New beginning Country vet to make rare appearance at MDI festival

Country singer Danny Harper has found a balance in his life the second time around.

The 58-year-old Harper, who will take part in Saturday’s first-ever Mount Desert Island Music and Arts Festival, is back songwriting, recording and performing after a decade’s hiatus. But now the Southwest Harbor resident, whose regular job is selling insurance, performs maybe a dozen times a year, so it’s a treat for both the audience and himself.

Harper is still enjoying the response he and his band received at the recent Union Fair, where he received his first standing ovation in years.

“I believe in giving people their money’s worth,” he said. “I want to reach inside of people’s hearts, to make them laugh or cry.”

Despite his limited schedule, Harper has been able to keep a veteran band together for the past couple of years. It includes guitarist David Cleaves, vocalist Pam Cleaves, drummer Tom Rush, bassist Bob Roman, keyboard player Bryce Sinclair, steel guitarist Tommy Thompson, harmonica player Russ Snyder, opening singer Lisa Higgins, guest performers 7-year-old Seth Clark and Higgins’ husband and daughter, Pard and Katie Higgins. Filling in for the MDI festival will be fiddler Zack Ovington.

“We cram a lot into an hour show,” Harper said. “It’s a family show. All the jokes are clean. It’s mostly songs I’ve written, although there are some covers.”

Harper will be performing on the bill with a variety of acts Saturday at the festival, which runs from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the Smuggler’s Den Campground in Southwest Harbor. Also scheduled to play are folkies Livingston Taylor, Tom Rush, Jonathan Edwards and Schooner Fare, bluegrass group Northern Lights and rockers Pat Colwell and the Soul Sensations.

Throughout his 35-year music career, Harper has learned to work with many different kinds of people. Beginning at age 13, he won a number of talent shows, leading to a guest appearance on the “Hal Lone Pine Show” in 1962.

He got his own Bangor-based TV show a decade later, in 1972. That same year, he recorded his first 45 record and was soon performing up and down the East Coast.

Harper recorded his first album, “Honky Tonks Have Always Been My Home,” in 1986, which led to a deal with a Nashville-based management team. In 1987, his first Nashville-produced album, “New Horizons,” came out, followed by 1988’s “Living, Loving & Losing,” which featured the popular songs “Uncle Clyde” and “Heartache Remover.”

The ’80s were a busy time for Harper, as he opened for such acts as Conway Twitty, Reba McEntire, Lee Greenwood, Gene Watson and Bobby Bare. In the late ’80s, Harper became the regular opening act for Johnny Tillotson, then in the early ’90s for Dick Curless.

What was the highlight of that part of his career?

“Singing a duet of ‘January, April and Me’ onstage with Dick Curless,” he said. “He was definitely the most underrated talent in country music.”

Then a family tragedy, the death of his daughter in 1993, caused him to abruptly quit the business.

“I couldn’t go on,” Harper recalled. “I was forcing myself to go out and perform, but my heart wasn’t in it. And the audience can always tell when your heart isn’t in it.”

Harper returned to music in 2003, at the urging of his grandson, recording the new CD “One More Time.” He has 10 new songs written, a few of which he’s already performing in concert, and will record his sixth album this fall.

“What I really missed was the creative part of it, the songwriting and recording,” he said.

The MDI festival marks the first time in his long career that Harper has played on a lineup with different genres of music.

“It should be interesting,” he said. “Hopefully it will be well received.”

For information about the Mount Desert Island Music and Arts Festival, call 288-4725 or visit www.mdimusicfest.com. Tickets are available at the Grasshopper Shops in Ellsworth and Bangor, Domus Isle and Music Bar in Bar Harbor and the Southwest Harbor-Tremont Chamber of Commerce.