Written by Hannah Jones
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Maybe it’s my Southern roots showing, but I’m in love with Ben and Ellen Harper’s collaborative album “Childhood Home.” Released May 6, the collaboration is a beautiful and touching folk album that could easily bring tears to so many mothers this Mother’s Day.
Even though there’s a generation between the mother and son, the two share their childhood home, the Folk Music Center in Claremont, California. Ellen Harper’s parents started the store with her grandparents in 1958, giving four (five counting Ben’s kids) generations a life in music. Apparently, a collaboration has been on the table for years now, but it wasn’t exactly feasible until “Childhood Home.”
The song “A House is a Home” starts off the album with the hollow echo of beating a knuckle on a guitar and an accompanying drum beat. Ellen Harper’s sweet purr accompanies her son Ben Harper’s earthy vocals wonderfully.
The lyrics they wrote themselves strike a poignant image: “A house is a home even when it’s dark, even when the grass is overgrown in the yard.”
I feel like I’m standing in front of the house as they sing, “screen door’s broken paint’s peeling from the wood.”
They took me there. And then the guitar solo in the middle of the song seemed so lyrical, I barely noticed there weren’t actual lyrics for about 40 seconds. These two clearly know what they’re doing.
The fifth track on the 10-track album, “Farmer’s Daughter” is probably my favorite. I feel like I should be sweating orange dust and squinting into the distance with an old Western sun blazing down my back. I never realized how beautiful a banjo could sound until this song in which Ellen Harper sings about the grit of a deteriorating family farm. The Western image is pushed even further with a mention of Jesse James and a bank robbery. The song’s a story that’s definitely worth a listen.
Every word, hum, pluck and strum is filled with so much genuine emotion, I can’t help but listen over and over again. With songs like “Born to Love You” and “Heavyhearted World,” this collaboration could have tipped the cliché lovey-dovey scale, but their folk, classic Americana approach gives it an honest and sincere sound.
Though a few lines out of “Break Your Heart” did make me question the cheese factor. “You can run, you can’t hide” and “love conquers all” wouldn’t have been my first choice as lyrics, but they don’t bother me nearly enough to hit the skip button. Because I live for Ben Harper’s melodic and vibrato-filled guitar solos, I’d sit back in a wooden wagon and chew on some dusty straw if it meant a front row seat to his guitar.
Maybe it’s my childhood memories of running around my grandmother’s farm that make me cling to this album, or maybe it’s the sincerity in the mother and son’s voices so close to Mother’s Day. Either way, I wholeheartedly love “Childhood Home” and recommend a listen.