Ben Harper Delivers Effortless Magic on 'Lifeline'

Ben Harper doesn't get writer's block. "Those words sound like Greek to me," he says. "It sounds like something my kids would play with."

The prolific singer, songwriter and guitarist admits he's had challenging moments, but he has never been completely at a loss. "Sometimes I'll have this great idea in my head and then I'll go to play it and it won't come out, and that's frustrating sometimes, but there's always something there to write or write about."

That's not so hard to believe. Even Harper's speaking voice has a soulful rhythm to it. On his ninth full-length album, 'Lifeline' (due out on August 28), the seasoned musician was inspired by the city of Paris and equates this record with a "traveling musician's journal."

After nine months on the road, Harper and his band the Innocent Criminals recorded the album in the City of Light itself in just seven days on a 16-track analog tape machine. "It just makes sense," he says of recording in Paris immediately following the tour. "You've got all your best equipment, and your musical abilities are never as sharp or as heightened as when you've been consistently on the road."

The album was named after its last song, which Harper says represents a combination of the best of each of the other songs on the disc. When he went to record "Lifeline," he began with an instrumental, which he would eventually call "Paris Sunrise #7." In one sitting, a bit of that effortless magic came out, and it was all captured on tape.

"I've never played that piece of music, and I'll probably never play it that way again, but at the moment it was improvised and it went right into 'Lifeline,'" Harper says. "That was all in one take. I had done variations of 'Paris Sunrise #7,' but it had never gone there until that moment."