We’re thrilled to announce that our album, “Meet Me In The Middle”, was just named 2021 ALBUM OF THE YEAR by The New England Music Awards!!! Jim and I are very honored, especially because this album was self-produced and recorded at home during quarantine by the two of us. We’d like to thank everyone who helped make this possible, including Pete Weiss (mixing), Peter Linnane (mastering), Joe Harrington at Boston Street Photography (cover photo), Dave Geissler (additional photos), David Avery (Powderfinger Promotions), and Richard Rosenblatt & Amy Brat at our label, VizzTone Label Group! ❤️ Big thanks to our fans for your continued support, and for voting for us ❤️ and to all the DJ’s and others who helped get the music out there!! And many thanks to the NE Music Awards for this award, and for supporting independent music in New England!!! 💋 Listen/buy/stream the album at linktr.ee/erinharpe

 

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🍂 Happy October! 🍂

There's a bit of a chill in the air, as my favorite season of the year rolls in, FALL! I hope you're able to get out and enjoy it – and if you're in the Northeastern US, you might be able to catch a show in person... We'll be coming to Kingston NY, Newmarket NH, and Fall River & Hingham MA with the Country Blues Duo this month, including some exciting shows with the award-winning Anthony Geraci Band! We're really excited to be doing our first big show with him at The Narrows on Saturday, October 16th! As well as a few more fun shows!

Annnndddd, I know lots of you aren't in those areas, so I'd like to invite you to join us on Thursday, October 21st for Music & Conversation – an online event! We purposely scheduled it early – 2:30pm EST – so hopefully some of our European friends can attend! Love to have you there, it'll be lots of fun!

Following are all the details, hope to see you (or hear from you) soon!

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Hot off the (virtual) press! We're excited to receive some great press from Greece, with an in-depth interview with Michael Limnios! It's a fantastic article, including some very insightful questions about our history, thoughts on the blues and the future, beautifully illustrated with a well-curated collection of photos.

Joyous Roots Blues Meeting: Q&A with Boston-based Erin Harpe & Jim Countryman, one of the most exciting roots rocking blues duos 

by Michael Limnios Blues Network

"Music is for healing in a very crazy world. It is an escape, it is education, it is entertainment. Music is magic!"

CLICK TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

 

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Photo by Adam Kennedy.

Exciting news!!! 

Our new album, MEET ME IN THE MIDDLE, has just been nominated by the New England Blues Awards for Album of the Year, as well as Song of the Year for the title track! AND THAT'S NOT ALL, I've also been nominated for Artist of the Year!!! You can help us win by voting, which you can do right now, quick & easy, from anywhere! (I won Blues Act of the Year in 2019 with your help! Let's do it again!!) 

VOTE NOW AT: nemusicawards.com/vote 

It's such a big honor for my latest, self-produced album, to be acknowledged

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Me & Jim backstage at Daryl's House.

Happy August!

First off I want to thank everyone who voted for me in the Blues Blast Awards, you're the best! I'll keep you updated when the winners are announced!!

It's been a busy summer, and we've felt lucky to be out there doing shows again – and finally getting to do some album release parties for MEET ME IN THE MIDDLE! It's been really great to see some of you friends & family in NY, CT, VT, MD & ME – we missed you!! Here we are a couple recent snapshots: above with our friend Harpo, who played harmonica with us at our very fun Delta Swingers show at the Red Square in Burlington, VT recently (photo by Orah Moore); and below is a snap of Lovewhip onstage at Harry Brown's Farm by Sam Davis!

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There's just a few more days left to VOTE for my album MEET ME IN THE MIDDLE for best Acoustic Blues Album in the Blues Blast Music Awards! We're up for Acoustic Blues Album of the year, and we could use your help. Click the link below and vote for Erin Harpe before the end of the week (voting ends August 7th)! Thanks!!

🗳️ CLICK HERE TO VOTE!

THANKS A MILLION!!! And wish me luck!🤞😊🍀

 

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🏆 I'm so excited to be nominated for a 2021 Blues Blast Award!!! 🏆

Happy July 🎆

Hope you had a nice 4th of July weekend! We had a big one, with a whopping three shows! We capped it off yesterday with a mini-festival in Plymouth where we got to play with our friends Gracie Curran and Barrett Anderson. It was great to see so many of you! (More pics on Facebook!) We've got lots more shows coming up, so check out our updated schedule below to see if we're coming your way!!

We've also got a great stay-at-home/watch anywhere option this Saturday, July 10th with our CBD show at Daryl's House! You can purchase a "donation" ticket, which helps us as well as the club (though the concert will actually be live-streamed on Facebook and Youtube for free). Click the link below for more info. (IN PERSON TICKETS are also still available, just scroll to the bottom and choose Dinner Reservation or General Admission.)

Daryl's Tickets & Donations

BLUES BLAST AWARDS!!!

And... I promised you some BIG NEWS! Well, I've been nominated for something big, my first Blues Blast Award! My latest album, Meet Me In The Middle (featuring Jim Countryman), has been nominated for best Acoustic Blues Recording in the Blues Blast Music Awards, and you can vote to help us win!!!

Vote for ERIN HARPE in the “Acoustic Blues Recording” category, and wish me luck!

VOTE NOW!

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The wait is over, live music is back!

Photo by Kevin Umlauf.

Happy June,

Summer's here! After a long year of Zoom meetings, being at home, and watching music almost exclusively on our screens, we're happy to say that live music is finally returning!! (And don't we all deserve some live music in our lives?!)

We're excited to announce that we have quite a few in-person shows booked for the summer(!!), with stops all around Massachusetts, and also in Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont! And for those of you that live farther away, we have some online shows you can enjoy, too!

Online Events:

• Daryl's House on Saturday 7/10 – you can attend either in person or online, just buy a ticket on their website!
• Facebook Live Concert on Sunday, June 27th – join us for our next livestream concert! (More info below + RSVP link.)

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Join us this Sunday for our Mother's Day Livestream!

Happy May!

This month we are excited to have slightly more things going on than last month! (See below for more info!)

• First, some very exciting news, our album Meet Me In The Middle was nominated for an Independent Blues Award, and you can help us win by voting! 
• Then this Sunday, 5/9 is our Mother's Day Livestream Concert!
• Also, Jim and I just got our vaccines(!), and with venues slowly opening we have actually booked a few in person shows starting this month!
• And there's still time to book a backyard concert with us!

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This weekend – don't miss the Vila do Conde Blues Festival!

Tune in April 16th at 5pm (Eastern US Time) for Erin Harpe CBD's appearance at the Villa Sessions - Vila do Conde Blues Festival in Portugal! The three-day festival is free and online this year, and you can watch it from anywhere in the world on the festival's YouTube channel! (See the fest's Facebook event for the full lineup!)

Click here to Subscribe, so you get the notification!

We'll also be sharing the livestream Friday on our Facebook page, where you'll be able to write comments, and we will be commenting back!

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Our next Facebook Live Concert is on 4/11!

Sunday, April 11th, join us for the next installment of our monthly free Facebook Live concert, featuring our Country Blues Duo! Join us from 2-3:30pm (EDT) for Erin & Jim’s April Livestream! We've got an hour and a half of music, news, and catching up to do! Bring your dancin' shoes!!

Watch at our Facebook Pages & on Boxford CableTV!

CLICK HERE TO RSVP!

We can't wait to see you there!

 

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Sound Waves Magazine Cover Story!

I'm a cover girl!!! It's a big honor to be gracing the cover of the April 2021 issue of Sound Waves Magazine! Thanks to Bill Harriman for a fun interview – and a fabulous article!

“Erin Harpe has a timeless quality about her. Maybe it is her signature look with a flower in her hair and the fishnet stockings, a look that would have worked in any decade over the past century. Or maybe it is her virtuoso finger picking guitar style or the way she can play the slide guitar like some of the recent greats such as Bonnie Raitt or Rory Block. Or maybe it is her beautiful singing voice, especially when she is covering the old-time blues music of Memphis Minnie or Sippie Wallace with a confidence and sass that might remind you of Maria Muldaur. Her style is both endearing and enduring. ...”

Click to read the full article!

 

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Our next live-stream concert is coming up Sunday, March 14th at 2pm!

March Merch Madness Sale!

This month we're having a special MARCH MERCH MADNESS SALE! Check out our store to get 30-70% OFF until March 31st! Get great deals on all our albums CD's & LP's, as well as all t-shirts, masks, hats, kazoos, posters, stickers, koozies & all other merch!

Save on Erin Harpe Merch here!

Spring Forward with us Live on 3/14!

Sunday, March 14th – the day the clocks spring forward – we're celebrating with a special Facebook Live concert featuring the Country Blues Duo! Join us from 2-3:30pm (EST) for Erin & Jim’s Spring Forward Livestream. Just don't forget to set your clock forward before bed the night before, or you might miss it! To be safe, be sure to RSVP at our Facebook event, that way you'll get the reminders!

CLICK HERE TO RSVP!

We can't wait to see you there!

MEET ME IN THE MIDDLE Album News:

“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.”
-Frank Matheis, Living Blues

“‘Meet Me In The Middle’ is one of those albums that has bags of quality, a generally cracking range of tracks and an old-school, acoustic blues mastery that is seldom found these days.”
-Iain Patience

“⭐⭐⭐ Erin Harpe is an unmannered singer and assured guitarist, with an assertive touch and a firm grasp of country blues idiom”
-MOJO

Click here to see all of our full album reviews!

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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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🎉Happy New Year to You!🎉

I want to thank you very much for being there with us this year! This week, I found myself looking back at this nutty year, a historic one, and I wanted to share my musical year in review with you. A little warning, it's long, but hey, it was a longgg year (and lots happened)!

PS. If you don't have time to read it now, see you Thursday 12/31 at 7pm EST for Erin & Jim's New Years Eve 2021 Livestream!) 

And now, for an interesting read, here are my highlights from the past 12 months...

Our 2020 Year In Review!

2020, what a crazy year, and I’m sure we can all agree – it’s good to see it end! But it wasn’t all bad... Despite the pandemic, the lock-down, and the many other unpleasantnesses including losing all our gigs, we still found ways to continue to make music and create a sense of connectedness and community. We started live streaming (and did over 60 online shows!), we recorded our first CBD album (quarantined at home) – both of which got us wide attention and support all over the world! We look back at the year that was 2020 with a lot of gratitude, some sadness, and a lot of love. Here’s our 2020 Year in Review! 

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Big news!

Not only did our new album, Meet Me In The Middle, get reviewed in the latest edition of MOJO magazine – we got 3 out of 4 stars! Not bad, for our first time appearing in this fantastic global music mag!! Check that off my bucket list! Here's what they said:

⭐⭐⭐

“Erin Harpe is an unmannered singer and assured guitarist, with an assertive touch and a firm grasp of country blues idiom, revealed in performances of Memphis Minnie’s What’s The Matter With The Mill and Lucille Bogan’s I Hate That Train Called The M&O. Among her original compositions, One Fine Day is set to the gorgeous melody of the old parlour guitar piece Spanish Fandango.” 

I immediately thought, “they're right, I don't have any manners”, but then I looked up unmannered (we don't really use that word over here...), and I guess it's a compliment, meaning “not affected or artificial in style.”

 

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Photo by Joe Harrington.

Happy November!

It's only a few days since the release of my new album Meet Me In The Middle, which I have already told you all about, so I wanted to share some of the other things I'm doing – album-related and otherwise! First off, I've re-vamped my website, and added a new ABOUT page, so you can get to know more about me, my story, and my music! I was interviewed by writer Lorne Behrman, who did this lovely new bio for me, which covers just about everything there is to know about my history and music, and how it lead me to go back to my roots and make an acoustic blues album! Read it at erinharpe.com/about, and while you're at it have a look around...

I've updated the STORE and MUSIC pages with the new album and new merch, so feel free to give them a gander too (and grab your copy if you haven't yet!)... And there is a brand new store item – Wazoo Kazoo Horns are now available! Upgrade your kazoo to the “professional model”, like mine! Makes the kazoo louder, plus it looks really cool! Get them for $3 each at my store, where we also have new masks, t-shirts, koozies, and lots more!

Besides that, I've been busy with sending out your orders of the new album & merch (thank you!!!), sorting through the many photos and videos we took during the making of the album, and finding time to play around with TikTok (follow me to see my first TikTok vid!)! I'm planning to share lots of this new content so click for the links

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"Almost enough to prove the existence of God!" -Paris-Move

"Killer stuff throughout." -Midwest Record

THE NEW ALBUM IS OUT!!!

Our new album Meet Me In The Middle is now out! Here are the links where you can find it:

• BUY the CD and other great new merch at our STORE!
• DOWNLOAD at our MUSIC page!
• CLICK below to LISTEN on your favorite streaming service:
  • Spotify
  • YouTube Music
  • Amazon Music
  • Apple Music
  • Deezer
  • Pandora
  • Tidal
  • Download on iTunes

Every stream, purchase and download that we get helps! We are truly grateful for your support!!

This album was a true labor of love, produced totally independently, and we're already getting feedback from fans and critics alike saying it's the best album we've made yet, and I think you're going to love it too. Here are a few ways you can help us get the word out about the new album: share this blog post to friends & family you think might like the music, share my linktr.ee with links to the album (below), listen to the album on your favorite streaming service (and add it to a playlist!), or buy the album for yourself or as a gift for someone you love!

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Counting down the days until album release day...

There's just a few days left until we release our new album, Meet Me In The Middle! Friday's the BIG DAY, and we're celebrating with our first live stream concert in a while – our Album Release Party – on release day, Friday, October 30th at 8pm (Eastern Standard Time)! We're planning to play all the songs from the album, plus a few more of your favorite songs. The free show will be streaming on Facebook as well as Instagram Live – so mark your calendar and/or set a reminder, and we look forward to seeing you there!

RSVP on Facebook!

Recording this album is what got us through a strange summer without many gigs, stuck at home because of Covid-19. Since we couldn't leave the house much, it was great to have a project to keep us busy, and looking back, I'm really thankful that I finally had the time to make this album – my first full acoustic album in 12 years!

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A still photo from our new MUSIC VIDEO – All Night Long! WATCH IT NOW!!

Tuesday, Sept. 29th we celebrated the release of the first single – All Night Long – from our new album “Meet Me In The Middle” (coming out October 30th on VizzTone/Juicy Juju Records! You can pre-order it here.)! You can now purchase the song as a single, and listen to it on your favorite streaming service!

We're also pleased to announce that our brand new MUSIC VIDEO for the song is out now, and was premiered by American Blues Scene! Jim and I enjoyed getting out and making this video recently with our friend, videographer Dave Geissler, on a beautiful day in Franklin Park, right here in our neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, MA.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH IT!

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Here's my cover design for the new album, Meet Me In The Middle!

We’re excited to announce that PRE-ORDERS have begun for our new country blues duo album, “Meet Me In The Middle”! Every pre-order comes with an immediate download of the first song, “All Night Long”! Pre-order the digital album, CD's, cool new merch – new CBD logo T-shirts (mens & womens styles) and masks, new Erin Harpe signature kazoos, signed posters – or choose a special Koozie Bundle! Click the link below to check it all out, and find out  more about the new album, see the liner notes, and the artwork!

PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY NOW!

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It's August, my birth month! (Not that I'm one of those people that celebrates the whole month, LOL!) But I do love August. Usually, I'd be out doing a tour with the band, maybe playing a festival or two... but this year it's all about stay-cations, working in the studio, and trying to find time to take a little walk (when it's not too hot out!!!). Jim and I have been buzzing around, getting ready to release a new album -- our first release in two years(!), and my first full acoustic album in 12 years (which is hard to believe!). Fingerstyle acoustic blues is where it all started for me, so I'm really excited to share this very personal and intimate album with you!

We're pleased to announce that the new album, Meet Me In The Middle, will officially be released October 30th on VizzTone/Juicy Juju Records! Pre-sales start September 1st, so next month we'll be revealing all the great pre-order options, including new merch, a seat at our private live-streamed album release party concert (date TBA), posters, CD's, vinyl LP's, T-shirts, kazoo's, early access to the album and more, so stay tuned...

In other news (more details below):

• Speaking of merch, our summer clearance sale is still happening (50% off everything in our stores!)
• We have TWO shows this month!
• You can hire us for a Curbside Concert!
• Our Wednesday Live Stream Concerts continue on Wednesdays!

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Another month has passed in lock-down... but we've been keeping really busy, and have lots to share. For the last few weeks Jim and I have been working hard in our studio on the new Country Blues Duo album, and we think it sounds pretty great! In fact, we just sent it off to today to our engineer, Pete Weiss, to mix. The album is set to be released in October on VizzTone, and we'll be doing lots of fun stuff leading up to the release, more on that soon...

Since we need to make some space in our "storeroom" for CD's and other album-related merch, we've decided to have a big summer merch sale! We've added a few new items to our online stores, like new t-shirt designs, check them out, and get yourself something nice! All items are 50% off until August 31st (no coupon code necessary). The store links are below, along with all our other news tidbits: show news, Curbside Concerts, Augusta Blues Week, and our July live streaming schedule. Enjoy, and we hope to "see" you soon!

Merch Sale!

Visit our merch stores now and get half off! There's lots to choose from, check out the product lists below.

Erin Harpe Store - CD's, vinyl, T-shirts, instructional guitar DVD's, T-shirts, tank tops, girly T's, trucker hats, beanie hats, patches, flask/shotglass sets, cheap sunglasses, pins, bottle opener keychains, koozies, signed posters, and stickers! Click here to go to the Erin Harpe Store!

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Wow, June is here already, and the world is becoming crazier than ever. I hope that somehow some meaningful change can come out of all this. Please stay safe out there! Here in Boston, we've been busy getting some stuff accomplished around the home/studio, and we've been thankful to be staying connected to you twice a week for our Wi-Five Live concerts.

My last month was all about guitar workshops. I want to thank everyone who attended my Intro To Country Blues Guitar online workshop! It was such a success that I plan on doing another one (I'll announce it next month!). I also put together two guitar workshops for Augusta Blues Week. All you budding musicians and blues lovers should consider signing up for this great program, which usually takes place in the mountains of West Virginia, but this year has moved online. Check it out/sign up here!

This month Jim and I have a new project, and we're really excited to get it started and share it with you! We are recording our first acoustic CBD album! We've been wanting to record our Country Blues Duo for a while, and coincidentally we find ourselves stuck at home together, with no touring, so it makes perfect sense. Stay tuned for more announcements about the upcoming pre-sale and release date!

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