Harrison Patrick Smith has a few obstacles to overcome on his first nationwide headlining tour. The artist known by many as The Dare will be hitting the road in support of his debut album, What’s Wrong With New York, which is out on Friday, September 6. Sprawling live runs present plenty of logistical nightmares to begin with, but Smith is facing a number of pressing questions on his first sold out jaunt. Firstly, how can he possibly capture the sexy, scenester shows he’d throw in New York called Freakquencies? These club nights became the place to be seen in the city, and replicating the intoxicating energy won’t be particularly easy when he’s on stage, high above his audience. This brings us to our second conundrum. How is Smith going to bring his electro-pop sound to the biggest venues he’s ever played, while performing on-stage as a solo act? It’s a beguiling question that left Smith, his manager Bryce Segall, and lighting designer Stephen Cowan grasping for answers. As the run is set to begin, the trio are confident they’ve found answers to both, solutions that will hopefully make The Dare live show one of the year’s can’t-miss events — and you don’t need to be an NYC social butterfly to find your way in.
“I want people to feel like they saw something spectacular and dazzling and something that feels worth their time. I don’t want to just get up there and sing,” Smith explains to UPROXX. To execute this vision, Smith recruited Cowan, who won’t be able to join The Dare on the road because he’ll be cooking up visuals for André 3000. “We’ve been slowly building the design to fit in bigger venues and bigger rooms,” Cowan explains. He’s referring to The Dare’s opening slot during Charli XCX’s Brat show in Brooklyn back in June. This came just weeks after Smith provided production Charli on “Guess,” and later its Billie Eilish-featuring remix, from the deluxe edition of Brat. This seems to be a “we’re gonna need a bigger boat” situation. “We’ve been building the show as necessary, but it just keeps getting bigger and bigger,” Cowan explains.
Smith, for his part — both musically and aesthetically — will be taking stage inspiration from the artists he grew up checking out in concert. “I remember seeing Crystal Castles and Sleigh Bells. Those were huge for me. I never got to see Justice, but I saw pictures,” Smith says. “I like these shows that feel like they have epic set designs, and when you can tell no one is making money because they’re putting everything back into the show.” Even without a backing band, Smith still wants this to be one of the most epic shows you’ve ever seen.
Part of achieving this was in marrying the indie sleaze aesthetic of The Dare’s electro roots with some of his more rock n roll inclinations. He had to capture the buzz of Freakquencies shows by performing as a band, not a DJ. “At first, we wanted Harrison to perform in front of a wall of amps, but we needed something behind him. We thought marrying the visual language of rock and roll with the amps, with the electronic leaning lighting rigs that Stephen was bringing in was a perfect middleground,” explains Segall. There’s a Stonehenge element to the upcoming tour, a loud and aggressive set design that combines big visuals with an equally big sound.
“We’re just trying to have it be completely overwhelming and just really intense,” Smith explains. “It’s more about the usage of light rather than color or complex light patterns. It’s just white lights that are either on or off.” It sounds simple, but when paired with The Dare’s music, the result will be awe-inducing.
With so many songs that will be brand new when Smith performs them, he’s able to emphasize his own vision for the perfect setlist without compromising to fan whims or what he thinks the arc of the show should be. He’s going to play the songs he thinks best fit his tour, and the context of these songs will change as people get to know them and familiarize themselves with What’s Wrong with New York. “It’s going to be stripped back and it’s going to be chaotic,” says Smith. Ultimately, he wants this tour to be many, many things at once. Above all, he wants to bring the New York he knows to cities across the country.
“There are so many people I know who are now a fixture in the music or art scenes who, when they first came to town showed up to every party.” Smith notes. He wants The Dare’s tour to feel like one of those parties. Everyone’s invited, and if you want to stand out, you need to look the part. Smith elaborates: “It was like, ‘Who the f*ck is this person?’ And someone says, ‘That’s my friend Joe. He just moved here, he just graduated and he wants to be part of the music scene.’ I’d go, ‘Okay, great.’ That was it. That’s what I did when I moved down here.” And that’s how it starts. Maybe, just maybe, your entry point into a new creative and social world will include an anecdote about going nuts at The Dare’s very first sold out, nationwide tour.