“Her slide playing is more like Leo Koettke than Johnny Winter and it's a good example of how her unique style is as much how her voice and guitar support each other as it is the actual notes she plays… Great finger-picking country blues guitar and an expressive voice that is authentic and from the heart. Why isn't this woman famous?”
–AJ Wachtel
If you like country blues; you will love Erin Harpe's latest release. If you're into traditional finger-picking blues and slide guitar with a touch of folk, gospel and zydeco: this album is for you. Recorded in June, 2020 while quarantined in their third floor Jamaica Plain apartment during the current pandemic, this stark, low key music is packed with passion and power and pitch-perfect playing. Erin's soulful singing and her incredible guitar picking are influenced by Memphis Minnie and accompanied by ukelele bassist/backing vocalist Jim Countryman. Together their stripped down music sounds like they are performing just for you right in your own living room. It works well! Check out Harpe's slide guitar work on: the opening track, written by her, 'All Night Long.' And the title track, also a written by her 'Meet Me In The Middle,' or her great version on the traditional 'Rollin' and Tumblin' where having the raunchy lyrics sung by a female changes the whole perspective of the song. Her slide playing is more like Leo Koettke than Johnny Winter and it's a good example of how her unique style is as much how her voice and guitar support each other as it is the actual notes she plays. There are four originals and six covers on her fourth Vizztone label release and sixth overall. Check out the covers from the catalogs of 1930's female blues singers you've probably never even heard of: 'The Texas Nightingale' Sippie Wallace's 'Woman Beware,' 'I Hate That Train Called The M&O' by Lucille Bogan who was a contemporary of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. And Geeshie Wiley's 'Pick Poor Robin Clean.' I especially dig Erin's take on Memphis Minnie's 'What's The Matter With The Mill.' Great finger-picking country blues guitar and an expressive voice that is authentic and from the heart. Why isn't this woman famous?
–AJ Wachtel