It is Friday night at Mixology and that means Dan Harper and Magic Show are performing like they do every Friday night. With his deep, John Lee Hooker sounding voice, Dan Harper assures the crowd that they are just warming up even though they have playing since 8pm and it is now 11:30. By midnight, when the band is scheduled to be done playing, the crowd chants for one more song and so the band obliges with Dan Harper leading them through a cover of Bo Diddleys "You Can't Judge A Book by the Cover." I got the chance to sit down with Harper a couple days later and ask him some questions.
Matthew Lenox: I have seen you perform live at Mixology
several times now and I always enjoy your shows because you really interact
with the crowd and one time as a matter of fact, when the band was jamming
during the middle of a song, you handed the maracas off to me and I got to jam
with the band. Since then I have seen you do this with other people as well. I
was wondering, what drives you to have such interactive performances, as
opposed to other band leaders who will sit back, play their music and that’s
all?
Dan Harper: Well when I was learning to play the kind of
music that I play, um, it was actually years later that I realized that if I
hadn’t experienced the people and met people who were masters at playing that
type of music, who wrote it, you know, they wrote the book; if I hadn’t seen
them play, I wouldn’t probably have a lot of the attitudes and execute the live
performances the way I do and I got a lot of that from them. I think that’s one
of the reasons I’m still playing now, especially in smaller venues because to
me that interaction is critical in keeping this form of music alive because
it’s such an important facet of it, it’s almost in a way the basis of it. And
if someone is trying to learn how to play the blues, or R&B of that sort,
if you don’t see someone really do it, you can listen to recordings, you can
see a lot of stuff on youtube that you couldn’t years ago but it’s still not
the same as being at a live performance and seeing someone do it like the way
they used to when it was fresh.
ML: What got you into music and specifically, what drew you
to the blues?
DH: Um, wow, I guess the blues did; there’s something about
it that I can relate to. There’s something, it’s very emotional. People tend to
think that blues are an emotional type of music to begin with but it seems to
me that a lot of technical aspects it takes to play the blues are overlooked
because people look at it as this emotional sort of music but it is that too.
It came from horrible living conditions and ass backwards social attitudes and
laws and situations that were intolerable. Basically it was a back lash to it,
a reaction to it so that why I think that people feel that emotion when they
hear it.
ML: I notice you play a lot of covers in your shows. Do you
play any of your own material?
DH: I’ve written a lot of music in a lot of different
genres, but as far as the Magic Show, yeah we do actually do some originals at
this point and were hoping to continue to work on the recordings of that
material and get those finalized before we come out with them and saturate the
sets with them. Hopefully the first wave of this stuff that we’re recording
comes out well and then we will be releasing a DVD and CD and we sort of have
our sights set on Europe and the U.K.
ML: What would the DVD be about?
DH: What we want to do is capture a live performance. In
fact, I got to go see someone after this to talk about filming at The Witches Ball. There will also be some interviews with some really interesting people
who were around before I was. The band is kind of associated with them, they are
sort of touch stones to us and we use them to get in touch with the past.
ML: When did you become involved with this band?
DH: I think it started to form four and a half or five years
ago. That’s when I met my guitar olayer. We were playing at this place called
Maxs, and he just walked in and started playing and that was it. Then I
contacted my studio key board player, Steve, and I’ve been cutting tracks with
him 20 to 25 years. He’s a genius. He’s kind of the musical director in a lot
of senses. Then we met the drummer two years ago and the bass player hopped
aboard while we were playing at Diablo.
ML: I read a bio about you online and you got to work with a
lot of different musicians throughout the years. Did you ever get to work with
any idols?
DH: Yeah and it was sometimes intense. At the time I met
these people they were a lot older than when I initially seen them or heard
their recordings and their music had changed from what it was originally to me
so there were some strange moments and experiences with that. So yeah, I did
actually, and it was very enlightening and I think back to what we were
originally talking about that’s one of the reasons why I still want to stay out
and perform this stuff live because you really have to see it and meet the people
doing it and experience a live show. This stuff isn’t going to stay alive if
that doesn’t happen.
ML: Who are some of the artists that influence you?
DH: Locally, there was Count Rabbit, Joe Madison, Tommy
Calandra, huge influence. He was in a band called Raven and he sort of helped
me start my recording career. He also loved blues and R&B. He was in BCMK.
There’s so many people locally, who already played nationally and settled here
or came from here and came back. And on a national level people like Muddy
Waters, Guitar Junior. Too many to mention.
ML: Well thank you for your time and sitting down to talk to
me.
DH: All right, very cool. Thank you.
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