So, Ben Harper and Relentless7, eh? What happened, you may ask, to the almighty Innocent Criminals, whom we’re so used to seeing on our stages around this time of year?
Upon the release of Harper’s last album, Lifeline, Bluesfest’s favourite son told Rhythms that the Innocent Criminals had been able to “collectively take a big step together” and that the album “signifies that we’re a band”.
But this year we see Harper recording and touring with a completely new band of musicians. On one hand, the Innocent Criminals have become such a staple in this country, it’s going to be a shock to see Harper backed by a new team. On the other hand, those who have followed Harper’s career since Rhythms first featured him on the cover on the eve of his first Bluesfest appearance back in 1996 will testify that his longevity can be at least partially attributed to his ability to progress and try new things.
And yet, back on the other hand, Harper has remained faithful to the original inspirations he talked with Brian Wise about 13 years ago – reggae, blues and soul – Jimi Hendrix and Marvin Gaye. It’s more the process, rather than the style of the music, that Harper has continually tweaked, a process that he has learned to allow the creative muse to dictate. Whether that means taking the whole band to a primitive analogue studio in Paris and recording virtually live (Lifeline), or holing himself alone with a ProTools set up and a room full of instruments (Both Sides Of The Gun), Harper attests that he’s been led by instinct. “At a certain point you have to come to grips with the realisation that you’re not leading the creative process, it’s kind of pulling you along,” he attests when I finally track him down to talk about Relentless7 and their new album White Lies For Dark Times. “The sooner you learn to follow that, the further along anybody who writes music will be… I think.”
Perhaps Ben Harper was always one of those musicians who had the courage to trust his instincts. Indeed, when Welcome To The Cruel World came out in 1994, not only did it sound like nothing else at the time, but like nothing before it or since. Harper’s Gaye-like vocals and rich-toned Weissenborn stood out amidst all the grunge noise like flowers blooming on a bare rock face. It was impossible to ignore, at once graceful and cool, gentle and fierce. As Mr Wise noted at the time, it appealed to “everyone from skateboard punks and young hip hop fans to listeners who grew up on Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix.” It really provided an inspirational premise of the power of modern roots music – a premise on which Rhythms was founded.
Eight studio albums and 14 years later, and Harper’s heroes have become peers. He’s recorded with the Blind Boys Of Alabama. Bonnie Raitt got up on stage and jammed with him at his last Bluesfest appearance. So it’s interesting to go back and note that Harper did not emerge fully formed, but had highly influential peers and mentors just like the rest of us.
His first recorded release, Pleasure And Pain (1992) was written and performed with friend Tom Freund, whom you can read about later in this article and whom Harper is presenting as one of the artists he was allowed to invite to Bluesfest this year. Both Harper and John Butler were consulted by Bluesfest in programming the artists that would precede their respective headline shows. As well as fellow LA singer-songwriter Freund, Harper is presenting young soul singer Grace Woodroofe, reggae/soul artist AYO, and world-blues phenomenon Tinariwen.
It’s interesting to compare the different paths of the careers of Freund and Harper, who started out together. Though Freund’s has been respectable, producing three original albums, it’s only recently, with the Harper-produced album Collapsible Plans, that he’s been gaining more widespread attention.
Harper can thank one very important hero and early mentor for giving him a substantial kick-start.
“Taj gave me my first professional gig when I was 21 or so,” he replies when I mention Harper’s contribution to the new Taj Mahal album Maestro. “He hired me straight up from my home town after he came to a gig I was playing at… heard me play and then a week later a plane ticket arrived and I toured with Taj a bunch. We did the Austin television show Austin City Limits, those were some good times, and then I kind of jumped out to do my own thing. But reconvening with him in the studio was just an honour of a lifetime.”
The significance of the leg up is something Harper has not forgotten.
“Without that I’m not sure I’d be where I am today,” he attests. “‘Cause that’s what keeps the tradition, the musical tradition, growing and passed down to generations of people; recognising younger artists, younger talent, newer talent – or older if it’s good – but reaching out to it, connecting with it, exposing it the best you can.”
As most of you probably know, Harper’s popularity skyrocketed first in Europe and Australia, his festival shows hushing fields of drunken revellers and gathering all before him in what was more like a religious enlightenment than a rock show. His charisma was gigantic. Mixed with a moral ferocity, musical intensity, and some kick arse songs, it was an inexorable force – a genuine phenomenon. Indeed, it inspired a swarm of imitators to the point that morally righteous lap slide guitarists were suddenly everywhere.
That might be part of the motivation behind Harper’s muse, which has led him to some new territory with the Relentless7. If you’re heading to Bluesfest expecting a Ben Harper greatest hits package strong on sweet, soulful sighs, you’re probably in for a surprise (and a thoroughly enjoyable one, I’m sure). Though Harper and the Relentless7 will be throwing a few old faves into the sets, for the most part they’ll be sticking to the new material – which is unashamedly, exuberantly, rock and roll.
A report of a recent Relentless7 concert quoted Harper proclaiming, “People say you shouldn’t smile when you make rock ‘n’ roll, but fuck them.” He laughs loudly when I read the quote to him. “Yeah. Yeah. That about sums it up.”
So who exactly are Relentless7 and where did they come from? Even without the official story, it doesn’t take much detective work to reveal the band’s origins. Relentless7 guitarist Jason Mozersky appears in the credits on two songs on 2006’s Both Sides Of The Gun, and the whole band – Mozersky, bassist Jesse Ingalls (credited as Ingulls on the sleeve notes) and drummer Jordan Richardson – explode on epic album closer ‘Serve Your Soul’. You only need to listen to this track once to appreciate Harper’s testimony that what this quartet summoned was “not to be denied.”
“I had actually planned to take a good bit of time off after Lifeline,” Harper picks up the story. “Because I had been going since the time I started recording the records that I made called Both Sides Of The Gun, toured that for a good eighteen months, maybe fourteen months, and that rolled right into the making of Lifeline, which we then toured for another, almost a year.
“So it was looking like it was going to be time to close the doors for a while. But as I said, once you sort of defer to the creative process, and recognise that it’s going to take you where you’re supposed to be or where it wants you to be, along came Relentless7, my new band. And it was not to be denied. We’d didn’t go into the studio anticipating… or with the blueprint of making a record, we just went in because we knew where we left off which was I recorded with this same nucleus that has now become Relentless7, I recorded a song on Both Sides Of The Gun called ‘Serve Your Soul’ and from that experience I thought ‘well there’s something here for this group of guys, I hope someday we can dig deeper’. So all we were doing, then, was going in and digging and seeing if that was as real as we all hoped it would be. We came out a month later with a record.”
You can read the rest of the story in April Rhythms, out now.