Advertisement ::

Enlarge Cartoon

Ben Harper ©MJF/Lionel Flusin

Montreux, Switzerland- Ben Harper took the stage on 7 July with no fanfare, but to great applause, and launched into “Diamonds on the Inside.” Having seen Harper in three live performances in Switzerland, I thought he looked calm even serene. Age has served him well.

His second number was a bluesy roll, reminiscent of Stevie Wonder (whose “Superstition” he has covered in the past). On Wednesday night he was all blues, all moaning bass, winding guitar solos and wailing drums that left me thinking of early Led Zeppelin.

For the third number he sat down and leaned into a slide guitar, moving his fingers over the fret like Jam Master J on a piece of a squeaky vinyl – this is the best intensity from Harper since “Fight for Your Life.”

The first half of the show was more electric, less acoustic hootenanny which had become a Harper standard. Harper’s band, Relentless 7, comes across as more of a team effort than what I remembered from the earlier shows, with at least guitar and drums taking up significant stage presence. What I initially mistook for calm, began to look more like a seasoned wisdom – Harper is in this for the long haul, not just the moment, and I can only look forward to the continuing evolution of his music.

“Feel Love,” a track from the upcoming album “Give ’till it’s Gone,” reflected Harper’s penchant for poetry, but the gloves came off when Harper and his band layed into one of the best renditions of his “Better Way,” I have heard. “This is now officially one of my favorite rooms to make music in, this is a great room!” Harper said as he engaged the audience and introduced the band, letting his guitar strings cool off.

One of Harper’s great charms is how disarmingly sincere, and even cautious, he is in conversation – there is no major sermonizing, or worse, detachment, but rather reserved reflections on what music and music making is for him. “Keep it Together,” was introduced as a meditation on the yin and yang of coupledom and the recognition that strength sometimes means letting your partner carry you.

Listening to this band, I thought, this is the new breed of blues (for me), and then recalled saying the same thing 13 years ago when I first heard Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals. When they broke out with “Red House,” the band had been playing for at least one hour and 45 minutes, and the crowd went wild, myself included – if anyone alive should be playing Hendrix, it is Ben Harper.

Harper followed up with “Up to You Now,” a new number he introduced as having a socially conscious message – and not suprisingly to me, one of the weaker songs in an otherwise outstanding performance.

At the two hour mark, or around midnight, the band walked off stage and the crowd howled for a good 10 minutes before Harper and the Relentless 7 rewarded us with what in layman’s terms is known as an encore. I lost count of the “encores,” at 6 or 7 numbers including: “Angel’s Arms,” “Another Lonely Day,” “Walk Away,” “Sexual Healing,” “When I See Your Face,” another piece from their upcoming album and a hallucinatory slide guitar solo, after which Harper lost track of the band set list, “Because, sometimes you get lost in here [points to his guitar], in the music.”

I left Harper on stage playing after 3 hours, thinking of work in the morning, but I swear I felt like I was walking away from an all you can eat buffet (the US, not the Swiss kind) with a fresh platter of lobster tail on the table.

Read all of our Montreux Jazz Festival reviews.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.