Grammy-winning entertainer Bill Harley of Seekonk has released a new DVD, Yes to Running! Bill Harley Live.

Susan Wilson

Storyteller. Singer. Author. Grammy-winning recording artist. Radio personality.

Bill Harley will answer to all those things, which even he admits makes what he does a little difficult to pin down. “One of the problems with my career is,” says Harley who has been entertaining audiences for 30 years, “I’ve never kind of fit.” Because he appeals to both children and adults, “I’ve always had a marketing problem.”

During a phone interview from his home in Seekonk, he finally says that in the end, “I’m more of a folk artist.”

But you can just call him a terrific entertainer, something you can see for yourself — if you haven’t already caught him on PBS or on National Public Radio — in his latest DVD release, Yes to Running! Bill Harley Live ($14.99), which was recorded for Montana PBS in June 2007.

Why Montana? Harley, who is a regular on NPR’s All Things Considered, explains that Montana Public Radio has a family radio hour from 4 to 5 p.m. every day and “they play me every day.” He was amazed when he went to perform in Montana “eight or nine years ago and I filled a 1,000-seat arena.” Very often he plays at schools and to small groups, so the reception he got in Montana was something brand new. Because of his popularity there, Montana PBS recorded the show and showed it last spring as part of its very successful fund-raising appeal. Five or six other markets are interested in doing the same, Harley says, although it will be a one-hour “brutal edit, cut down for fund raising” version of the nearly two-hour DVD.

Yes to Running! is an often laugh-out-loud funny mix of songs and storytelling skits, most of which are based on Harley’s schoolboy adventures in Indianapolis. They range from a hilarious sled race down “Mammoth Hill” which ends with the school principal’s wife and her little dog caught in the middle of it, to ruminations on a demanding, humorless fourth grade substitute teacher.

Harley acts out his stories with robust expressiveness and animation so that the characters come alive on stage. He says that the material in Yes to Running! is “a kind of best of” compilation “that spans 20 years of material from five or six recordings.” Harley has several of those, but is now branching out into DVDs. You may find Yes to Running! in local stores, including Border’s and Books on the Square. You can also order from www.billharley.com. It’s also available as a two-disc CD set for $17.99 from Round River Records.

mjanuson@projo.com