Ben Harper Releases New Single “We Need To Talk About It”

Photo: Ben Harper by Michael Halsband

Ben Harper Releases “We Need To Talk About It”
Three Time Grammy Award-Winning Artist Shares Blistering New Single
From Upcoming Album ‘Bloodline Maintenance’
Out July 22 via Chrysalis Records

3x GRAMMY® Award-winning singer-songwriter/musician/producer Ben Harper has shared “We Need To Talk About It,” from his upcoming album, Bloodline Maintenance out July 22nd.

Produced by Harper and GRAMMY® Award-winner Sheldon Gomberg, “We Need To Talk About It” marks the first single from Harper’s eagerly anticipated fiercely personal soulful album, Bloodline Maintenance, due via his new deal with Chrysalis Records on Friday, July 22. Pre-orders are available now HERE.

Propelled by Harper’s blisteringly funky guitar, “We Need To Talk About It” defiantly addresses the wounds of slavery through a sharp-edged call-and-response with gospel-fueled backing vocals and pounding rhythms augmented by the distinctive sound of the African talking drum.

Watch “We Need To Talk About It”

Listen to “We Need To Talk About It” HERE

Harper – joined by his longtime band, The Innocent Criminals – will herald Bloodline Maintenance with an epic world tour highlighted by North American and European headline dates, festival performances, US shows alongside Jack Johnson, and a 15-night run supporting his recent collaborator Harry Styles at Los Angeles, CA’s Kia Forum. More headlining dates will be announced.

Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals World Tour 2022 Dates See HERE. 

For updates and ticket information, please visit HERE

The new album is a work largely inspired by the loss of a longtime friend and the lingering influence of a mercurial and charismatic father, Bloodline Maintenance sees Harper performing the majority of the instruments on his own, spanning guitar, bass, drums and an eclectic assortment of percussions including a plastic toy snare. His 17th studio LP – and first since 2020’s instrumental Winter Is For Lovers–and the first non-instrumental solo album of new songs since 2016. The new album is further fueled by Harper’s signature lap steel, supercharged through a powerful Dumble amplifier creating a truly unruly tone that Harper describes as “a sort of a merging of Robert Johnson and Jimi Hendrix.”

“It was like I was moving forward and venturing into places I had never been before,” Harper says. “Taking everything I’ve learned from every other record and kind of setting fire to it all and starting over. And I knew the sounds I was hearing in my head were so unorthodox that I had to do most of it myself.”

Applying the inventiveness of hip-hop to longstanding paradigms of soul, blues and jazz, spinning it all forward into a reconfiguration of a new black Americana, Bloodline Maintenance continues Harper’s long history as one of his generation’s most potent protest singers. Persecuted by local authorities for being a communist, his grandfather moved his family west where their music store, the Folk Music Center and Museum in Claremont, CA, proved a vital hub in a thriving Southern California folk scene. There Harper learned guitar as a child, playing his first official gig at the age of 12. By the time he was 21, he was touring with blues legend Taj Mahal. The years that followed have seen Harper amass international critical applause and a worldwide fan following, winning three GRAMMY® Awards (out of seven total nominations) for his own genre-traversing body of work while also producing acclaimed albums by Mavis Staples, Rickie Lee Jones, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Natalie Maines, Ziggy Marley, and others. An inveterate collaborator, Harper has also recorded with a diverse span of artists ranging from John Lee Hooker, Charlie Musselwhite, and Jack Johnson to Ringo Starr, Keith Richards and, most recently, Harry Styles, contributing his signature guitar work to the latter superstar’s chart-topping new album, Harry’s House.

Ben Harper Bloodline Maintenance Tracklist
Below Sea Level
We Need to Talk About It
Where Did We Go Wrong
Problem Child
Need to Know Basis
It Ain’t No Use
More Than Love
Smile at the Mention
Honey, Honey
Knew the Day Was Comin’
Maybe I Can’t

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