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Forget St. Patrick’s Day associations with the color green…  Harper and the Midwest Kind rewrote the holiday with a different color at the Grind on Tuesday night:  the blues.  They pumped the coffeehouse full of the kind of foot-stomping, rootsy blues which deny audience inertia.  And the crowd did love Harper, enthusiastically, with howls, shrieks, and standing ovations.  His charisma, political awareness, and instrumental prowess made for a sizzling show and a blues-drunk audience who didn’t want to let him go.

A multi-instrumentalist, Harper wowed with rumbling blues vocals, wailing harmonica, and, a first for the Grind stage, didjeridoo!  The Aboriginal people taught him to play and influenced his music with the passion they feel for their land.  He played two didjeridoos, one named Mary (“the pretty one”) and the other named Roger (“the ass”).  Surprisingly, the strange, reverberating, frog-like croak of the didjeridoo yielded itself entirely to the blues.  Its low drone functioned as a wild, primal base for the band, The Midwest Kind, to flesh out their blues on.  And the Midwest Kind did know the blues!  Guitar solos sizzled out from a trance-like state of perfection, bass was deliciously heavy and rhythmic, and drumming was…well, fire-packed. 

Sticks were shattered.

Song material was just as impressive as the sound.  It revealed how Harper is dually versed in the politics of his homeland, Australia, and in those of the U.S.  He sang songs of the Aboriginal people, and how their children were sold to European families under the ruse of a “better” upbringing.  He also sang rousing post-Bush songs.  His passion was near tangible.  In  ‘Of Weaker Men,’ he finished the verse, “You’re sailing on a sinking ship” and then arched back venomously to spit out a full-blown, blazing harmonica solo.       For folks at the Grind on Tuesday, the skill and raw feeling of Harper and the Midwest Kind created a perfectly-blended show:  one part intelligence, one part talent, and plenty of soul.

-Sarah Thomas

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