I know. I get it. I tell people I’m a Windham Hill session guitarist and it’s the first thing that pops in their minds — Jason Harborqueen must get a LOT of strange. Yes I played on Brian Featherstone’s Lake Arrowhead Meditations and I shredded on Barnes & Noble’s Assorted Coffeehouse Jams but my life is not all back alley cunnilingus and trips to the VD clinic.
Let me back up. You remember the concert in Mill Valley park, the one where World Music star Ravi Littlethumb and the Uruguay Boyz performed and things got out of hand? Thirty middle-aged lesbians supposedly “dropped trou” and started “scissor-banging” in the mosh pit? That was wildly misreported. I was there as a guest of Mr. Littlethumb and I can tell you firsthand that the nine-minute instrumental of “Mountain Willow Sunrise” did NOT induce several librarians and Re/Max realtors to start fingerblasting on the scale of, say, a Bobby McFerrin show. It’s a common misconception.
“J-bone,” my fans write on the message boards, “surely you must hang out in lobbies and airports and before you can say Kiahuna Whale Songs the poontang is all lined up? Just awaiting your lips to form the words ‘open sesame’?” Ha-ha. Those days are long gone, my fellow Harborheads. When I sat in on James Mackelroni’s “Druid Moons No.7” back in ’85 do you think I knew the level of bearded clambake I’d be in for? No! Did I take advantage of it? Of course! There might have even been some extra-special depraved experimentation in the mix, but WHAT HAPPENS AT THE KENNEBUNKPORT MAINE GAZEBO JAZZ FEST STAYS AT THE KENNEBUNKPORT MAINE GAZEBO JAZZ FEST. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.
Overall, it’s just NOT what most people think about when you say “New Age Magazine’s 50 Top Session Guitarists Under 50.” They picture me with each hand up a woman like I’m famed ventriloquist Jeff Dunham. Oh, I can make ‘em talk, believe you me! But these fingers are too precious to be knuckledusting flap jackets at 120 bpm’s. No, my life is a quiet one. I tour, I sign ‘graphs, I volunteer with the local hospice. Every now and then I’ll air guitar along to one of my more famous riffs, maybe “Cockatiel For Two” or “It’s a Haberdashery Kind of Day” and I can just sense the hairy cock pockets, trembling beneath the skirts.
But usually I abstain. I’m in it mainly for the art.