Why There's No Place Like Byron Bay Bluesfest

18 December 2014 | 11:45 am | Steve Bell

"You’ve just got to step back and say, ‘Thank you’ – one giant, collective ‘thank you’ from me to a nation."

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When the fine folk at Bluesfest caused a stir earlier this year by cryptically dropping that their next announce would include the reformation of “one of the premier bands around the globe”, there was no real surprise when it eventually transpired to be the return of Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals, such is the rapport that the blues icon has had with the festival over the years. Seven appearances have made him one of Bluesfest’s biggest drawcards, no mean feat given the calibre of acts that they attract each year.

The Innocent Criminals were Harper’s backing band for much of the early part of his storied career, but – apart from one surprise reunion in 2011 at Bluesfest, naturally – they haven’t played together since 2008, so there’s a lot of buzz surrounding the reunion.

It just felt aligned and the right time creatively for us all to get back in the same room and strike up the band again.

“It will be out first gig out of the country in a long time,” Harper smiles. “The time in-between gave us all a chance to embark on our own creative endeavours and thoroughly flush those out, and it just felt aligned and the right time creatively for us all to get back in the same room and strike up the band again. I felt people were keen for it, and it just felt right creatively and what would serve the music best – I’ve always done first and foremost what’s going to best serve the music that I’m writing. With the songs that I’m writing now, and my creative instincts, everything pointed to The Innocent Criminals by far.”

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In the intervening years, Harper has worked with an enviable array of musicians – including subsequent supporting cast Relentless 7, Charlie Musselwhite and even his mother Ellen (with whom he released the album Childhood Home this year) – but is there a special bond with The Innocent Criminals?

“Yeah, there is,” he chuckles. “It’s a collective consciousness and its own instrument in the sense of familiarity and family. But then again playing with Charlie and Relentless 7 is also an instrument, and Fistful Of Mercy and my Mum – the different incarnations all have their uniqueness as far as what I get from them and what I bring to them. But twenty years is a long time – it makes us family. That’s a good amount of time for a tree to grow. Getting back with The Innocent Criminals is like coming home, for sure.”

Excitingly they’re already working on new tunes, and Harper attests that it’s a different feeling having the old gang with him onstage.

“You do feel the difference – there’s an energetic difference in playing with different people because you’re trying to unify and feed off one another,” he reflects. “You’re trying to become one with the sound and the players on the stage with you. With The Innocent Criminals there’s a lot of laughter and a lot of dialogue and a lot of history, and the camaraderie there is like a twenty-year brotherhood. And I’ve never been more confident that you’re going to be hearing the twenty-year brotherhood of The Innocent Criminals in this next record. And that will speak volumes beyond how I can explain it.”

Even more exciting than the revelation that new Innocent Criminals music is in the pipeline is the further admission that they’ve already embarked on the creative process for the next album.

“We’ve done two sessions – two week-long sessions – so far,” Harper enthuses. “I’ve never stopped writing for The Innocent Criminals, so everything that you’ve heard that I’ve released – whether it be with my mum on Childhood Home or the Fistful Of Mercy guys or with Charlie [Musselwhite] or the Relentless 7 – all of those songs were earmarked for those different bands, and the songs that were mainly for The Innocent Criminals I knew when they were being written, or in the process of being written, that I was going to set those aside for The Innocent Criminals so you can imagine from over six years that there’s a lot to pull from. But I’m not overwhelming these sessions, and I’m letting those guys bring songs to the table as well. I told them years ago, ‘When we do reconvene please have material ready’, because I need to be inspired as a songwriter just like I’m trying to enlighten and inspire those guys with my songwriting. I made a point of – not insisting because that’s overstating the point – but craving them bringing me material, and they’ve all done it and the material is blowing me away. I’ve been slanting in that way, as far as creative collaboration goes as a producer and a writer, for some time now to be able to bring that to The Innocent Criminals. It’s growth for us for the band.”

Even though it’s early days, Harper explains that this new music will be familiar to fans while still pulling in new directions. Just don’t hold your breath waiting for the new tunes to emerge because the process may take a while.

“It’s rooted in records past like Fight for Your Mind (1995) and The Will To Live (1997),” he explains, “but it’s also I think pushing forward into new territories that I think will bring out something that people didn’t expect in us but which had been waiting for us to reach – that would be the best of both worlds for me. Breaking new ground and also sort of having it steeped and rooted in our past creative process.

“If I could get it out next year, I’d be shocked; it’s probably going to come out early 2016, I’m thinking. Instead of going in and doing a marathon three-month session and having a deadline to hand the album in, at the moment I have no deadline and I want to take full advantage of that. I’m going to try recording in a way that I’ve never done before, which is go a straight week – block out a week – burn a little midnight oil and work hard for a week and then pull back. This way I’m going to get a heightened perspective on my own creative output, because one of the toughest things to do is really realise what you’re doing – it’s hard to critique what you’re doing while you’re doing it. It’s almost an unfair prospect in any art form. So the first week we’ve got three songs, the second week we’ve got a good part of five songs – which is almost a song a day over seven days – and I’m probably going to do close to a dozen week-long sessions and pull the material from that.”

Is this the part of Harper’s chosen vocation that he enjoys the most, the actual creative process?

“I love it, because that’s what gives birth to the live shows in a way, those moments where you just get to create in the lab,” he reflects. “And again, with time away from each session and getting to hear it with fresh ears and get some distance from it, all the while I’m curious as to how that’s going to allow the process to come together in a way that it hasn’t before. Every other record before that I’ve ever made has been ‘write, record, release, tour, write, record, release, tour’, so this does in a sense break a cycle. I’ve enjoyed it so far, and it also keeps the players’ ears really fresh.”

When one instrument isn’t banging out what I’m trying to reach for in a song I just swap instruments until I find it, and that’s been a great way of overcoming writer’s block, just using different instruments.

After all these years at the coalface does songwriting get easier with experience or does he find that he starts replicating things that he’s already created in previous attempts?

“I’ve caught myself replicating myself, but I’ve never yet been intimidated by the process,” Harper admits. “There’s a couple of different schools of thought when it comes to songwriting – some can do it as a craft, you can craft and cobble or you can wait for it to bolt though you, or you can seclude yourself away and look for it and force it out and find it. Writing for me is a steady stream, and the one main reason is that I write on a lot of instruments; I’ve got a Fender Rhodes set-up, I’ve got a Wurlitzer set-up, I’ve got vibes, I’ve got a grand piano, lap-steel, pedal steel, acoustic, electric, different amps… So when one instrument isn’t banging out what I’m trying to reach for in a song I just swap instruments until I find it, and that’s been a great way of overcoming writer’s block, just using different instruments. If it’s trying to push through you, you’re not even sure – sometimes you’ll reach for an idea and it’s like trying to learn a new language – so a part of it is sometimes reaching for different instruments to get that breakthrough.

“A lot of it starts with bare-bones guitar because that’s my go-to, and that’s what I reach for. A lot of it’s lap-steel, that’s my first go-to. I’ll wake up in the morning and play some Weissenborn lap-steel and let that ring out for 45 minutes, just to keep that alive. That’s an instrument where it’s intonation specific – you’ve got to keep your chops up on that one – and then for writing I’ll reach for an electric guitar. There’s a great documentary right now on David Bowie and his first five records [2013’s David Bowie – Five Years In The Making Of An Icon] and the characters that he brought to life on those five albums, and some of those riffs have such an amazing simplicity to them – usually what we’re looking for is right in front of our face, and I often take that procedure to songwriting. What I’m trying to reach for if I just settle into it is just right there.”

Does Harper feel that he conveys most of what trying to get across in his songwriting with the words or the music?

“I think they rely on each other like the left- and the right-hand,” he tells. “I think that the lyrics might stand most strongly on their own as some semblance of poetry beyond what the music might be able to attain without the words, but at the same time they are one another’s sub- and unconscious. They’re incredibly co-dependent.”

He’s always had the knack of making the words and narratives seem so effortless, but he explains that this belies the effort that is required to get them to a point where he’s happy sharing them with the world.

“I’m so super-glad to hear you say that, because I’ll spend an hour in a song belabouring whether I should put ‘if’, ‘and’ or ‘but’,” he laughs. “Honestly I overwrite, and sometimes I’ll overwrite and there will be three pages and I’ll spend as much time editing the damn song as I did to write it! I’ll get lost pondering which verse is better and you can’t ask someone because it’s taking a huge chance and might even depend on what mood they’re in, you’ve got to be your own quality controller in that regard. And I write a lot of songs as well – not just writing a lot in each song, I write a lot of songs – and I think that’s also a strength, because when you overwrite you can recognise what’s rising to the top. I’m not scared to write a bad song, because at this point I’m confident that from that process I’ll learn more about the craft, and there may be a piece in that bad song that I can pull for a future song that is a strong piece of music.”

Can he tell during the actual process whether a song is a keeper or a perhaps that it’s a bit weak?

If I was desperate to be relevant I don’t think I’d make a record with my Mum. 

“That’s also a good point, once you know how to do something you’re doing it how you know,” Harper ponders. “There’s a beauty in the unknown when it comes to songwriting, so I don’t really want to know how to do it, I just want to know that it’s there to be done and that I’ve had some luck with it that may push me forward and propel me into what could be the best song I’ve ever written, hopefully for me.

"I still feel – and this isn’t because I’m an old guy wanting to make music, because there’s a trap too thinking that you’re going to be doing this into old, old age, I’ve got other things to do; other interests, other passions, other hobbies, other loves, even though music is first and foremost – but I want to go out gracefully. You’re not going to hear the Ben Harper electronic record. But I am going to push the boundaries, and what I do do I’m going to take it as far as I can. And I still do feel, and it’s not because I’m jaded and desperate to be relevant – if I was desperate to be relevant I don’t think I’d make a record with my Mum – but I really do feel a calm.

"I could sit back here and write ten [2000 hit single] Steal My Kisses every year and just coast, but that has no interest to me. I could write ten [2003 charting album] Diamonds On The Inside and just make that style of music until I strike pay dirt with a radio hit – that’s of no interest. I want to write the music that I’m moved by, so – to come a full circle and answer your question, how do you know you have a good one on the line? – it’s when the blood pumps through your heart a little bit faster. You start to sweat a little bit and the room gets a few degrees warmer, and you go, ‘Okay, I think something’s going on here’. It’s a great feeling.”

There was that one year, ’96 in Byron Bay, that not only shifted things in Australia but next thing you know I’d be walking down the streets of Berlin and someone from Australia would go, ‘Hey mate!’ It was, like, ‘Woah!’

What about his long-term relationship with Australia – it feels at this end that he’s always had a special rapport with this country and our crowds; is that belief reciprocated?

“Oh, for sure!” he thunders. “I’ve often spoken about the rationale behind that, and it’s because you were the first place that spoke English that really lifted me up over the hump. There was that one year, ’96 in Byron Bay, that not only shifted things in Australia but next thing you know I’d be walking down the streets of Berlin and someone from Australia would go, ‘Hey mate!’ It was, like, ‘Woah!’ At that point I was 24 or 25 years old, and people around me were telling me that I’d be lucky to make two records and get past the sophomore slump, so after hearing all this non-stop [negativity] when there is that alarm sound [like what happened] at Byron Bay Blues and throughout Australia it’s a watermark. It’s something that you can’t deny or ignore its effect. When you’re walking down the streets in Chicago and a group of Australian tourists come up to you before anybody from Chicago, it’s like, ‘Okay, thank you!’ You’ve just got to step back and say, ‘Thank you’ – one giant, collective ‘thank you’ from me to a nation.

Why does he think that his music has resonated here so much?

“I had this exact discussion before Jeff Buckley died with Jeff, because we couldn’t figure it out,” Harper admits. “Where Jeff was working and where I was working, in ’95 or ’96 I had this conversation with Jeff, our music was mirroring each other where it was finding its way to recognition; it was the exact same places. And I’m not comparing our music, we just come out of the same class and had that conversation.

"First and foremost you can’t pick your fans – you’re truly lucky to have ten of them, and I never lost sight of that. When I was a little kid in my family’s music store with a guitar, a song and a dream learning blues songs on my grandmother’s old Martin… my grandparents and my family and the music store I grew up in are folk and folk-based; they’re so anti-establishment that any success was a sell-out! If you weren’t giving half of what you made away then you weren’t politically active enough, and that’s where I come from – a real working-class, socialist perspective.

"One of my great uncles graduated top of his class at Harvard, and went back to leading the union and being a kerbside baggage handler and a union organiser – fact! The class structure as it has been formed throughout the years, taking part in it beyond what you need to survive is selling out – that’s in my pedigree. No one in my family is ever beyond an ass-whippin’, that’s for sure. From each other, that is.”

If I had to choose one [festival] a year, it would be Byron Bay – hands down, bar none.

And, tellingly, the bluesman feels a similar affinity for the institution of Byron Bay Bluesfest itself.

“If I had to choose one [festival] a year, it would be Byron Bay – hands down, bar none,” Harper smiles. “That’s including Coachella, Lollapalooza, you name it – my first one would be Bluesfest. There’s a whole bunch in line for second, but Bluesfest is number one by a street. It’s because it’s home – it’s home base. It’s one of the rare festivals that can grow in leaps and bounds – it expands and grows – but it still comes from the same place. When I’m walking around seeing different music and watching shows I still feel the same way as I did [in the early days]. When I’m watching Michael Kiwanuka I feel the same as when I first saw Candye Kane – the same people are there, with the sole purpose of improving their way of life through music. You can feel it in every corner, and I’ve seen some insane shows down there.”