Piper & The Hard Times debut at Mojo's BoneYard

Piper & The Hard Times
2024 International Blues Challenge Band Winner
The eclectic and entertaining roots music group Piper & the Hard Times deliver intense, rhythmically dynamic music. Each member enjoys a wide array of musical genres, and they bring those diverse influences into their performances. The blues are one of the foundations that buttress their work, along with an instrumental prowess that enables them to improvise with flair, while still creating music that has a melodic appeal and can immediately connect with audiences that want both a high degree of musical competence and songs with a strong groove, familiarity and sensibility.
Piper & the Hard Times enjoy doing original music, but also are comfortable with established blues, R&B, rock and soul standards. Their shows mix contemporary and classic influences and material, and the band is known to improvise for the crowd, but never so that they become self-indulgent. That balance is maintained by the comfort levels they've established with each other through thousands of performances. And with the group's recent incarnation, there has also been a level of confidence and polish that makes their collective sound even more formidable. The core of Piper & the Hard Times is Al "Piper" Green, Steve Eagon, and Dave Colella and they have known each other since 2000. They are joined by pro-level players covering bass guitar, keyboard/organ, and horns for a big rootsy vibe.Each principal member has an interesting and intriguing personal story to tell. Al "Piper" Green's lead vocals combine the flamboyance and earthiness of blues with the power and authority of gospel and represent the two biggest influences in his life. Growing up in a very musically inclined family in Bolivar, Tennessee, he sang in a gospel choir growing up while also hearing the best of soul, pop and rock on radio. But Green remembers perhaps his biggest influence, as well as mentor from a sensibility/style approach, was his uncle. "Every 4th of July he'd come down to visit us from Chicago and he'd be riding in this grand blue Fleetwood Cadillac,” Green recalled. "He'd be decked out and have a bunch of folks with him playing the blues. I wasn't old enough just then to really get the full impact of what I was seeing, but I knew this guy had style and flair and really represented the essence of the blues. I think that's where I got a lot of my vocal approach from, duplicating that personality and that spirit." Green contributes to the band's original songs with lyrics based on personal stories and experience.