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A cure for the Wednesday blues

Los Angeles-based blues guitarist Rich Harper and his band perform this Wednesday night at the Cosmopolitan Grill in Taipei. PHOTO: COURTESY OF COSMO

Rich Harper seems to have made a good impression in Thailand. The American blues-rock singer and guitarist has been invited to the Phuket Blues Festival for three straight years with his Los Angeles-based, three-piece, the Rich Harper Blues Band.

Last year a reviewer writing for the Phuket Gazette was so impressed he said that the band was as good as U2 and that Harper was as good, if not better, than the Irish group's legendary guitarist, the Edge.

Harper, who plays this Wednesday at the Cosmopolitan in Taipei, chuckles when he hears this. "My reward is whenever I go on stage and people are smiling - that's all I need, I don't need nothing else," he said Wednesday in a phone interview from his Phuket hotel.

Like American blues masters Robert Nighthawk and Charlie Patton, Harper uses the slide technique to play the guitar. The term refers to the sliding motion used instead of pressing strings against the fret to vary the instrument's pitch. It's also called the bottleneck method because early blues guitarists used to break off the neck of a beer bottle and slide it across the strings to produce the sharp, wailing sound that was developed into a high art in Delta blues.

PUBLICATION NOTES What: BBQ and Blues at the Cosmopolitan Grill, featuring the Rich Harper Blues Band and Shari Puorto Where: 218 Changchun Rd, Taipei City (台北市長春路218號). For more information call (02) 2508-0304 or log on at www.cosmo.com.tw When: Wednesday; barbeque dinner from 6:30pm to 9pm, followed by performances at 9:30pm Admission: NT$1,200 for dinner and two drinks; NT$500 after 9:30pm for the music and two drinks On the Net: To listen to Shari Puorto’s songs, go to myspace.com/sharip; to hear music by the Rich Harper Blues Band, visit myspace.com/richharperband

Harper, who grew up in a small Pennsylvania town and started playing blues guitar when he was 11, first heard the distinctive keening sound of the slide technique while listening to an Alman Brothers album.

"The more I researched it and learned from it, the more I got involved with it," he says.

He's stuck with the blues ever since, he says, because "it's from the heart. Blues music is however you're feeling that day."

Joining him on his Asia tour is Shari Puorto, a California-based, blues-rock singer with a powerful delivery who critics says sounds like Janis Joplin, Melissa Etheridge and Bonnie Raitt.

"I get compared with Janis Joplin a lot, but I really think it's because of the execution of what I sing and not the sound or tone of my voice," Puorto says. "We all know and love Janice because of the way she bares her soul in her singing. I think a lot times I do that; not consciously, it just happens."

When they perform together, Puorto and the Rich Harper Blues Band usually play separately before getting together for a few songs at the end.

Both Puorto and Harper say they are extroverted performers. Adds Puorto: "We engage 100 percent with the audience and really pull them in, in the hopes that they're really feeling what we're playing.

Harper, who is making his fourth trip to Asia, says he enjoys playing outside the US.

"Blues goes up and down in the States. You can play one club and it will be packed out the door and the next year it's not a blues bar anymore," he says. "My experience touring the world has been that in Scandinavia, Europe, Asia … they listen to and appreciate blues year end and year out.
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