Yeah, Ben Harper’s UB Center for the Arts show made me cry

Harper & the Innocent Criminals truly burned one down in Buffalo

Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals at UB’s Center for the Arts, October 7, 2023. Photo by Jonathan Coe.

Ben Harper knows how to go there.

He comes across as humble, self-effacing, maybe even a little bit shy, as he takes the stage. And then he starts to sing. And you realize that he now owns you, heart and soul, for as long as he decides to stick around. 

Such was the case when Harper and his band the Innocent Criminals ambled onto the boards at UB’s Center for the Arts on October 7, before a relatively small crowd that would prove to be a wholly energized, unified assemblage by show’s end. 

The 5 musicians simply materialized, Harper nodded at the crowd, and then all proceeded to the front of the stage and began singing “Below Sea Level,” from 2022’s Bloodline Maintenance album, in multi-part harmony, a cappella. Harper stepped back from the mic, and suddenly, his voice filled the room, as if the power of the emotion behind the song was enough to make a microphone redundant. 

Yeah. He went there. And he wasted no time doing so. 

Photo by Jonathan Coe.

For the following 90 minutes, Harper and his band - bassist Darwin Johnson, guitarist Alex Painter, keyboardist Chris Joyner and drummer Oliver Charles - basically ripped our beating hearts out of our chests and showed them to us, before ultimately returning them, unscathed but permanently tattooed, and sending us on our way.

I’ve attended thousands of concerts, and hundreds of them have been transcendent affairs. But very few have packed the emotional wallop, vast dynamic range and and impactful intimacy that marked this one. 

Harper’s been at it for a minute. Since dropping his debut effort Welcome to the Cruel World in 1994, he’s proved himself adept at blending folk, the deepest Black American blues, soul, R&B, reggae, funk, pop and various strains of rock - from sly and laid-back to full-on ferocious - into a soul-stirring hybrid that finds conceptual continuity in his gorgeously emotive singing and smart, engaging, aware, observational lyrics. We got a little bit of all of this during the UB show. 

Whether Harper was leading the band through the supple groove and indelible chorus of “Diamonds On the Inside,” or offering a solo rendition of “Don’t Give Up On Me Now” that rather handily reduced me to tears, his performance was an emotionally resonant one, as if he was leaning hard on the music to pull him through, or perhaps, that he was looking for the sort of redemption that comes only when we reveal our true, naked selves to others.

It could be that the 2021 death of his brother-in-music, Innocent Criminals founding member and bassist Juan Nelson, still lends Harper’s live performances the patina of an artist working through their grief the only way they know how. The cancellation of several gigs due to Covid in the touring party, just previous to the Buffalo show, might’ve lent an urgency to the performance as well. 

Whatever the reasons - and doubtless, they may be myriad - Harper was engaging in something that goes far deeper than mere entertainment here. 

His take on Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” - which was prefaced by Harper recounting a childhood spent at the Harper family-owned Folk Music Center in Claremont, California, where he was immersed in music by the time he’d learned how to speak - underscored this fact. It felt like a prayer, much more than it did a mere take on a storied tune. (The Claremont story resonated particularly deeply with one of our concert crew for the evening, who grew up there, and remembers the Harper family store well.)

Ben Harper at UB's Center for the Arts. Photos by Jeff Miers.

To be sure, there was plenty of joy in the building too, and Harper and company lassoed it during a jubilant “Steal My Kisses,” with Harper further engaging that levity during the casually anthemic ode to the benefits of indulging in the occasional recreational spliff, “Burn One Down.”

A lengthy, multi-section take on the strident rocker “Faded” broke down into a solo spot for Harper, who, seated at center stage with his Weissenborn electric lap slide guitar, took us deep into the Mississippi Delta, before returning us to the raucous “Faded,” via a brief stop to say hi to Led Zeppelin’s “The Ocean.” It was at this point that it struck me as utterly absurd that the Center for the Arts wasn’t packed to the rafters for a gig of this magnitude. But happily, those who were there made it count.

The joy and levity were married to social activism during the torrid gospel-reggae-rock of show-closer “With My Own Two Hands,” by which point the crowd had come unglued, seemingly overwhelmed by the - dare I say it - spiritual power of the music, and bathing the performers in a raucous standing ovation as they left the stage, all smiles and gratitude. 

The pristine acoustic environment of the Center for the Arts lent an air of majesty and momentousness to what still would’ve been a life-affirming concert even if it was presented in a dingy gin-joint with a lousy PA.

The sound at the CFA was absolutely impeccable. And the performance? It landed firmly in the unforgettable category. 

Photo by Jeff Miers.