TV anchors moonlight as music bloggers

Starched shirts by day, tattered flannel at night?

Network television anchors Brian Williams and Dan Harris have unusual new side gigs as music bloggers.

Williams’ “BriTunes” – a name he quickly found was already in use by a 27-year-old blogger – launched last week with the NBC News chief anchor’s talk with Deer Tick.

That’s the indie-rock buzz band from Providence, R.I., not the insect whose bite can carry Lyme disease.

ABC News’ Harris has for the past few months operated “Amplified,” a Web site that features his interviews with such artists as Superdrag, Neko Case and Bon Iver.

For anyone whose vision of a network anchor runs to Tom Brokaw or Walter Cronkite-style stateliness, the sight of Williams on camera comparing the styles of White Lies and Interpol is jarring.

The “Nightly News” anchor’s current playlist includes Great Lake Swimmers, Dead Weather, the Knux and Jason Isbell.

“Since my earliest memory, I’ve never been able to drive without music, write without music or be alone for too long without a song playing. This, I guess, is an extension of that,” says Williams, 50, whose plans this past weekend included taking in Green Day and Leonard Cohen concerts.

Harris, 37, who anchors ABC’s “World News” on Sundays and is a general assignment reporter who spent six months in Iraq, was hooked when the goth kid in his high school class handed him a tape of the Minutemen and Sonic Youth.

His and Williams’ musical credentials were met with some suspicion in the rock world.

“There is sort of a feeling of ‘What are these interlopers doing in our special little space?’ ” Harris says.

Harris makes it clear to the bands he interviews that he’s a fan. He interviews like he’s one part journalist and one part guy who won a radio contest to hang out backstage.

When he met hero Bob Mould, “I was sort of geeked-out and excited, and I think he found that charming,” Harris says, adding: “Given the amount of time I have in my life, there’s no way that I’d do a band that I have mixed feelings about.”

Although he’s strictly indie rock now, the name “Amplified” was chosen to allow room for expansion, perhaps into film and television.

Williams’ musical tastes are a little broader. As a volunteer firefighter in New Jersey, he joins his buddies on weekends to chase bar bands along the Jersey shore.

“They will quickly straighten me out if they detect any signs that I’m becoming a tragic hipster,” he says.

It’s hard to even gin up a rivalry between the two anchors, not when they both recommend the same little-known Scottish band Camera Obscura (a demerit to Williams for spelling it wrong on BriTunes).

But Harris couldn’t resist poking fun at what Williams wore during the Deer Tick interview.

“The V-neck sweater works,” Harris wrote on his blog. “Love it.”