Harper and Midwest Kind April Blog 2017

Howdy all,

Just back from a 5 week tour of Australia and China and now back on the road in Florida.  My band and I had an amazing time.  In Australia we performed 12 shows with  some great festivals. The GirraKool Blues Festival on the central coast was very wet but super cool.   We stayed in a luxurious apartment over looking the beach.  We were so bummed that we had to get up at 4am to catch a 7am flight to Melbourne for the Mordialloc Food and Wine Festival the next day, but that's life on the road folks. After the show at Mordialloc we had to catch a flight to Perth, Western Australia that evening.   Talk about full on!!  In Perth I got to hang with my family.  It was the first time my parents had ever seen me perform with my band.  So it was really nice to do a show at the Perth Blues Club.  The band that opened for us had the bass player -Pete Lisiewich from my very first band ever.  We had some great club dates in and around Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. The Final festival was the HUGE Forth Valley Blues Festival in Tasmania where we opened for guitarist Icon Ian Moss.   We covered a lot of ground in a very short time.   So many old friends and fans came out and really supported us.  Huge thanks to Ian Ferguson for organizing backline and performing before us with his band NRG.  It was the best OZ tour Ive ever done.

Then it was on to China.  An experience of a lifetime!!!.  Absolutely huge cities -especially Beijing and Shanghai. Crazy traffic and pollution. There seemed to be no road rules at all. Infact in China, pedestrians have to give way to cars and buses!!  We had packed houses in Beijing. Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, Wuhan and Shanghai.  The shows were really well promoted by Eric de Fontenay and the audiences really got into the music.  Most of the places we visited, the people didn't speak any English, thankfully we had a Chinese Tour manager Clyde, who really took care of us. The Chinese people were very friendly and very accommodating. The food was incredible!   We were all treated like stars!!  We managed to fit in a little touristy stuff like a visit to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.   I would have to say that we have all never walked so much in our lives. By the end of the two weeks, we were all foot sore and exhausted.  Bobbi was literally limping by the end.  There were several shows where we had about 4 hours sleep before we had to catch a train or a plane to the next show.  The weirdest thing about China are the squatting toilets with no toilet paper.  Also most restaurants didn't have toilets - you had to leave the building to go to a public toilet.  It was hard to get used to but if all the world was the same, life would be pretty boring.  Bobbi,  Mike, James, Mario and I were so very appreciative of this amazing opportunity and we hope to return in April 2018!

Thank you for your support and we hope to see you out on the road this Spring and Summer!!!

Thanks and Peace,

Peter D. Harper,
Harper and Midwest Kind
www.harper.biz (Official Harper Website)