Harcourt’s ‘Eclectic’ Empire

Just 4 1/2 years ago, Nic Harcourt was happily running a small station in Woodstock, N.Y., living on seven acres atop a mountain, and unsure that he wanted to accept the offer to move to Los Angeles and oversee the music at KCRW-FM (89.9).

But--because he said he never wanted to ask himself, “what if?”--he accepted the job from general manager Ruth Seymour, took over the music show “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” and has expanded the visibility and influence of the program and the station alike.

“Since Nic has been in Los Angeles, the show has become more sophisticated, more open to different kinds of music,” Seymour said of the program, which airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon, and which takes in more money during pledge drives than all other shows on the public station. And with its exposure on the World Wide Web and other venues, she said, the show and the bands that Harcourt plays are reaching far beyond KCRW’s signal area.

On Tuesday, the seventh compilation CD of songs from his program, “Sounds Eclectic Too,” went on sale, with live performances by Dido, R.E.M. and Norah Jones, and proceeds benefiting the station.

On Saturday, Harcourt hosts “Unsigned Indies,” the station’s second annual concert of local unsigned bands, scheduled for 5 to 7 p.m. at Town Center Park in Costa Mesa.

His two-hour weekly program, “Sounds Eclectic,” featuring the best of the KCRW show, is syndicated to about 30 stations nationwide, including stations in Seattle, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Portland, Ore. Its 100th episode airs Sunday at 6 p.m. on KCRW.

The first major film for which he supervised the music, “Igby Goes Down,” is in wide release, featuring songs from “Morning Becomes Eclectic” regulars Coldplay, Travis and the Dandy Warhols.

And Nissan even hired Harcourt to emcee a compact disc of alternative artists that the company gives out with new cars and promotional materials.

In less than five years, he’s gone from “Nic who?” to Nic Inc.

“I’m totally overworked. I look at my calendar, and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, how did I create all this?’ ” Harcourt said this week. He and his staff look at their schedules and realize, “We can’t do it all. You always want to please, but at the end of the day, there’s only so much you can do.”

But what drives him is his desire to expose an ever-expanding audience to the music he thinks is worthwhile.

“There’s a passion for spreading the word, in whatever way you can,” he said.

And because the show broadcasts to L.A., where so much of the entertainment industry is based, Seymour said, the program is “a taste maker, and that was never more true than it is now.”

Million-seller Coldplay made its first radio appearance on “Morning Becomes Eclectic.” Pop chanteuse Dido was on the program six months before her first record came out, and a year-and-a-half before the rest of the country heard of her. Her song “Here With Me” became the theme song for the WB network’s “Roswell” after executives heard it on “Morning Becomes Eclectic.” David Gray didn’t even have a record deal when Harcourt heard something that he thought was special and put him on the air.

“I have the best job in radio. I get to play the music that I find attractive,” Harcourt said.

The show--under previous hosts Tom Schnabel and Chris Douridas, who each left for higher-paying, higher-profile jobs--was already well-regarded, and well-known among music cognoscenti. But Harcourt discovered that “Morning Becomes Eclectic” and even KCRW itself were invisible to many outside the station. He wanted to bring KCRW out of the basement and into the community.

“If we’re true to what we say we are, hip and cutting-edge, let’s go find some of that rather than waiting for the mail to arrive,” he said.

So, KCRW began presenting five to 10 concerts a year, starting with Morcheeba in August 1998.

Harcourt said that he receives about 200 CDs a week and that he listens to every one--although many get only a few seconds before he knows they won’t make the station’s library of 50,000 discs. Only about 5% make the cut.

“I wish I could play every demo that gets to the building,” he said, but not all of it is good, and a show that simply regurgitated everything the station received would shrink its audience very quickly. “This is a professional operation. It’s important to have an audience that can sustain the station.

“I feel a responsibility, when these CDs come to me, to listen to them,” he said. He goes through as much as he can during the week, but he may spend four hours on a Saturday night culling the rest.

“Within all those pieces of plastic, you find a piece of music that touches you, that makes it all worthwhile. You really have to retain that sense of discovery,” he said. The piles of CDs in mail crates in his office may be daunting, “but that’s where the gold is.”

Harcourt, 45, a native of Birmingham, England, who moved to New York state from Australia 14 years ago, works in a light-filled bungalow across from the Santa Monica College campus, where KCRW’s studios reside in the basement of the arts building. In his office, filled with crates of CDs yet to be heard, and a massive reproduction of the “Abbey Road” album cover, autographed by the Beatles, are posters signed by artists that he’s showcased on his program, such as Coldplay and Kasey Chambers, with their thanks for exposing their music to an appreciative audience.

“The real rewards come from the e-mails,” Harcourt said, from listeners saying that they were touched by a certain set of songs when they were having a good or bad time, or that they discovered their new favorite band. “They let you know how much more it is than playing records on the radio.”