The Talking Heads' Jerry Harrison talks about tour with Adrian Belew

McKEES ROCKS – The Talking Heads' "Remain in Light" makes people want to dance all night.

And that's why Talking Heads keyboardist Jerry Harrison and that acclaimed 1980 album's famed guest guitarist, Adrian Belew, will perform its songs in a tour visiting the Roxian Theatre on March 3 and Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, N.J. on March 5.

"Adrian and I had often discussed the magic of the 1980 tour and the sheer joy it brought to audiences," Harrison said. "It is such a delight to see that joy once again in the audiences on the current tour."

An 11-piece band will back up Belew and Harrison.

"You need that many people to play all the parts," Harrison said in a phone chat. "It's really fun having a horn section and being able to make suggestions about horn parts."

To prepare for the tour, he's studied YouTube footage of The Talking Heads' 1980 Rome concert, held four years before the New York/New Wave band released its "Stop Making Sense" documentary hailed by critics as one of the greatest concert films ever.

"You can see how that (1980) tour really was different than 'Stop Making Sense,'; it's got a different vibe, a different feeling to it," Harrison said. "There was something about this first incarnation of a big band that was also quite unique and wonderful, and we just thought wouldn't it be fun to try to emulate that. It's really been about 10 years in the works from that first idea and it's just a delight that we're really doing it.

"We played an amazing show in Golden Gate Park for 55,000 people in October, and the happiness that went across the audience and the way they just danced and knew the words ... it was wonderful."

The album's lone hit is "Once in a Lifetime" well-known for singer David Byrne's off-kilter delivery and refrain "And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile/And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife/And you may ask yourself, 'Well, how did I get here?'

A rock radio staple, "Once in a Lifetime" also stands out for the way Weymouth's bass part starts on the upbeat rather than the downbeat, giving the song an uneasiness and tension, Harrison said.

"Actually live, everyone adjusts the bass part to be more on the downbeat and plays an extra note," Harrison said.

The tour will help fans discover or get reacquainted with deeper cuts like "Born Under Punches," "The Great Curve" and "Houses in Motion," which pushed the Talking Heads' art-punk sound into a broader, bolder soundscape of African polyrhythms and clubby funk. Performing those songs live stakes a claim of how influential the Talking Heads were in incorporating non-Western music beats and rhythms into songs heard by the masses.

"I Zimbra," the leadoff track from 1979's "Fear of Music" album, first nudged the band in that more percussive direction.

"We knew music like that was where we wanted to go on the next record," Harrison said. "We'd all been listening to various African artists, but the idea was to compose in the studio. Because we recognized there was always a theme or something individual about how we made each of the first four records. 'Fear of Music' was recorded in our rehearsal loft. And it was like the idea never sounds quite right when we're in the studio, so why don't we record it where it does sound right? So, this was an experiment of like, 'Well, there's something special the first time you play something. Let's capture that.' So we basically were writing it as we went. We got to the studio without basically knowing what we were going to do. That's why I think that the album exudes a sense of experimentation."

Compositions for "Remain in Light" began as instrumental jams by Harrison, Byrne, bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz (a Shady Side Academy graduate), with lyrics later added, and acclaimed producer Brian Eno brought in by the band for a third and final time. Belew, who had played guitar with Frank Zappa and David Bowie, was hired to flesh out the atmospheric guitar parts.

The trick now for Harrison and Belew is to maintain that experimental zest in a concert tour with a big band picking the right moments for improvisation.

"You have to be organized," Harrison said. "But it's very essential that we make sure everybody in the band feels like they have their moments to shine. We're pretty egalitarian that way. And we do accomplish that, and everyone is having a really good time. You have to be disciplined but then there's your moment when the focus is on you. Obviously, when you play many nights in a row there's an expectation of what comes next. But people can go where they want to go."

Concertgoers will be excited to see where lead guitarist Belew, a longtime member of prog-rock legends King Crimson, goes.

"He's such an insanely talented and incredible guitar player, and just one of the sweetest people you'd ever meet," Harrison said. "He's just a great pleasure to work with."

More:Adrian Belew says see him while you can

The powerhouse band also includes former members of Turkuaz, Julie Slick on bass, and Yahuba Garcia-Torres on percussion.

The band won't be doing the "Remain in Light" number "Listening Wind," about a terrorist.

"We're basing this more on that show in Rome where we did not play the slower songs on the record," Harrison said. "It's all about keeping people up and dancing."

The warmup set will come from Cool Cool Cool.

Tickets for the Roxian show cost $40.50 to $115. There also are "Once In A Lifetime" meet & greet VIP experiences at remaininlight.net for $187.

Harrison and Belew first reunited to perform ‘Remain In Light’ material at the 2021 Peach Music Festival. Coming on the heels of the album's 40th anniversary, it marked Harrison's first live performance since 1996. The band reunited at LA's The Wiltern for a celebrated performance, and due to popular demand, they decided to bring the show on the road.

The setlist often includes Harrison's catchy 1988 radio single "Rev It Up," and Belew conjuring a song from King Crimson's "Discipline," plus several other Talking Heads tracks from other albums.

Perhaps they'll play "Take Me to The River," the Talking Heads' ferocious cover of an Al Green song ― one of the best examples of a band making an already good song even greater.

" It's interesting, when we released 'Take Me to The River,' Bryan Ferry released a version and Foghat released a version and Levon Helm released a version. And ours won (laughs). I think two things made the song different from Al Green's, or Syl Johnson's version," Harrison said. "We're more like a march. It's more didactic. I played the song with The Hodges brother, and Teenie (Hodges) was a co-writer of the song, all on the upbeat where there's more of a lightness. Ours is stomping along. David (Byrne) taught me the song but I never listened to the Al Green version. I just started playing it. And that's one of the few songs where the organ is the dominant instrument so it pushes it into sort of a march. And then (producer) Eno really influenced it because we were doing it faster and he said 'I want you to play this almost as slowly as you can.' And that just made it really sexy."

Harrison's distinguished career as a producer includes recording acts like Crash Test Dummies and Kenny Wayne Shepherd ― plus Live from York, Pa., (the eight-times platinum "Throwing Copper") and Pittsburgh's platinum-selling Rusted Root's "Remember" from 1996.

"That Rusted Root album was crazy because they had to leave to go on the H.O.R.D.E. tour and we were running out of time so we had multiple studios going at once. It was challenging, but I loved the record."

Harrison's two most vivid memories of Pittsburgh are the Talking Heads' first concert here, on Halloween night 1977 at a pizza parlor (he recalls the name as something like Antonio's), and as a 16-year-old with a fake ID when he visited a friend in Mount Lebanon and they drove to Wheeling, W.Va., to buy beer.

"That was quite an adventure for a 16-year-old," he said.

Harrison won't spend too much time reminiscing on stage this tour.

"There might be some ways to try and deal with that, but we don't like to interrupt the flow of like the music," he said. "It's like, if you're dancing the last thing you want is talking."

Scott Tady is entertainment editor at The Times and easy to reach at [email protected].