Cool dad indeed
BEN HARPER HAD TO GET HIS OLD GUITAR BACK FOR HIS LATEST GIG
Ben Harper finished last year with impressive “cool dad” credentials. The Harper household was more than excited when the Grammywinning singer songwriter and multi-instrumentalist “got the call” from Harry Styles to play on his track Boyfriends.
“What a thrill. Because you get calls, and then there’s calls,” Harper says.
“I happen to feel that Harry’s House is one of the best records of the last two or three decades.
“So as someone who loves to session as much as I love to record my own work, that was a very exciting call to get.”
The only problem was the sound Styles was after required Harper’s vintage Martin 00-18 acoustic guitar, which featured on his early albums.
The guitar was on permanent loan to the musician’s 23-year-old daughter Harris.
“Once I’d heard my daughter’s songs and realised she was a better songwriter than me – no selfeffacing nonsense here, it’s just what it is, she’s a more creative writer. I gave her that guitar because it’s tool,” he says.
“I knew she’d taken it to college with her … fortunately, she was home on holiday break when the Harry session came around and had brought the guitar back with her.”
Father and daughter then got to share the Styles stage and the guitar thanks to the next call from the As It Was superstar.
Would Ben Harper accept the invitation to open 12 sold-out Love On Tour concerts at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles? Hell yes, he would, and he was bringing his daughter with him.
Harris played that guitar as she sang one of her own compositions called Longest Apocalypse with her father.
“So a full-circle dad moment and creative artistic moment for me was her bringing that guitar on to Harry’s stage to sit in with me and do one of her own songs, to which she got thunderous and rapturous applause and ovations before and after every night,” the proud dad says.
“There was zero nepotism in having her on that stage.
“I’d never put my kids in a position to not be ready for something. And this was her time, and she knocked it out of the park.”
Family looms large in this chapter of Harper’s musical life as he heads back to Australia to play the Summer Salt festivals and a handful of solo side shows.
It will be his first opportunity to
share songs from his 17th studio album Bloodline Maintenance, the cover of which features a throwback photo of the artist as a toddler, standing alongside his musician father Leonard Harper, who split from his mum Ellen when he was five.
His father died in the late 1990s and the album, written during the pandemic lockdowns when Harper was forced off the road for the first time in his three-decade career, explored some unfinished business between the pair.
“There was an entire conversation waiting to be had posthumously with my father, who passed in ’98, that I was unaware that I even wanted or needed to have,” Harper says.
“There’s a song called Need To Know Basis. He and I used to joke about how humans would be the reason aliens wouldn’t touch down.
“And I would say to him, he was the reason they actually would come, because he was so eccentric, they’d come for him.
“He was not a ‘I love you’ Dad; his love was on a need-to-know basis.
“And towards the end of his life, I needed to know.”
Harper also picked up the bass again on the album to pay tribute to and mourn his longtime Innocent Criminals bandmate Juan Nelson, who died in 2021.
“I picked up the bass to mourn the loss of Juan, which was the only way I could actually get off the couch,” he says.
“You know I have a family and kids and a life and through the pandemic, I had to find a way to get off the couch. And guitar wasn’t doing it.
“I picked up the bass and found a connection to Juan that started the process of healing.”
Getting back on the road to share his music with the people here who have remained in his camp for three decades continues that healing process.
Harper is energised by the prospect of sharing the SummerSalt stage with his Australian music companions including Angus and Julia Stone, The Runs, Middle Kids and Alex The Astronaut.
He and his good friend, fellow American troubadour Dallas Green – aka City and Colour – are the first international guests on the hugely successful beachside festival which has hosted allAustralian line-ups since he kicked off in 2019.
“I would love to be granted citizenship, if that’s what we’re talking about here,” Harper says. For all SummerSalt dates and tickets, summersaltmusic.com.au
Ben Harper also performs at the Palais Theatre, Melbourne on February 7, State Theatre, Sydney on February 8 and QPAC Concert Hall, February 10. Tickets via livenation.com.au