Meet John Harvey

We were lucky to catch up with John Harvey recently and have shared our conversation below.

John, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

Our band is motivated by the resilient the culture of the Navajo, the Diné. From the extreme hardships faced during the forced removal from their homeland to mandated assimilation through the boarding school system imposed on children, the Navajo have maintained their identify as an incredibly resilient tribe. The modern day arts and music scene is an accurate representation of resilience despite attempts to remove Navajo identity. We choose to represent the Navajo in way that we honor turquoise and steel as an art form used to hand-craft some of the finest Native American jewelry . Coming from a long line of silversmiths in our family, we display that name with pride in the music that we perform.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

First of all, we are a family band and we represent the Navajo Nation, currently residing in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We incorporate stories of our culture into our music and we express ourselves in the style of rock blues. Our lineup includes John Harvey on rhythm guitar and vocals, Malachi Harvey on lead guitar, Elias Harvey on drums, and Brent Jacobs on the bass guitar. We emerged as a duo in 2021 with John and Malachi playing at open mics around ABQ which led to the incorporation of Elias on drums and Brent coming along to add his bass lines. When we came up with our band name, we wanted to represent our culture in way to honor the arts and culture with an incredibly tenacious history. We chose turquoise and steel to represent the fusion of a bond formed in the creation of silversmith work of the Navajo. We come from a long line of silversmiths in our family lineage and we honor that in our name. We are currently in production with our first full length album with a release date of mid to late November of this year. We will also be participating in a blues showdown competition in Phoenix Arizona with the Arizona Blues Society this month with hopes of showcasing our music at the national level in Memphis TN next year. We currently run our adds, music, announcements on social media including Instagram and Facebook.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

First of all, as new impressionable emerging musicians, gaining and maintaining a depth of musical variety is essential to our growth. We do this by listening and watching so many talented blues rock musicians who have paved the way as a blueprint for us to explore our own sound and figure out we can contribute to the blues rock music scene. Second, we had to learn to play together and communicate in a language that is unique to musicians. Listening to each other is a skillset that we had to develop and are still working on. What began as unbridled garage jam band, took some serious effort to achieve a level of performance capable of moving people into emotion to want to engage with the energy that we express. Lastly, we surrounded ourselves with other creatives and musicians who have helped us develop our sound. Our music community in ABQ has led us to some amazing individuals who have contributed to the success of Turquoise Steel. For musicians early in their journey, explore music in your niche (there is so much excellent music out there), play often, and surround yourselves with others who will help build you up.

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

We would like to give a shout out to Ken Riley, our sound engineer and studio producer. Little did we know that going to his studio would be more than just laying down our tracks. We come up with a rough draft and he helps guide it to perfection. We play our music similar to our recordings and Ken has helped us to find the right sound.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @turquoise_steel
• Facebook: Turquoise Steel Band
• Youtube: @TurquoiseSteel
• Soundcloud: Turquoise Steel

Image Credits

Madeline Bilan #1 and #4, Jonah Michea Judy #3 and #6, Daniel DeVries #2 and #5 and personal photo