Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals

With the March 20th release of the double-disc Both Sides of the Gun - his seventh studio album, Harper offers his signature mix of rock, soul, and folk music, while also venturing into new territory. "I was hoping I could come back to the root of my earlier records, the sparseness and intimacy, "he says, "and also branch out further in a produced sound than ever before." From the blazing Curtis Mayfield/Stevie Wonder-style funk of "Black Rain" to the gentle sway of "Morning Yearning" to the full-on power ballad "Waiting for You," the eighteen songs on Both Sides reveal a master stylist at the peak of his game.

Harper says that what was most exciting about the sessions for this album was a newfound sense of "absolute fearlessness." "just diving into a song and ripping it wide open, with a lot of one-take vocals and guitar solos that are nasty, loose, raw, immediate." The raging "Please Don't Talk About Murder When I'm Eating" went from dinner conversation to finished track in one night; the vocal for the delicate "Picture in a Frame" was done in just one shot, straight through.

For the first time, the singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist decided that the strongest way to present his new material was on two discs. "I've always found some way to blend the different ways that music plays down - hard songs, fast songs, soul songs, folk, rock, reggae, ballads - but this time I couldn't find it," he says. "When I'd come out of a ballad into something hard, it was too much like getting hit in the face with a cold bucket of water." And so despite his initial hesitations ("double records come with such baggage about being overindulgent and unfocused"), he looked up one day and realized that he had chosen nine harder songs and nine ballad-based songs for this album, and that, conveniently, one of them had the title "Both Sides of the Gun" - and the structure of the album became clear.

"I hate to call it the hard disc and the soft disc," he says, "because sometimes the soft stuff hits you harder than anything else." With each disc clocking in at just over 30 minutes, Harper compares the experience to listening to old-school vinyl; "It's like flipping a record, turning it over to the next side."

Since debuting in 1994 with Welcome to the Cruel World, Ben Harper has established himself as one of the world's most versatile and hard-working musicians - and one of its top concert draws. Even by his standards, though, the years since releasing his last album, 2003's world-music-inflected Diamonds on the Inside, have been hectic.

After completing his usual extensive tour, Harper had started writing and was preparing to make his next album when he got a call from the legendary gospel dynasty the Blind Boys of Alabama. "They asked me to produce a couple of songs," he says, "and that quickly turned into its own world."

The "world" it became was the critically acclaimed, 2X Grammy-winning 2004 collaboration There Will Be a Light, which was in turn followed by the riveting Live at the Apollo DVD. Harper says that working with these legends, on stage and in the studio, quite simply altered his entire approach to making music. "Before the Blind Boys, I used to sing," he says. "With and after the Blind Boys, I may have become a singer."

All the while, he kept writing new songs. "I've been so hungry to make this album, we're lucky it's not a triple record!," he says. "I'm glad I waited, though, because if I had gone in right away, it would have sounded too much like Diamonds. The Blind Boys thing came along like a bolt of lightning and gave me a much clearer vision of how I wanted to make my next record." Beyond a newfound confidence, he claims that working with the Blind Boys - and a subsequent session with the incomparable Funk Brothers for the Standing in the Shadows of Motown film - gave him the sense of immediacy and urgency that underscores Both Sides of the Gun.

That attitude is perhaps best exemplified by "Black Rain," a song written as a direct response to the days following Hurricane Katrina. "I had to make the picture as clear as the event," says Harper of the string-powered slice of soul. "Because if that can happen here - that disregard for human life - and we allow that to happen to the citizens of this country, then all bets are off. And if there's no justice in day-to-day living, there's for damn sure gonna be some justice in my music."

Throughout his career, Harper has bounced between recording on his own, with other musicians, and with his long-time partners, the Innocent Criminals; on Both Sides he utilized all three configurations. "The songs themselves lead the charge," he says, "but there were some songs I didn't want to check in with anybody on, because I could hear them so clearly." As always, though, he's excited to take the new songs out and road test them with the band. "The amazing thing about the Innocent Criminals," he says, "is that everything always gets ramped up by about the second or third month we've been hitting it. It takes on new life."

This album marks the third time that Harper has taken sole production credit for a full project. He felt the responsibility had to be his own. "So how do I motivate myself, push myself? I'm driven. Pure and simple. There has to come a point in your creative world where you're the only one that can raise the bar."

With Both Sides of the Gun, Harper has raised that bar to new heights. For him, though, it's just one more step in a career that's still building. "I've never made a record that didn't feel like it was my first," he says, "with the same excitement, the same enthusiasm and intensity. Of course, in the dozen years since that first record, he's built a loyal fan base around the globe, but he sees the expectations of his audience as a challenge, not a limitation.

"Expectations are there for a reason," says Ben Harper. "To be surpassed."

benharper.net

Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley

When "Welcome To Jamrock" erupted onto airwaves and blew apart iPods halfway through 2005 it came as a shock to some--but not to Damian "Jr Gong" Marley. The song is about the farthest thing from commercial music offerings today--an outraged and unapologetic description of the poverty and "political violence" ravaging his homeland of Jamaica--but "Welcome To Jamrock" hit--and hit hard--because it's the sound of truth and the result of years of work to bring that truth to light. "I spent a lot of time thinking and this is the fruit of that labor," explains the youngest child of the musical Marley family."The song might be a 'success' so why be blind to that? But success can't surprise given the time put into it."

Jr Gong has been honing his skills--not so quietly--for some time. He made noise early on with 1996's Mr Marley, and his major label debut Halfway Tree showcased a unique gift for blending hard-hitting reality rhymes and an uncommonly eclectic musicality; with a classic reggae sensibility at its core and run through with streams of hip-hop, r&b and dancehall, the album resonated with urban tastemakers and won a Grammy for Best Reggae Album in 2001. ("A Grammy in reggae is good," he observes. "But it will be great to see reggae win Album Of The Year...it's not about one man shut off from the rest of the crabs in the barrel." So while slow-burners like "It was Written" and "Educated Fools" became club classics, Jr Gong was laying the groundwork for the tracks that would become Welcome To Jamrock--an album that was ultimately several years in the making. Hear the album and you instantly understand it to be the work of a perfectionist; Jr Gong is not focused on overnight success. "Some songs just come. 'Jamrock' was like that," he explains. "But other songs take a lot longer. This is street music, and the streets have to feel it."

He can be sure the streets will. Following the path blazed by its title track, Welcome To Jamrock opens with the devastating attack of "Confrontation"--this is Jr Gong at his best, rhyming with the conviction of a street preacher and the intellect of a university economist. That essence is spread throughout the album, even when he switches pace and explores different riddims. "It's like going to war. Sometimes you have to wear camouflage to really get in there," says Jr Gong of the diverse appeal of the album. "Dancehall, r&b, hip-hop...it's more about feelings. We're not just trying to do a segment of the mix. We're trying to do the whole mix." This is that mix--never content to deliver a straightforward "reggae" album, Jr Gong touches on various sides or urban life as we live it today, from the smoky spiritual love ballad "There For You" to the nostalgic throwback jam "The Master Has Come Back". Hip-hop fans will bump to "Pimpa's Paradise" featuring Stephen Marley and Black Thought of the Roots as Nas rips his verse on "Road to Zion", while classic reggae heads will spark to the rugged sound of "Khaki Suit" which features the combo of Bounty Killer and Eek-A-Mouse. Taken together the songs on Welcome To Jamrock convey a consciousness that's framed by the song "For The Babies", which Jr Gong says was inspired by the idea that "we raise our children with the same lies we were told."

From the first listen it is undeniable that Jr Gong detonates his lyrical gifts with force and precision, but it would be a mistake to think the man's abilities begin and end in the recording booth. A quick scan of Welcome To Jamrock's credits reveal that he co-produced all but three of the tracks with his brother Stephen (the two are the album's executive producers)--so while the youngest Marley suggests his fiery vocal delivery is partly inspired by seeing fierce dancehall icons like Shabba Ranks, Ninjaman and Super Cat at Jamaica's Reggae Sunsplash festival as a youth, his work at the boards show him to be a knowing student of the early '80s digital roots sound of Sly and Robbie, a touch of Stephen's other productions and the magic in his own father's recordings. All told it's the science behind Welcome To Jamrock's instantly classic sound and an appropriate release on the family's Tuff Gong/Ghetto Youths International label. "It reflects us," Jr Gong says simply. "And I say us 'cause it's not just me that makes the album. We're taking the baton from the elders who made rebel music--we're new leaders of the old school."

The response to the "Welcome To Jamrock" single heightened expectations for the record you're holding in your hands, and its 14 songs--songs of both love and war--have a depth that surpasses what many might have expected, given the fear of creativity and strong beliefs that permeates the current pop climate and our daily lives in general. "These are difficult years...and this has been a year of signs and wonders and mystics. We're in a mind opening time now--a lot of people don't have material suffering, but spiritual suffering," he offers. "Welcome To Jamrock is about hope, and there's still more to share. I'm still very close to the beginning.

damienmarleymusic.net