 Backroads is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008. Need vocals with Harper's Chord. They do a little percussion, but it's very light percussion. My name is Roger and I play rhythm guitar for Harper's Chord and they let me play banjo once in a while. My name is Evan Hocus, fiddle player with Harper's Chord. I play mandolin as well and occasionally the banjo. My name is Micah Barrett with Harper's Chord. I play bass, mandolin, and vocals. Harper's Chord started with sort of an idea that was mine. I was a singer and I just wanted to record a CD, it was kind of a lifelong dream. And I recruited two guitar players, one of them being Roger Fink, and we started playing together and we were working toward recording this CD and in the process realized we actually liked to play together more than we liked to be a part. So one day I said, you know, this isn't just my project. This is a group thing and we started Harper's Chord and at the time it was a musician named Paul Drinkwine and we were together a couple of years and then we sort of grew and expanded from there and then a couple of years ago now Paul decided that he wanted to be done and so we went through a transition and along the way we got lucky enough to find two musicians that really fit for what we did and we're very much a family and it's been pretty darn fun. Doing for songwriting lately has been more of a collaborative effort. Someone will come to the band with a song idea, has the basic structure for some lyrics but then we bring in the talents of the other band members to help fine tune it or change it up a bit or modify the lyrics and really start to make it more of a song than it was originally and it's been really great that way with a collaborative effort. I mean, I guess less than a year since you guys found me on the street somewhere. Right about a year. Yeah, about a year. Yeah, definitely. So the experience here is incredible. These guys, you know, everything's so tight in order. We have our beats, everything structured, it's understood what we, the expectations, what we want from each other in this band and it's professional and I appreciate that. Other bands that I've played with it's kind of just been very loose goose and just, you know, hey show up at the gig and let's hope for the best and I think it's stressful playing but this is just smooth and functional and at the end of the day, like when you can walk away from a gig knowing that you nailed your parts, things were good and then you can all just maybe sit down to a glass of wine and enjoy each other's company and just be friends. That's something I haven't experienced in a band before and so that's kind of my end. I experienced that so it's cool. I think one of the, probably the most sort of interesting things about the dynamic that we have in the band and maybe one of the most challenging aspects as well is the different musical backgrounds that we all come from. For myself, I come from a very formal music background. I've heard some of the stuff that, you know, Evan came from and that's, I don't even know how to define it, you know, and Joe's got this dance vocal background, you know, and, and Roger, you know, just being from a slightly different generation of mine. Just is. Yeah. You know, you just, you know, we all grew up with sort of different styles of music. I mean, we've got probably, you know, the widest age gap in the group is probably 35 years or something like that. So, you know, we've grown up with different styles and different backgrounds and it's fun because it brings a lot of different aspects and ideas to the table. It's also very challenging because we all have different ideas about how things get done and how songs get written and there's a lot of give and take. And I know I take a lot more than I give. But I think that's probably one of one of the better sort of aspects and more fun things about being with the group. I came from Iowa about, what has it been, 20 years ago and I'm not quite sure, you know, how to describe the music scene in Minnesota, except to say that I'm just totally impressed with the wealth of talent that is out there, both in the Twin Cities and statewide. A lot of it's very regional in nature. Indeed, Harper's Court is more or less regional in nature. But all of those great metro regions, whether it's Winona or Bemidji or Duluth, they have this collection of great talent individuals, groups, you name it, that are really, you know, being supported by the community. I think social media has had a lot to do with that. And it's been incredible. Backroads is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008. If you enjoy watching Backroads Online, please consider making a tax deductible donation at lptv.org.