It seems as though the most pivotal point of Jim Countryman’s life was the day he sat on the couch at a party next to Erin Harpe. That is when the adventure began.
“She wasn’t supposed to be there, she didn’t want to be there and it was pretty crazy,” said Countryman. “I got her phone number that night and I called her the next day. She was busy, so two days after that we got together. And we probably haven’t spent more than two or three days apart in that whole like 16 years I’ve known her.”
Both were musicians, but they didn’t start making music together until they had dated for over a year. Countryman had been in another band, Usalos, at the time and Harpe was doing solo blues around Boston. After Countryman’s group slowly dissolved, he and Harpe finally paired up to create their band Lovewhip.
In the 80s Harpe had travelled to Africa and brought back a cassette tape with recordings of the music there that would eventually inspire the premise of Lovewhip.
“I love what the Police did. They’re not a reggae band, but they built their whole shtick on reggae. And so I wanted to do the same thing with Lovewhip. I wanted to build our foundation on this African music and take it in the direction of The Police, of the Talking Heads.”
The first Lovewhip album was pop infused with some African flare and was very successful, said Countryman. But on their second album they hired trained musicians who wanted to make the music more authentic by playing more African music, and that wasn’t what Countryman and Harpe had intended the sound to develop into.
After that album the other musicians moved on and Lovewhip changed it up again. They started working with a Michael Potvin, a synthesizer player, and started creating modern electronic elements.
“We wanted to kind of bring the same feel a DJ does to a dance crowd,” said Countryman. “But we wanted to do it with live instruments, but also utilize technology.”
There was a transition period for Lovewhip as they got into a more electronic sound, but it was almost a necessity.
“We were on tour as a quartet down south and the drummer we had with us was a little tweaked, and he actually had a nervous breakdown on the tour and left the tour with seven or eight gigs left.”
Everyone was on the verge of giving up and going home, but the keyboard player wanted to make it work. They only cancelled one gig to figure it out.
“In a 36-hour session, Erin and him sitting in this parking lot programed on the computer a random sequence of drums for 25 songs so we could still do two-set shows. And so we finished the rest of the tour with the computer playing the drums.”
Countryman was hesitant about having electronic drums and felt nervous about doing it. He eventually embraced it. The new sound garnered good responses from the audience, so when they got back to Boston they didn’t replace the drummer for about a year.
After being in Lovewhip for almost 13 years, Countryman and Harpe (who were married in February of 1999) decided to start a blues band, Erin Harpe and the Delta Swingers. However, Countryman had never played the blues before, and really was never interested in that genre, he had always been drawn to rock, especially punk rock.
Countryman grew up in the 80s and was absorbed in music from the time he was five or six. “I was way out in the boondocks of upstate New York, so I spent many hours just riding around on my bicycle with my transistor radio,” he said.
By the time he had reached twelfth grade he had seen over 40 concerts ranging from heavy metal to pop rock, and everything in-between. He remembered seeing Iron Maiden, Van Halen, Deep Purple and Ted Nugent, among the many.
His first concert was in sixth grade. He saw a band in his hometown, Kingston, NY, called Soft White Underbelly. Apparently there was a huge buzz going around town that this band they were all going to see was really the well-known band Blue Oyster Cult. Regardless of which band it was (it was Blue Oyster Cult by the way), Countryman’s first concert experience was revolutionary for him.
“I couldn’t believe that music could have these waves of power that you feel in your body. I couldn’t even think at the time of being able to play to that point. I was just hypnotized and mesmerized by how music made me feel.”
Countryman was so wrapped up in listening and seeing music, that he didn’t actually start playing it until he was 20 years old. He had moved to Boston to attend Boston University, and found himself heavily exploring the underground music scene in the city.
“I went with some tax return money I got from my part-time job and bought a bass and an amp, and tried to learn it. That’s one side of the story.”
The other side, he explained, was that he was a writer and wrote a lot of poetry. At the time he lived with five other guys who all played instruments and would have jam sessions in the living room while he was in his room writing poetry.
“I would feel so alone. Those guys in there, they’re having a community because they can all play music together. I was like, I gotta find a way to match the two together. So luckily I started playing music and I had a little bit of talent for it. “
Countryman has gone through some serious musical reinventions since then and has come to allow blues to enter a realm of enjoyment. It just took the right era of blues to ramp up his interest. The harmonica player in The Delta Swingers introduced him to older bluesmen, like Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf. After that he was hooked.
“It has such an edge and a swagger and a sex to it that is exactly the kind of music I was pursuing with punk rock and stuff,” said Countryman.
The Delta Swingers are actually on the younger side of the blues scene, he said, and he hopes that will allow them to keep playing for years and years. He credits Harpe for his introduction to so many different cultures of music and where that has taken him.
“It’s like in some past life I had this kind of partner, this magical friend. That’s kinda what our relationship is based on. Holy shit, we’re on this incredible adventure.”
Strums, Drums and Tambourines 