More exciting album news: writer Frank Matheis, who is both a friend and a great scholar of the Piedmont blues, has reviewed MEET ME IN THE MIDDLE in the January issue of Living Blues Magazine(!!!) – and he has some very nice things to say! (He also co-wrote a fantastic book about “DC's Homemade Blues” with Phil Wiggins called Sweet Bitter Blues.) Here's the review, including some background, and his judgement that this album is HOT!
From Living Blues:
“One can play the roots country blues differently, louder or faster, to try to impress and dazzle. But nobody today plays and sings it better.”
Whatever is going on here is hard to capture in words. It’s genuine, passionate, totally convincing, and outright joyous, a pure listening pleasure, today’s country blues at its very best. Afficianados of the raw, true, and deep acoustic blues can rejoice: Erin Harpe is back and she can sing the tattoos right off your arm.
The acoustic blues is not typically defined as “hot,” and adjective usually reserved for jazz from the early 20th century. Any poor writer destined to review her new CD, Meet Me In The Middle, will have to grapple for descriptive verbiage that does not seem to overly gush accolades, no matter how well-deserved. Words of praise from the usual music critic vocabulary could fit, but none muster it quite perfectly to summarize the album. Old clichés “lightning in a bottle” or “you’ll need a cold shower” would be too easy. “Hot” does it.”
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