Audio By Carbonatix
“I do sit down to work on songs,” notes slide guitarist Ben Harper, “but really, songs sit me down and say, `It’s time to write.’ When I see something that needs to be written about, I write about it. When I feel something I need to express, music is the way I express it. Writing is a constant process. It’s an eternal evolution, and I’m just blessed to be a part of it.”
As that comment implies, Harper doesn’t suffer from the fashionable ennui so typical of Nineties performers. His latest album, last year’s Fight for Your Mind (on Virgin Records), is impressive musically, thanks to Harper’s unparalleled skill on a variety of guitars and other stringed instruments. But what makes it stick in a listener’s mind are his songs, which combine stinging social commentary and heartfelt personal reflections that make references to Sixties songwriters inevitable. When asked if he is flattered by these allusions, however, Harper’s response is an emphatic “Hell, no!” A moment later he adds, “I guess I shouldn’t be that frustrated by the comparison, but I just see too many inactive activists from that time, musically and socially. I don’t want any association with that group, because this is a new day and it’s a new time. No one man has a world solution, but one man can have a solution for his world and the world around him.”
Given the experiences of Harper’s youth, spent in California’s Inland Empire, it’s no surprise that music has become his driving force. “My parents owned a music store where I grew up,” the 26-year-old recalls. “It’s generally been part of my upbringing, learning respect for music. I started playing young because there were music and instruments around my home at all times. It wasn’t like, `All right, now let’s get you guitar lessons at age five.’ Instead, it was, `If you want to play, here are the instruments, and if you want us to show you something, we’ll show you something.’ Because both of my parents were very musical.”
Another key to Harper’s development was his grandfather, who also owns a music store. Harper describes it as “a certified museum. It’s all acoustic instruments–both string and wind–from all over the world.
“Grandpa put me to work when I was a kid, because we couldn’t afford a babysitter or anything,” he continues. “I started out sorting screws, getting all the Phillips sorted from the flats. But eventually I found my way to the back room, which has a full string shop with guitar molds for construction and every tool you could possibly need for restoration and repair.”
Even as young Ben was learning these crafts, he was soaking up the music loved by his elders–everything from the early Delta blues of Robert Johnson, Elizabeth Cotton and “Mississippi” John Hurt to the soulful efforts of Bob Marley, Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix. “Musical music” is what Harper calls it today. “Music that’s obviously music, because it was as good then as it is now.”
Harper’s inspirations can be heard throughout both Welcome to the Cruel World, his 1994 Virgin debut, and last year’s followup. “Fight for Your Mind was a growth and an evolution as far as having time to spend and as far as knowledge in the art of production itself,” admits Harper, who co-produced both his platters with J.P. Plunier. But although Fight is indeed marked by impeccable arrangements and crisp sound, it’s Harper’s subtle intensity, especially on ballads, that takes it a step forward. The sparse acoustic track “Another Lonely Day” is bleak but powerful, while “Burn One Down” is a rootsy homage to hemp that sounds so much like a Marley song, it’s hard to believe it’s not a cover. And although some listeners will find socially charged songs like “Oppression” overwrought, most will be won over by Harper’s soft, sensitive delivery of his political messages and the tightness of his new band, the Innocent Criminals (bassist Juan Nelson, twenty-year-old drum phenom Oliver Charles and percussionist Leon Mobley). The group is an amalgam of players from the Los Angeles area whom Harper “met through fate, was introduced to or just had the pleasure to hear play.”
According to Harper, kismet has often played a role in his performing career. In fact, his first big break–the chance to contribute to the soundtrack of the 1992 Harriet Tubman documentary Follow the Drinking Gourd, starring Morgan Freeman–came about because, he says, “I had met up with Taj Mahal about a month prior to that and played at a show after him. Afterwards, he invited me to go on the road with him and to do some recording. I couldn’t believe it, because I was only twenty at the time, and I didn’t believe stuff like that can happen.”
Both the opportunity to work with Taj Mahal and the subject matter of the film attracted Harper to Drinking Gourd. But since then, he reveals, “I haven’t been interested in any other film or video projects. I really feel that the film and television industry has a tremendous amount of blood on its hands and has shown the greatest amount of social irresponsibility to the youth and humanity, so I don’t associate with them, generally.
“I really just love music,” he goes on. “Every day I get to make music is an honor for me, and it’s also a responsibility. The way music affects people is stronger than anything I’ve ever known, and that’s what I’ve got to do.”
Ben Harper, with the Broun Felinis. 4:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. Saturday, February 3, Fox Theatre, 1135 13th Street, Boulder, $10.50, 447-0095.
