Books by Dale Harris

Books by Dale Harris
A Feast of Epiphanies

Though I Walk, A Novel

Daytime Moons and Other Celestial Anomalies, a book of poems

Second Wind

Second Wind
An album of songs both old and new. Recorded in 2021, a year of major transition for me, these songs explore the many vicissitudes of the spiritual life,. It's about the mountaintop moments and the Holy Saturday sunrises, the doors He opens that no one can close, and those doors He's closed that will never open again. You can click the image above to give it a listen.

The Song Became a Child

The Song Became a Child
A collection of Christmas songs I wrote and recorded during the early days of the pandemic lockdown in the spring of 2020. Click the image to listen.

There's a Trick of the Light I'm Learning to Do

This is a collection of songs I wrote and recorded in January - March, 2020 while on sabbatical from ministry. They each deal with a different aspect or expression of the Gospel. Click on the image above to listen.

Three Hands Clapping

This is my latest recording project (released May 27, 2019). It is a double album of 22 songs, which very roughly track the story of my life... a sort of musical autobiography, so to speak. Click the album image to listen.

Ghost Notes

Ghost Notes
A collections of original songs I wrote in 2015, and recorded with the FreeWay Musical Collective. Click the album image to listen.

inversions

Recorded in 2014, these songs are sort of a chronicle of my journey through a pastoral burn-out last winter. They deal with themes of mental-health, spiritual burn-out and depression, but also with the inexorable presence of God in the midst of darkness. Click the album art to download.

soundings

soundings
click image to download
"soundings" is a collection of songs I recorded in September/October of 2013. Dealing with themes of hope, ache, trust and spiritual loss, the songs on this album express various facets of my journey with God.

bridges

bridges
Click to download.
"Bridges" is a collection of original songs I wrote in the summer of 2011, during a soul-searching trip I took out to Alberta; a sort of long twilight in the dark night of the soul. I share it here in hopes these musical reflections on my own spiritual journey might be an encouragement to others: the sun does rise, blood-red but beautiful.

echoes

echoes
Prayers, poems and songs (2005-2009). Click to download
"echoes" is a collection of songs I wrote during my time studying at Briercrest Seminary (2004-2009). It's called "echoes" partly because these songs are "echoes" of times spent with God from my songwriting past, but also because there are musical "echoes" of hymns, songs or poems sprinkled throughout the album. Listen closely and you'll hear them.

Accidentals

This collection of mostly blues/rock/folk inspired songs was recorded in the spring and summer of 2015. I call it "accidentals" because all of the songs on this project were tunes I have had kicking around in my notebooks for many years but had never found a "home" for on previous albums. You can click the image to download the whole album.

random reads

Snow in June

Relatively regular readers of terra incognita may have noticed that this month's "CD of the Month" is The Northern Pikes' classic 1990 album, Snow in June. I actually picked up this CD last year for 2 bucks at a church yard sale in Columbus Ontario; and the minute I saw it sitting there, scratched jewel case stacked along side some old AC/DC discards, some tattered Tom Clancey novels and a box of random stereo parts labelled 25₵, it was like bumping into an old High School friend, 20 years later.

And popping it into the CD player on the drive home was like sitting down with said old friend over coffee for one long catch-up session. The edge of Shotgun Morning wasn't quite as cutting as I recalled, but Love these Hands and Am I in Your Way still perfectly evoked that happy ache for good things gone.

For reasons that go far beyond musical tastes, this album is one of the few that I'd rank as an "Album of My Life." Taken objectively, it's a bit of a diamond in the rough. The song-writing is solid, and the musical ideas original, but the production is a kind of spare and often the energy of the music gets lost in the mix, so depending on the given day and the particular track, sometimes you get more diamond, sometimes you get more rough.

But taken subjectively, this album has been with me through it all; and that's why I was so ready to shell out two bucks at the yard sale for a happy reunion. My friend Tom and I first heard "She Ain't Pretty" on the radio back in the summer 1990, and we belted out lines like "her ego wrote cheques incredibly fast, but her personality didn't have the cash" with gusto. I actually purchased my original (cassette) Snow in June on my first date with the girl who would later become my high school sweetheart and later still my wife. It was one of the few cassettes I packed with me when I went to live in Quebec as an exchange student in my grade eleven year, and whenever I missed home (which was often) and especially my afore-mentioned high-school sweetheart (which was always), it would pick me up, with lines like "Did you ever know a place where nothing ever changed, a place you've maybe called your home?" Years after that, when I'd started my career as a teacher and was commuting an hour each day to a job that was draining the soul out of me, it was the only cassette in the car for months; and on that long drive home each day, as I wrestled with the worst identity crisis of my life, it would challenge me with lines like, "Oh just wait until you're dead, we'll see just how big you were (you weren't no Columbus, Rembrandt or a Mozart)." And later still, when I'd finally put that identity crisis down for the three-count, and had become a new Dad, I'd often rock my newborn son to sleep singing the words of "Love These Hands" over him.

Listening to Snow in June that drive home from Columbus Ontario, all these memories, and many more, rushed home to me with the opening riff of "Dream Away", and lingered, bitter-sweet, right to the fading outro of "Snow in June." And they've left me wondering if the best albums aren't always these: the ones that have sealed our memories onto our hearts, by singing just the right song at just the right time, asking just the right question in a moment of crisis or offering just the right answer in a moment of peace, in a way that only music can.

I'll leave you with a few of my favorite lines from Snow in June, but along with them this question: if you had to choose an album that's "been with you through it all," which would it be?

"My perfect life may deceive me tonight
forgive me, I haven't been myself lately
I may survive if I don't jeopardize
what you mean to me"

"Sharp is the razor that cuts the vein that feeds the hand
It isn't my hand so why should I feel the pain?
You've gotta know where your razor is and what it does--
Isn't it lovely?
Isn't it beautiful?"

"I love these hands so soft and strong
I love these hands they can do no wrong
I love these hands, they belong to you
and I will love these hands my whole life through."

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