Ben Harper: 'Music Helps To Channel Pain & Find Our Way Through Grief'

Ben Harper is one of Australia’s most loved artists. The American blues, gospel, reggae, soul and rock singer and multi-instrumentalist has visited us on each album cycle for over two decades, with setlists spanning back to 1996 on Setlist.fm. Regrettably, it seems the only album Aussies didn’t get to celebrate with Harper was his 2020 instrumental album, Winter Is For Lovers, for obvious reasons.

He is here next week, though, headlining each date of the Summersalt Festival alongside Angus & Julia Stone. He’s a big fan of the Aussie songwriters and has a great relationship with the man behind the City & Colour moniker, who appears directly below the headliners on the line-up. “I'm not only a fan of Angus and Julia – a longtime fan, but I'm friends with Dallas Green,” he shares.

“We’ve duetted together, and he’s just extraordinary,” Harper continues, and on that, we couldn’t agree more with each other. At his Red Rocks show in 2016, Harper introduced Green as his “dear friend” and one of his favourite artists to the audience, to thrilled whoops in the crowd. The two performed Harper’s 1995 classic, Another Lonely Day, from Fight For Your Mind. The delicate folk track grows in beauty as the two performers harmonise together. Will they perform it again in Australia? It seems like a missed opportunity not to bring out the duet somewhere. Harper remains tight-lipped, but a fan of both artists can dream.

About Harper’s ability to transcend genres, he notes that “one part comes naturally, and one part keeps me on my toes,” we’re not sure of which one is which, but he adds, “I mean, I have to be engaged [in all types of music]. In this day and age, it’s too easy to find music. Back when I was coming up, we had to go dumpster diving – we had to go looking for records in dusty old bins and dusty old record shops. So now that it's available for all of us at all times, 24 hours a day, to not take advantage of that seems like a wasted opportunity.”

This curiosity and amalgamation of musical genres informed Ben Harper’s brilliant 16^th album, Bloodline Maintenance. Widely recognised as a soul album, the songwriter never allows pastiche moments to cloud the thematic content or instrumentals on display. Bloodline Maintenance saw Harper go on a mission to deal with grief – on the album, he finally processes the death of his father, Leonard Harper, and honours the memory of his bass player and friend, Juan Nelson.

“[The album] is sort of working my way through some immediate pain through the loss of Juan,” he shares. “It’s about working my way through losing one of the nearest and dearest friends and then confronting the pain that had been lodged somewhere deep in my unconscious. Both were part of bringing this record out.” Which is why music resonates so deeply with him.

He adds, “Music also helps to channel the pain and find our way through grief. Find our way in and find the good in it; to try to bring some meaning to it.” The album art sees Harper as a child poking his father. “This album represents picking up a conversation with my dad that I should have done long ago but had been thinking about and really didn't have,” Harper said in a Straight interview last year. “I did my best to transform a mirror into an open window, lyrically, once and for all, and this pandemic really put that mirror in front of me as far as never having processed the loss of my dad. That was one of the many things I ended up sitting in solitude during the pandemic, writing my way out of.”

Ben Harper’s longtime bandmates, drummer Oliver Charles and percussionist Leon Mobley, have been by his side for decades. “The relationships have been maintained over time through the camaraderie through a like-minded conversation and musical dialogue, the three of us, and up until last year, the four of us with Juan had been having, since we were kids, and that’s just impossible to replace,” he shares. It’s a sign of musical chemistry and their mutual respect for each other. Harper reveres them as much as he ever has.

“There's nothing like it, and it just maintains its own momentum. I mean, as we keep going, surprisingly, we're still building on our musical or sonic dialogue,” he adds. “Matter of fact, you can email Leon Mobley right now – I just finished doing tracks for his upcoming record and sent him all the files last night at midnight. We work separately at our own musical and on our own musical endeavours, which motivate and inspire the band direction once we circle back and commit to our own records and our own tours.”

Looking back on 30 years alongside his bandmates, Harper is stunned by how much time has passed and how strong the relationships remain. “I still feel that when I communicate with them musically, it’s as if it's fresh and new. I can’t explain it; I can’t ask for anything more.”

Ben Harper has been nominated for eight Grammy Awards and has won three (Best Blues Album for Get Up! in 2013, Best Pop Instrumental Performance for 11th Commandment in 2004, and Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album for There Will Be A Light). At this year’s Grammy Awards, Bloodline Maintenance has been nominated for Best Contemporary Blues Album. However, on the big night, Harper will be gearing up for his Summersalt gig at the Yarra Valley.

The nomination still means a lot to him, even if he won’t be in attendance for the LA telecast. “[Grammy Awards] are so special. For one, they're voted on by your peers and two, there's only a handful of them every year, so to find your way into that number is beyond description. Once you get that call, there's this out-of-body experience and depth of appreciation.”

Aside from making his own albums, Harper is no stranger to collaboration – he features on the psychedelic Harry Styles track, Boyfriends, from the album Harry’s House. Harper also opened for Styles for 12 nights at the Forum in LA. “It was the experience of a lifetime both recording and doing live shows with Harry,” he says, noting that the famous singer is even nicer than he seems. And his band? “Extraordinary,” Harper adds, “[Guitarist] Mitch [Rowland] and [drummer] Sarah [Jones], the whole band, everybody there was a pleasure to be around. Harry made the opening artists feel like family.”

He has also worked with artists from behind the desk, working as a producer for icons such as Mavis Staples, Ziggy Marley, Natalie Maines and more. “From behind the desk, I learned that there are sonic landscapes beyond my reach that I could only arrive at within the collaborative process,” he shares, revealing that he’s even worked with his mother, Ellen Harper. He found that working with a parent led to a shared understanding that the two didn’t need traditional communication to create art. “I've always felt it's a unique exploration to attempt to collaborate with people, and then with family, it's just on a whole other level,” he adds.

However, the stage is the place he enjoys most as a performer. Harper loves Australian audiences as much as we love him, recalling “The energy, the exchange between the artist and the audience, the uniqueness of the landscape and the people… I feel like there's an urgency about music that doesn't exist anywhere else, and it's been one of my life's great journeys to get to explore it.”

Ben Harper will be headlining all Summersalt Festival dates from 27 January to 12 February. Between those shows, he will perform three special gigs in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. Find more details about Harper’s appearances in Australia on his website.