HEART OF STEEL
WHEN YOUR VOICE is as strong as Ben Harper’s, it’s only natural to sing with all your heart, all the time. How many other guitar aces could fathom winning a gospel Grammy singing with the Blind Boys of Alabama? So maybe it’s not crazy to consider how Harper waited this long to record an instrumental showcase of his other divine gift, a signature sound on lap steel. Sophisticated, sexy, revealing and rewarding, Winter Is for Lovers (Anti-) was worth the wait.
The two-time cover artist has a long history in these pages, and in 2018, when he announced that an instrumental record had been on his mind for a long time, he also said he had a new lap steel created by archtop icon John Monteleone. No one figured it would completely win the day in the studio over the two lap steels he’s most famous for playing: the Weissenborn acoustic and his signature electric Asher. Imagine a jazzy vintage archtop combined with a bountiful Hawaiian lap steel, plus the sparkling richness of a traditional flattop, and you’ll start to understand the essence
