Hogwarts-via-Massachusetts rockers Harry And The Potters tackle the usual punk-rock subjects: love, rebelliousness and … broomsticks? Fresh from the release of their latest album, Harry And The Potters And The Power Of Love, brothers Paul and Joe DeGeorge (Harry Year 7 and Harry Year 4, respectively), are now on the road. At the start of their latest tour, with a full summer of gracing libraries and rock venues alike with songs like “New Wizard Anthem� and “Cornelius Fudge Is An Ass� ahead of them, Harry And The Potters checked in and shared their thoughts on dental hygiene, Back to the Future and Bruce Springsteen.

Your New York show at the Knitting Factory was sold out. How did it go?
Paul: It was great. Really sweaty. My jeans are still wet, actually. I totally sweated through a pair of jeans. But that’s good rock ’n’ roll, right? We also sold out [New York’s Donnell Library] earlier in the day. I mean, sold out, for free. It was full. They had to start turning people away there, too.

Is there a big difference between performing in a library and performing in a more traditional venue?
Paul: I guess with the library there are no real expectations from the people going to the show. They’ve never been to a show in a library, unless they’ve seen us before. So they don’t know quite what to expect and it gives us a bit of an advantage. We can do whatever we want. There’s no way you can do anything that’s wrong. In a club, there are still certain expectations. You know, you’re worried about, “Oh, am I wearing the right clothes?� We try to make that not a concern for anybody. At our shows, anything goes.


You’ve got a summer reading list posted on your website and fans who bring book reports to your shows get toothbrushes. Have you given away any toothbrushes?
Paul: Yeah, we gave away maybe half a dozen yesterday and that’s funny because we really only put the reading list up two days ago. There were some girls who read a book on the train ride into the city yesterday and gave us a report at the show. Other people wrote reports from memory. We were hoping to get them to re-read. They’re claiming, “Oh I read Stranger in a Strange Land 10 times already.� I don’t know. I guess if you’re going to bother to write something about it, we’ll give you a toothbrush.

Are these Harry Potter-themed toothbrushes?
Paul: Yeah they’re Harry And The Potters toothbrushes.

Have you guys decorated them?
Paul: We just got them printed. There are two different ones. One of them says, “Harry And The Potters rock the plaque off.� The other ones say, “Harry And The Potters fight evil and tooth decay.� I asked my dentist where they got their toothbrushes made and they gave me a phone number. I just called them up and got these toothbrushes made.

Do you have any goal of getting onto a bigger, more established label?
Paul: No. We’ve always viewed it as a real DIY thing. We just do everything ourselves, from the recording to the CD pressing and all that. It’s easy. For this band, it works out that we can do it. People still buy the CDs on the website. It doesn’t matter that our CDs aren’t in any stores. People get them from the website or they just download it illegally, and that’s cool, too. If they come to the show and have a good time, that’s all that we care about.

Do you think you guys will suffer from a lack of new material before book seven comes out?
Paul: Not at all. We actually just put out a new CD. We kind of spent the last six or eight months working on that. It’s a lot of fun, sort of based around the latest book, which came out a year ago. We first started playing around the time the fifth book came out. There was like a two-year dearth in between there. It seemed to work fine for us. There is still plenty of material in the books that are already out there. If we need to write some new songs, we won’t have any trouble, I don’t think.

Did you try to tackle any particular theme in the new album?
Paul: Oh yeah. It’s called Harry And The Potters And The Power Of Love. After we read the last book we kind of were joking around like, ‘Well, what do you think the seventh book is gonna be called?’ My vote was Harry Potter and the Power of Love, and maybe that’s just because I like Back To The Future a lot. It really does sort of speak to the overall theme of the series, which is that love will conquer all. That’s sort of the power that Harry has that Voldemort doesn’t. That’s what the prophecy says, basically. Dumbledore tells him the thing you have is your heart, basically. Voldemort doesn’t have a heart. So that’s kind of our base approach to the record, to speak to that theme in a lot of ways. But there’s also plenty of fun, like goofy songs. There’s a lot of steamy teen romance in the latest book, so we spoke to that in a few songs. On the whole, I think this is our strongest CD to date. We didn’t anticipate when we recorded our first couple albums, it was just like we’d been playing shows in libraries and you know, a few people were trying to come. We recorded them in our living room and in our parents shed in the back yard. We didn’t expect we’d be a nationally touring band with thousands of people listening to the songs on our MySpace page. We kind of felt this time around maybe we should give a little better effort. I’m not saying we did a total professional job because we’re still pretty amateur musicians—we still recorded in a house—but it was with a friend who really knew what he was doing. And we just spent a lot more time crafting the songs, recording glockenspiel and tubular bells, sort of like Born To Run, by wizards.

Can any artists or bands be easily categorized into the houses of Hogwarts?
Paul: I did an interview with a [Bruce] Springsteen fanzine and somebody asked me what house Springsteen would be in and I said Gryffindor. But I think a lot of the bands I really like, like Springsteen or the Flaming Lips or Andrew W.K., all these are like really inspired artists. They’d probably be in Gryffindor. In Gryffindor, they’re the ones who like come up with the genius plans and the bright ideas. The other houses tend to rest on their laurels in a lot of cases. Musicians in general tend to be pretty independent-minded and do their own thing and I think that sort of speaks more to Gryffindor than a lot of the other houses. A lot of popular music and major label stuff would probably fit into Slytherin.

Do you have anything you want to add?
Paul: I was thinking, I kind of made a promise to myself that I wanted to talk about the Dumbledore from the movie. I think he sucks. I think they should get Christopher Lloyd to be the Dumbledore. I keep meaning to mention that in interviews whenever people ask me, “Do you have anything else to say?� I think they should hire Christopher Lloyd as Dumbledore. He’d be good. Hang on, I’m going to put my brother on. He’ll have something to say. [Heard faintly through the receiver] Do you have anything else to say?

Joe: About what?

Paul: About our band.

Joe: Yeah. Turn up the volume when you read.

Interview By Megan Brown. Photo by Angela DeGeorge

Harry And The Potters Tour Dates:
[All shows all-ages]
07/19 – Portland, OR – ACME
07/20 – Portland, OR – TBA
07/22 – San Francisco, CA – San Francisco Public Library, Main Library
07/23 – Sacramento, CA – Sacramento Public Library, Rancho Cordova Branch
07/24 – Milpitas, CA – Milpitas Community Library
07/25 – Pleasanton, CA – Amador Theater
07/26 – Las Vegas, NV – Clark County Library
07/27 – Las Vegas, NV – LUMOS 2006
07/28 – Riverside, CA – Glen Avon Public Library
07/29 – Los Angeles, CA- Los Angeles Central Library, Teen Scape
07/30 – Aliso Viejo, CA – Aliso Viejo Library
07/31 – Poway, CA – San Diego County Library, Poway Branch [1pm]
07/31 – El Cajon, CA – San Diego County Library, El Cajon Branch [7pm]
08/01 – Anaheim, CA – Haskett Library in Maxwell Park
08/03 – Provo, UT – Velour Live Music Gallery
08/04 – Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court
08/05 – Denver, CO – Denver Public Library, Central Library
08/06 – Boulder, CO – Boulder Public Library [2pm and 5pm]
08/07 – Kansas City, MO – Theis Park
08/08 – Norman, OK – Norman Public Library
08/09 – Garland, TX – Nicholson Memorial Library System, Central Library
08/10 – Austin, TX – Wooldridge Square Park
08/11 – Houston, TX – TBA
08/12 – Dallas, TX – J. Erik Jonsson Library [2pm]
08/12 – Ft. Worth, TX – Metrognome Collective [8pm]
08/13 – Fayetteville, AR – Fayetteville Public Library
08/14 – St. Louis, MO – Contemporary Art Museum
08/15 – Lexington, KY- Southside Church
08/16 – Lakewood, OH- Lakewood Public Library
08/17 – Philadelphia, PA – First Unitarian Church

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