Saturday, July 1, Harlow’s on the Hill (21-and-over): Red Hunter is probably a crazy genius. Making over 50 stops on a massive U.S. tour by himself, playing with local musicians and on found instruments in a “divine orchestra of junk metal?” Crazy. Doing the last 10 dates by sailboat? Genius. Aided by considerable national media attention, Red Hunter, aka Peter and the Wolf, has become an unwitting spokesman for touring musicians in the face of a national energy epidemic. He’s chartering a sailboat along the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway for the last 10 dates of his national tour, taking a $3-a-gallon gas crisis and turning it into a pretty clever media gimmick. "It sort of started as a joke,” Hunter told the Austinist earlier this month. “We were playing pool and drinking beer and talking about how cool it would be … but then [a friend] e-mailed me and told me she thought she’d found a sailboat." Built on peaceful, lilting folk incantations, technically articulate vocal harmonies and romantic boxcar hobo sentiment, Hunter’s solo project-turned-operatic bandwagon is more than deserving of the hype. Hunter creates undeniably bizarre, swirling, woozy lullabies on fluttering, warm-winded ukuleles and tin cans, sealing his miscellaneous orchestral deal by picking up new musicians and instruments along each stop like Syd Barret’s crazy vaudevillian lint roller. “I just like weirdoes and crazies. When I meet a weirdo or a crazy, I confess my undying loyalty to them. And somehow everyone seems to have my mailing address.”Crazy.
Peter And The Wolf
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