By Maya Meinert
Special to the Daily Press

SM COLLEGE — You may not know what he looks like, but you’ve likely heard his voice in the morning.

Nic Harcourt hosts “Morning Becomes Eclectic” each weekday morning, from 9 a.m. to noon, on 89.9 KCRW, a public radio station housed at Santa Monica College that has helped propel more than one emerging artist’s career.

Harcourt’s soothing voice has been a fixture for Santa Monica and Los Angeles hipsters for nearly nine years. As music director at the station, he also hosts “Sounds Eclectic,” a weekly syndicated show featuring the best of “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” and “Music Exchange,” a show co-hosted by BBC radio DJ Steve Lamacq.

Through his discerning musical tastes, Harcourt has helped jumpstart the careers of artists such as Norah Jones, Dido and Coldplay, often giving them their first chance at widespread airplay by having them perform live on “Morning Becomes Eclectic.”

Bands like Interpol and Franz Ferdinand owe many a thanks to this radio DJ.

Prior to his gig at KCRW, Harcourt hosted a show in Woodstock, N.Y., at WDST, an independently owned commercial radio station that had a reputation for playing emerging new artists, much like KCRW. He worked there for eight years, during which time he played artists like Alanis Morissette, Semisonic and Moby before those artists made it into the mainstream.

Harcourt keeps himself busy and “out of trouble” by taking on many different projects. Not only does he work in radio, but he chooses music for movies, television shows and commercials. Remember that Mitsubishi commercial a few years back that featured Groove Armada’s “I See You Baby?” That’s was Harcourt’s pick, as was the Teddy Bears’ track “Punkrocker,” with the unmistakable vocals of Iggy Pop backing up the new Cadillacs.

His television credits include “Queer as Folk” and “Life as We Know It,” and he has worked on the films “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” and “Igby Goes Down.” Harcourt has also written a book, “Music Lust: Recommended Listening for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason.” His monthly television show on A&E called “Second Sunday with Nic Harcourt” is part of the network’s “Breakfast With The Arts” program.

“It’s similar to what I do here [at KCRW], but it’s on camera, which is a little bit different for me,” Harcourt said. “I’m not that comfortable on camera, but I have fun.”

The venerable DJ is currently working on a pair of films — Ben Affleck’s directorial debut, “Gone, Baby, Gone,” and “Pride and Glory,” starring Edward Norton and Colin Farrell.

“They’re both small- to medium-sized movies, and those are the movies I like doing,” Harcourt said. “You can actually really help tell a story, unlike some big Hollywood movie. I’ve done some of those as well, where the music is almost incidental.

“There’s not as much money in these films, but there’s so much more creative fulfillment.”

Originally from Birmingham, England, Harcourt just recently moved from Topanga Canyon to the border of West Los Angeles and Santa Monica. The father of 3-year-old twins, Sam and Luna, he doesn’t always get enough sleep before he goes on the air, but it doesn’t seem to affect his work or his enthusiasm for it.

Harcourt sat down with the Daily Press last Friday to talk shop.

You’ve become a tastemaker in the industry, helping to break and propel artists to success. Why do you think you, and “Morning Becomes Eclectic” and KCRW, have become so important in that way?

“Well, clearly, the station has been here before I was here, and “Morning Becomes Eclectic” has been here before I was here, so there’s a legacy that’s been there for quite a while. But I think that in the period of time that I’ve been here, the station has seen a huge growth in its listenership and in its subscriber base as well. That period of time tends to get a little bit more notice because of that.

From the point of view of the music that we play ... we’re a free-form station. When you have the opportunity to play lots of different music, then you have the opportunity to introduce the audience to music they wouldn’t hear otherwise, and in some cases would never hear anywhere else. In some cases, [it’s] music that then perhaps goes on ... to become more well known or gets into the mainstream. It’s really because of the format. When you have the opportunity to play what you like, then cool things can happen.”

Is that because it’s public radio?

“We’re supported by our listeners. As long as they support the station, then we can do that type of programming. It also encompasses the bigger picture of KCRW, the news and current affairs programming. It’s all information of one type or another that you probably don’t get to hear in other places.”

How do you choose the music that you put on the air?

“It’s pretty random. It has to be music that I like. I’m not going to put something on the air that doesn’t do anything for me. And fortunately for me, I’m lucky enough that the audience goes along with it. I mean, how do you choose the music you listen to in your car or at home? I’m basically doing a show of music that hopefully other people relate to. When I’m doing it in the studio, I’m doing it for myself.”

That’s like your book — it’s music you like. It’s not a definitive guide, right?

“No, that was never intended to be a definitive guide. When you do anything in the media, you’re always susceptible to criticisms. But at the end of the day, I don’t pretend to be somebody who knows what’s going to be a hit and somebody who doesn’t.”

You don’t think you can predict the hot new trend, but ...

There are times when you play something and you think, ‘Wow, this is something a lot of people could like.’ And sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn’t. So, for every Coldplay or Norah Jones or Damien Rice, there’s somebody that we played that I thought would become bigger than they did, and they didn’t. But again, you’re not playing it because you think, ‘Oh, this is going to be the next band we’re going to break.’ You just sort of throw it out there and let the audience decide.”

So what do like about your job. What do you wish were different?

“I get to do something that is creative, and something that I’m passionate about. At the end of the day, I’m a fan — that’s how I sort of come to this. I’m really fortunate. I’ve had some really sucky jobs, so to have a job like this ... I mean, it’s work, but it doesn’t feel like it. There’s days when it feels like a job, like everything, depending on what side of the bed you got out of, or whatever. But most of the time, I’m just really happy to be here and to be doing it. So I like the fact that we get to help people with their careers, even if it’s just an indie band that the music supervisor for ‘The O.C.’ or some other TV show hears and the band makes $10,000 because their demo was heard on the station. That’s pretty cool. And that’s just as rewarding as seeing a band or an artist becoming really huge.

I don’t think I would change anything. It would be nice if [the show] was a little later in the day.”

You’ve helped pick music for commercials, TV shows and movies. Which one was your favorite project?

“It’s hard to say. I worked on a TV series last year called ‘Love Monkey,’ which didn’t make it, and that was a shame because I thought that show had a lot of potential. But there were too many cooks in the kitchen. Two studios, the TV network ... it’s tough to get good stuff done. I did work on a show two years ago called ‘Life As We Know It,’ which also didn’t make it past half a season, but that was a lot of fun. It was about a bunch of high school kids in Seattle. From the point of view of creativity, that was really cool because everybody on that show was into music. There was no ego — everybody was just trying to find the best music for the show. I get more excited on the things where you work in a collaborative way with either a director or an editor. That’s much more fulfilling than just throwing a bunch of songs at somebody and saying, ‘Oh, see what you think of these.’ That’s easy, but you don’t really get into it.”

How do you spend the rest of your day?

“I also do other stuff here as the music director. We put an annual show together — a Sounds Eclectic Evening — which is a big fundraising show every year that takes a lot of time. I just finished putting together the next KCRW compilation CD, which is going to be coming out next year. And that’s been an on-off process over the last five months of getting songs and listening to songs. So there’s plenty of stuff here, and then obviously, the other stuff tends to be in the afternoon or in the evening, depending on what’s going on.”

If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

Sleeping.

Not at this moment! I mean, if you weren’t doing this radio thing.

“I’ve done a lot of different things. I’ve driven a forklift truck, and I’ve worked in factories and made concrete blocks and plastic bags, and worked in warehouses and building sites— when I was younger, obviously, not recently.

[Radio] is the first thing that I found that I really liked. So taking what I do here and expanding it to other areas is probably the answer, like working on films. I’d really like, at some point, to produce something. It would be musically related. But I don’t feel like there was something I wanted to do that I didn’t. I didn’t play soccer for England, which I really wanted to do, and that’s too late. It took me a long time, but I found what I wanted to do.

If I wasn’t doing this tomorrow, hopefully, it would be because I found something else that I want to do ... And if I wasn’t doing this tomorrow because I got fired, then I would be sleeping ... seriously.”