September 19, 2020
Al fresco concert for Rebecca...
No matter from whence it comes, music lifts the spirits.The right music at the right time sprinkles ethereal fairy dust that for brief sparkling moments ever so softly and subtly temporarily neutralizes pain and the shadows of mortality. It can happen in churches, temples, dive bars, back yards and warm kitchens. It happened here today. Erin Harpe, an RW fave, provided the musical groove that called down the spirit.
That spirit came down and sat beside us as soon as it heard Harpe's robust, Piedmont blues dexterous finger picking, a perfect match for the songs in her repertoire. Obvious in the videos below. And her stage (lawn?) patter that introduced songs that often had a distinct ragtime rhythm with a bluesy twist. The style was sourced in African American songs that gained popularity from the mid 1920s to the the 1940s. If you've ever heard a Josh White song you feel it.
Contemporary artists like Keb Mo, Ry Cooder and David Bromberg carry on the tradition. And this afternoon, Erin Harpe gives us a front row seat and treat with her deeply felt Piedmont picking and stylings. Once you listen to the style, you can hear traces of it in other regional styles that veer into the style with string bands and ragtime.
Erin Harpe and Jim Countryman, aka the Country Blues Duo. Jim Countryman provides the bassline the way a cement foundation supports the frame house above it, not flashy, certainly essential and occasionally playful.
The Kazoo is an unexpected surprise in Erin's musical grab bag...what a hoot!
More KAZOO on this jaunty swing gem.
A terrific cover of John Prine's "Angel From Montgomery."
We need angels today. This is more than a lawn concert. It is a wish of a woman to fill her heart and ears with sounds that make her happy, stir neurons that palliate and cast rays of sunshine down roads with vanishing points that we as her invited friends cannot imagine staring into.
A dark undertow runs under the rich melodies, vocalizing. and presentation. Reflexively I am loving the music. And can't shake the reason I am siting here with a woman I have shared so much with. Her days are numbered.
She has invited a handful of us because she knows we are kindred spirits, transfixed with the same kinds of music that lifts, cradles, sends us into corners in our psyches and onto dance floors real and imagined in which we dance with passion, effervescent energy in the immediacy of now.
She wants us here to share this now with her. It is all we have.
Videos and photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
Comments