Joe Harvard has lived like a jack of all trades and master of none on the local rock scene. The scruffy East Boston native has modestly made his mark around town as a musician, producer and promoter. But the project that really paid off for him in 1988 was Fort Apache, a pair of successful recording studios that began three years ago as a pipe dream in a Roxbury warehouse. Treat Her Right, Throwing Muses and Christmas have since recorded major-label albums at Fort Apache which now offers facilities in both Roxbury and Cambridge. Other acclaimed local rock bands, including the Pixies, Volcano Suns, Big Dipper and the Neats, have also used "the Fort" to make recent records. In fact nearly half of radio station WFNX's Top 50 Local releases of 1988 were recorded, mixed or both at the studios co-owned by Harvard, who first opened Fort Apache South (in Roxbury) as a cooperative outlet with former Sex Execs Paul Kolderie and Sean Slade, who now serve as engineers, and Treat Her Right harpist Jim Fitting.

But Harvard who celebrated his 30th birthday this week, says running a recording studio was never his real goal. "This was the accidental by product of wanting to be in a band," Harvard admits with a sheepish grin as he sinks into a chair at his Fort Apache North office which he calls a "memory motel" of music and movie posters. "It's one of those funny things. In looking for a band, I've done everything else.

On the desk is Harvard's first rock 'n' roll dollar bill dated March 13, 1978, and earned when his first band, Baby's Arm collected four dollars at the club (now Nightstage) in Cambridge. Also on the desk is an autographed photo from Willie Alexander, a recent shot with Harvard backing him on guitar. "I've been lucky this past year in that I got to play with a lot of my local heroes, "says Harvard who also enjoyed recent stints with Lazy Susan and Xanna Don't as well as picup gigs with his friends Greg and Bob Kendall formerly of Lifeboat. Harvard has also begun a new year of leading a Monday night house band at the Plough and Stars pub in Cambridge. Composed of some of his friends, plus guests (ex-Lyres guitarist Jack Hickey sat in last Monday) the band spits out rock, blues and country standards, and is learning some of Harvard's originals.

Harvard knows how to get musicians together. His experience as a promoter began when he and Greg Kendall hosted Monday night Variety shows at the Rat in 1987 ("Once Boby Bear and Dennis McCarthy did this drum duel with two go-go dancers who danced so wild that one of them threw up." Harvard remembers). He and Kendall went on to form Helldorado Productions with Billy Ruane to put on shows at the Middle East Cafe in Central Square. Ruane has since assumed the job though Harvard is assembling acts for a January 15 show. He also promoted a fall benefit at Axis in support of the referendum to close the state's nuclear power plants.

Since the opening of Fort Apache, Harvard's connections also led to recording projects. He produced albums for the Neats and the Turbines and is always on the lookout for new bands to produce, though he doesn't have to try as hard to find them these days.

I remember going down to the Rat, shaking hands with people I've known for about nine years, saying, "Hey I have a studio," Harvard says. I'm not a salesman. But now I see people and they say 'How's the Fort? I hear this recently. Some of those acquaintances date back to Harvard Square in the late '70's when he was known as Joe Incagnoli, the rebellious son of an East Boston construction worker and the youngest of four children. He was attending Harvard University, but spending much of his time at the Record Garage, a used guitar shop where he "plugged into the scene" and earned a new name that stuck.

"My freshman year, when I started going there, I got bombed one night and shaved my head he says. "I went into the Record Garage and some one said, Who was that!? and someone else said, 'You know, Joe...Joe ...Harvard." After a couple of years, it was obvious anyone who knew me through music called me that,"says Harvard who eventually graduated from the university with an archeology degree. ("I dug in Arabia and on Wall Street - on an old landfill site"). But rock music provided more of a calling. Harvard played with Baby's Arm and Unnatural Axe, with whom he competed in the first (pre-WBCN) Rock 'n' Roll Rumble at the Inn Square Men"s Bar in 1978. He was also a roadie for the Real Kids and formed his own band, the Bones, playing Mondays at the Rat. In 1982, just out of Harvard, he also started a four-track studio at home. "My roommates said I was driving them crazy, turning the upstairs living room into a studio,"says Harvard who pooled resources with ex-Sex Execs Kolderie and Slade (who had just lost a similar home recording situation) and Treat Her Right's Fitting to launch Fort Apache in a Roxbury warehouse. They named the studio after the movie about a police station in a similarly tough neighborhood in the Bronx. The studio, cheaply built with help from musician friends, began as an eight-track room, then grew to 16 tracks. "But we kept the eight-track because we wanted to keep working with the kind of people we started working with," Harvard says. But the demands of other clients, such as Throwing Muses, dictated another jump. Harvard and Muses producer Gary Smith, now Fort Apache's manager, bought the former Audio Matrix 24-track studio in North Cambridge with help from their parents. "When we had the opening, it was like my wedding, "Harvard laughs about Fort Apach North which opened in late 1987. Like South, North offers a very "live" recording space - but with brick, tile and sound diffusers in place of the concrete, wood and draped blankets that grace the Roxbury room. "I've always wanted to be like the Record Garage, wanting to bring people together, but I never had a center like that, "Harvard says. "Fort Apache has become that center."