending the branch, and being like, “Hey, I want you to be a part of this, because I respect what you do.”
How did you link up with Miguel Atwood-Ferguson for “Ballade de Vixen”?
First of all, Vixen is my cat. The power went out one night at the house — it was a storm or something — and I kept playing this riff on my piano. It was just me and her sitting at the piano, and I was like, “Man, I want to write vocals,” and eventually, “I kind of want strings on this.” And my manager [had] reached out to Stone’s Throw and was like, “Hey, can we get Miguel Atwood-Ferguson?” I’d been familiar with his stuff, from the Dilla suite to different things that he had done. They reached out, and he was totally down. It was surprising to me that he already was a fan of my work, which was crazy… It all just came together.
But that’s kind of the spirit of the whole thing, with the collaborative effort. When I write these backdrops of different songs and different ideas, it’s like, “If Miguel Atwood-Ferguson had this, I could just send it to him, and I wouldn’t have to tell him anything. He would just know exactly what to do to make it the right thing.” And he delivered.
How did Angélica Garcia get looped into the project?
I had done remixes for her [and] I had done recording sessions for her when she was living here. Certain songs that I have put down on tape channel a certain vibe, and she has a certain vibe where I was like, “Oh, she’d be perfect for this.” But now she’s in L.A.
I should also mention Adrian Olsen from Montrose Recording, who used to live here in Richmond. He now lives in L.A., and he mixed the record, so I was going out there every so often. I had this one track, and I was like, “I wonder if she’d be down to do this?” I had a run of four days when I was out there, and on the second day, I was like, “Yo, I got a song to show you.” She actually was free, she had time, and she came to the studio. I played her the track [“Turn Away”] and she was riffing, and even the first thing she put down, I was like, “Oh, yeah, this is cool.” And then she was like, “I want to redo this. I want to actually sit down and spend time with this.” And it paid off. Her energy and her vibe were perfect for the song.
Did the tracking that didn’t happen at Montrose take place at Jellowstone?
The musical backdrop — a lot of that happened here in the house, Jellowstone. I bounced everything on a hard drive when I flew to L.A., brought the hard drive with me, and Adrian started mixing from there… A lot of [the featured artists] weren’t in the same place at the same time. I think Yaya Bey was in D.C. Fly Anakin [is] from Richmond too, but he’s in Atlanta now. Miguel did his track at his house, so a lot of stuff was flown in, but the majority of like, the meat and potatoes, that was done here.
“NeverFold” is such a powerful statement. When was that one written?
The lyrical content came later. The actual song was recorded early on, maybe late February, March. It was when I left the hospital in 2024. Fun fact: If you listen, there’s a shaker in the song, and it’s my bottle of pills that I was taking… For a while, when I started presenting the project to Stone’s Throw, it was just like, “Who would you want to sing on this?” And I wanted Mac DeMarco to sing on it. Mac DeMarco heard it, but he respectfully declined. He was like, “I’m alright.” So once that happened, I [ran] with the idea.
When I’m doing gigs with Butcher Brown, or if I’m traveling, I’m always carrying a notebook with me. Not writing a journal, but I always want to practice the other side of the game, too, writing lyrics and whatnot. I forgot which gig we were going to, but I actually wrote those lyrics on a plane. I was listening to the song, and I put the lyrics together, and I was like, “OK, this is what it’s gonna be.”
The song hits especially hard in light of your health scare. Does it feel like you’re putting more of yourself out there in your recent albums when it comes to lyrics and vocals?
Oh yeah… I don’t have the greatest singing voice in the world. Jimi Hendrix is a huge inspiration of mine, and I love Jimi to death, but his voice wasn’t exactly the greatest either. But he was able to write great lyrical content and still get his point across with the inflections and the blues. For me, it’s all about intent. I want to sing it like how I felt writing it … It is a lot of vulnerability putting yourself out there, doing something a lot of people don’t really know you for doing. Everybody knows me as a beat maker, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and I definitely have some vocal stuff that’s been out there for a long time, but I would never call myself a proper singer. But at this point, my voice is just another instrument that I play.
Are there any songs outside of the singles that you’re especially excited for people to hear?
“Beginning Again.” That’s the Brian Auger cover — Brian Auger from the UK. I had this solo tour with this band called Yellow Days. It was four or five days [and] the last gig we had was in Nashville, so I had to go from Nashville to Richmond in one day, in one stretch. So you know you’re driving, you listen to your podcast, you listen to your music and whatnot, and this mix came on — Mad Lib’s “Mind Fusion” came on — and the first song on there was Brian Auger’s “Beginning Again…” I hit [Interstate] 81 and for like three hours straight I just listened to this song. It just captivated me. And driving back from Nashville, I was like, “Oh man, I’m so tired.” Then I got back home, and I listened to the song so much, I was like, “I gotta record it.” So I recorded it that night.
Once I got everything recorded, the homie Kiefer, who’s on Stone’s Throw as well out in L.A. — there’s a Rhodes solo, and I was like, “Oh, this would be a cool thing. I could play the solo, but he should do it. He’s gonna do it more justice. He’s gonna play this shit that I’m hearing in my head already.” Then he sent me two takes and the first take that he sent, that’s what we went with.
Looking ahead, are there projects on the horizon that you’re excited about?
There’a couple of things in the pipeline, as far as different releases planned out throughout the year, and other things, like getting a couple of my solo records back out there. Obviously doing a couple things with Butcher Brown … Of course, me and Nigel Hall are working on some. Working on some records with Dionne Farris, working on some records with Jermaine Holmes. It’s being able to say if I can’t do this, then what can I do? … Granted I can’t travel overseas a lot like I used to, until I get to a certain point with my ailment, when it gets better. But I was like, “I’m still blessed to be able to make music in some capacity, so let’s just focus on that, and let’s focus on healing and getting better.” Positive vibrations, you know what I mean?
To hear and purchase “ElectroSoul,” visit djharrison.bandcamp.com. DJ Harrison will appear at Plan 9 Music in Carytown for a conversation about the album on its release day, Friday, Jan. 23, at 6 p.m. Admission is free. Also, Harris will be performing with Butcher Brown at the National on Saturday, Jan. 24. Nate Smith and Plunky will also perform. Doors open at 7 p.m. and music starts at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $41.72 and can be purchased at thenationalva.com.
