While his colleagues and coworkers tucked into bed on Saturday, Jan. 9, English teacher John Harrison took the stage at The Jackpot Music Hall, 943 Massachusetts St., guitar in hand.

   Harrison and his two rock bands, the Eudoras and the Harrisonics, were the stars of a show that benefited the Lawrence High Model United Nations’s upcoming trip to Chicago. The bands are products of Harrison’s lifetime in music.

   Harrison’s musical journey began in little Pratt, Kan., about 80 miles west of Wichita and out of reach of the Wichita airwaves.  Harrison remembers Pratt as a musical desert, and it was not until his teenage years, that Harrison escaped its confines.

   “My classical training as a kid was in violin and piano, but then I heard the Ramones,” Harrison said. “I remember driving to the mall in Wichita and buying my first punk rock music. It was so exciting.”

   From that point, Harrison’s musical career took off. He experimented with several instruments, graduated high school and came to Lawrence the following fall, thoroughly infatuated with music.

   “That’s really why I came to Lawrence,” he said. “My parents thought I was going to college, but I was really coming to be in bands.”

   The university experience taught him well, and Harrison quickly went from middling in “horrible bands in high school” to opening for such mainstream groups as Guided by Voices.

   Harrison’s music career had endured a slow start, but by this point in his life, it was beginning to blossom. Though he was not on his way to stardom, he was beginning to establish himself on the Lawrence scene. However, Harrison remains humble.

   “I like music, and I’ve played it for many years with an astonishingly minute amount of success,” Harrison said. “I really like to write songs and to sing, but I’m not sure I do anything very well. It’s just all about getting together in basements and playing, and I really enjoy that.”

   He has been able to do just that with the Harrisonics and Eudoras.

   The Harrisonics are essentially a ’60s pop band. The group draws heavily on the British invasion sounds of the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Who, and owes its name to Harrison himself. However, Harrison maintains he did not come up with the monicker.

   “My wife thought that was a clever name, and she’s the drummer.”

   The group is a classic, four-piece band with Harrison on rhythm guitar and vocals, his wife on drums and two friends on lead guitar and bass. They practice about once a week and perform from time to time.

   The Eudoras take a slightly different approach.

   “The Eudoras definitely practice less,” Harrison said.       “We generally don’t practice before shows and don’t have any new material.”

   That being said, the Eudoras are the more “successful” of Harrison’s bands. The group blends sounds of the ’50s with those of the Clash and Ramones of the late ’70s and ’80s. The end result is what Harrison calls a “surf instrumental band.” Essentially, the group plays its own variety of ’50s surfing music minus the vocals.

   Over the band’s 12 year history it has become something of a mainstay in Lawrence, drawing varied audiences that include townies and Harrison’s fellow teachers.

   “Whenever they play, I try to come out and support,” English teacher Keri Lauxman said.  “It’s just good local music. Plus … John Harrison is a presence on stage no doubt. He’s large and in charge and in command. He’s musically talented no doubt. That’s a given, but he’s such a presence because he enjoys what he does and it shows through.”