Ever heard of Ben Harper?

**ShaneJ** · Aug-17-2005, 9:43pm

Ben Harper

Listening to Blues "radio" on Yahoo, and this one came up. Ben Harper's 'In The Lord's Arms'. I don't know if all his stuff has mando in it, but this one is good.

**ShaneJ** · Aug-17-2005, 9:53pm

I listened to samples of a few of the other songs. A couple kinda sound a little Old Time-ish. Others are blues, others something else? Not bad at all, but it ain't bluegrass.

**mad dawg** · Aug-17-2005, 11:40pm

That's David Lindley playing mandolin on that track; I really like what he did with it.

(Ben Harper is great, but most of his music focuses on his guitar work rather than mandolin.)

**Dagger Gordon** · Aug-18-2005, 1:42am

Big fan of Ben, but I didn't think he played mandolin.

He plays a lot of slide Weissenborn guitar. His first album 'Welcome to the the cruel world' has a lot of that, and is mostly acoustic. He has generally become more electric over the years. He has done some nice stuff with the Blind Boys of Alabama.

**grandmainger** · Aug-18-2005, 2:17am

Not a huge fan of Ben Harper on the whole, but this is very cool. In addition, you should check out the album he made with the gospel legends 'The Blind Boys of Alabama'... That's also nice.

**DryBones** · Aug-19-2005, 8:57am

saw him on Austin City Limits about a month or so ago...very good!

**delsbrother** · Aug-19-2005, 1:31pm

Speaking of ACL, if anyone remember the set where Ben plays backup Weissenborn for Taj Mahal? Verrrry cool.

It wouldn't surprise me if Ben knew how to play mando (given his background - he grew up literally IN a music store) but I don't think any of his playing's been recorded.