Ben
Harper and his mother Ellen have collaborated to create Childhood Home
(Prestige Folklore), an absorbing, deeply personal collection of original songs
set for release on May 6, 2014. Landing
the week before Mother’s Day, the ten songs on Childhood Home, six written by
Ben and four written by Ellen, explore the intricacies of family life with
honesty and generous intimacy.
The
album’s source can be directly traced to the pair’s highly unusual, musical
heritage. In 1958, Ben Harper’s maternal
grandparents established The Folk Music Center and Museum in Claremont,
California. It was there, amid guitars,
banjos, tablas, ukuleles and all manner of instruments from around the world,
that a distinctively musical family took shape.
Ellen Harper, a talented multi-instrumentalist in her own right,
encouraged her family to use the store (which she still operates) as a musical
laboratory. The center was a magnet for up-and-comers such as Ry Cooder, David
Lindley and Taj Mahal, who became extended family members, providing master
classes in creativity and philosophy, all of which the young Ben Harper soaked
up like a sponge.
“I was a
single mom, so he would come to the music store pretty much everyday after
school, and help out while I was working. I think he just absorbed a lot of
it,” Ellen told a local paper. “It was in his environment, everywhere, because
I used to play in bands, and he used to hang out with us all the time.” “Without that upbringing, I don’t think I’d
be doing what I do,” Ben told the LA Times upon his grandfather’s passing in
2004.
The
tender, artfully crafted story sketches on Childhood Home are laced with an
undercurrent of love, wistfulness and, sometimes, pain. “A house is a home even
when there’s ghosts / Even when you gotta run from the ones who love you most,”
Ben sings on the album opener “A House Is A Home.” On “Memories of Gold,” truthfulness cuts
through sweet nostalgia: “In the winter she wants to be dancer / In springtime
she wants to be a scribe /In summer she wants to be a painter / Come autumn the
mother of a child.” Likewise, the sacrifice and despair of domestic life is
devotedly delivered on Ellen Harper’s “Altar of Love”: “He always works late,
determines his own fate / He’s found his true match; he’s found his soul mate /
Sorry he says, sorry he feels / Can’t help himself, he fell head over heels /
And now she’s another wife and a mother / Sacrificed on the alter of love.”
Ben
Harper produced Childhood Home "like early Elvis," he told Rolling
Stone, after he and Charlie Musselwhite won the "Best Blues Album"
GRAMMY Award for last year’s critically acclaimed Get Up! (Stax/Concord).
"Not one thing is plugged in. It's all acoustic. I think they’re going to call
it ‘Americana,’ but it’s soul, California, folk rock, American."
Addressing
a hometown audience, Ben recently affirmed: “I’ve always figured home is where
you run from, and then run to.” Ben and Ellen Harper find the circle unbroken
on Childhood Home.
Childhood
Home Tracklist:
1. A
House Is a Home
2. City
of Dreams
3. Born
to Love You
4.
Heavyhearted World
5.
Farmer's Daughter
6.
Memories of Gold
7. Altar
of Love
8. Break
Your Heat
9. Learn
It All Again Tomorrow
10. How
Could We Not Believe
