Kim and Reggie Harris

“The stirring husband-and-wife folk duo Kim & Reggie Harris combine their love of music and social vision into accomplished, heartfelt songs.”
– All Music Guide

Kim and Reggie Harris will never be confused with the legions of navel-gazing singer-songwriters who drift into the category of “contemporary folk.” As socially conscious acoustic musicians, the Harrises have been “walking the talk” for over 30 years, performing modern and historical songs that explore societal ills and proffer positive social messages. They have appeared on stages from Italy to Alaska to the Virgin Islands, in classrooms and auditoriums across America, and on 11 albums (the six most recent on Appleseed) and various compilations. Whether entrancing festival crowds with their own material or dramatizing the Underground Railroad songs for which they are best known for schoolchildren in classroom workshops, the duo carry on the folk tradition of preserving important songs from the past and adding meaningful new compositions that reflect the world around them.

The Harrises’ cultural background as African-Americans is a major component of their repertoire. Spirituals and gospel songs are liberally incorporated in their work, and they are well respected in scholastic circles for their presentations on black history for teachers and students alike. Their best known recording, Steal Away: Songs of the Underground Railroad(1998), is a much-used teaching tool during the annual Black History Month, serves as the backbone of their “Music and the Underground Railroad” workshops, and is a staple educational aid in many American historical museums. The CD’s sequel, Get On Board! Underground Railroad & Civil Rights Freedom Songs, Volume 2, was released to enthusiastic response in 2007.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Pa., both Kim and Reggie were exposed to a wide range of music through their childhoods. After meeting at summer camp in 1974, the duo continued their friendship that fall at Temple University. As their personal relationship deepened, they began combining their voices and Reggie’s acoustic guitar playing in performances at local Philadelphia clubs and coffeehouses. Married in 1976, the duo began a touring schedule in 1980 that still averages more than 200 yearly appearances.

Writing songs separately, together, and with other musicians, the Harrises’ compositions have addressed politics, domestic violence, families, the rewards and pitfalls of love, and a constant underlying theme of social activism. Their tribute to automobile seatbelts, “Passive Restraint,” has been featured on National Public Radio’s syndicated “Car Talk!” program (and can be found on their Rock of Ages CD on Appleseed). With an additional repertoire of spirituals and freedom songs drawn from their heritage and ongoing studies and impeccable taste in the songs of other songwriters, Kim and Reggie’s recordings and performances offer a rich array of thought-provoking entertainment that includes imaginative instrumental arrangements and spectacular solo voices and harmonies. 

The Harrises have long held a special affinity for the songs of the late Phil Ochs, the Sixties folksinger-songwriter who exemplified the social conscience of the era’s musical protest movement. Kim and Reggie are mainstays of a group of musicians who have toured the country for the past 16 years, keeping Ochs’ music alive in a series of Phil Ochs Song Nights. Ochs’ “What’s That I Hear” was recorded by the Harrises on 2005’s Let My People Go! A Jewish & African American Celebration of Freedom, a joint CD with Rabbi Jonathan Kligler that compares the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt in the 13th Century B.C.E. with the African American struggle for equality in the mid-1960s. 

Kim and Reg have also composed and arranged music for television, radio, video and multi-media presentations. As part of their ongoing work in education, they are presenters for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts touring workshop program, providing teacher training that encourages the use of arts in the classroom. Among other high-profile appearances, Kim and Reggie have performed at the opening of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, at the Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Institute, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & Museum, the Philadelphia and Falcon Ridge Folk Festivals, the International Children's Festival, and the Psalm Festival in Graz, Austria. In October 2012, they were honored by the non-profit "Americans Who Tell the Truth" organization and appeared as "featured tellers" at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tenn.

Most recently, Kim has earned her Master of Divinity degree at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, where she now lectures, and is working as an adjunct professor at the College of St. Rose in Albany, NY, and as an artist in resident for the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Brunswick, NJ. She has also become involved in Operation Respect, a non-profit organization founded by musician/activist Peter Yarrow that works to assure children a safe, compassionate climate of learning where their academic, social and emotional development can take place free of bullying, ridicule and violence. Meanwhile, Reggie continues his volunteer work as a basketball coach and youth mentor in the Harrises’ upstate New York community.

Kim and Reggie Harris’s version of the Civil Rights song " If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus,” previously available only on their website, is now on our Sowing the Seeds – The 10th Anniversary collection. Kim and Reggie & Magpie’s “Those Three are on My Mind” is on Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger, the double duo’s “Old Devil Time” from Guide My Feet can be found on If I Had a Song: The Songs of Pete Seeger, Vol. 2,. and their version of "Tomorrow is a Highway" is on Seeds: the Songs of Pete Seeger, Vol. 3.