What do you do when you’re widely considered one of the most honest, soulful and spiritual singers in rock music, yet you want to go even deeper?

In Ben Harper’s case, you go straight to the source. You get a little friendlier with the place from which those noble characteristics came.

You find a way to go back in time.

Harper, who will play with his band The Innocent Criminals tonight in Bend, has never had a blockbuster album, but has attracted a massive fan base with his heartfelt songs, prodigious guitar playing and intense live performances.

He has seven albums under his belt, including ”Both Sides of the Gun,” which was released in March, and each is laden with Harper’s unique take on the blues, gospel, folk, soul and rock music of his upbringing.

Harper, 36, grew up in Southern California and spent much of his childhood in his grandparents’ store, the Folk Music Center in Claremont, Calif. It was an instrument repair shop and a museum rolled into one, and music was always in the air.

”(It) was focused around American folk, American blues and American gospel,” Harper said. ”I grew up hearing a wide range of music.”

He has mined those influences over the course of seven records and hundreds of concerts, his mastery of slide guitar driving songs that explore themes ranging from faith, greed and oppression to love and hope.

But for an artist who works mostly on his own, it was a collaborative project that altered Harper’s outlook on music.

In 2004, Harper recorded an album with the Blind Boys of Alabama – one of the groups he used to hear in his grandparents’ store.

The intent of the project was for Harper to produce a couple of Blind Boys tracks, but the relationship flourished, and the end result was ”There Will Be A Light,” which drew critical raves, won two Grammy awards and featured seven Harper-penned songs.

The experience changed Harper’s career and his life.

”(It) was like going to the well, and there’s nothing like going to a well that’s full,” he said. ”There is no (deeper) a well of American historically significant soul music and gospel than the Blind Boys of Alabama.”

The recording session humbled Harper and pushed him to seek a stripped-down, rawer sound on his new album, a two-disc set with one disc of quiet acoustic-based songs and another of fervent rock numbers.

”(The Blind Boys album) redirected me. Had I not had that experience, this record would not be what it is, and I’m excited about what ‘Both Sides of the Gun’ is, and I know how much I pulled from that session,” he said. ”I had never seen a group that was that consistent, confident and uninhibited by the subtleties of soul.”

The subtleties of soul, according to Harper, are the imperfections, the improvisation. Those things are more important than making sure each note is played correctly, or that a song stays perfectly in time, he said. That was the greatest lesson Harper learned from the Blind Boys.

”They get out of their own way to make way for the most sincere aspect of the song they’re singing. They don’t over-think it. They don’t cut it up. They don’t throw it into auto-tune. It’s all rough and ready,” he said. ”I carried that approach with me and will carry that approach with me for the rest of my life.”

As a result, ”Both Sides of the Gun” sounds even better than the music that Harper says is always bouncing around in his head. As both performer and producer, he walked a fine line between making a recording that is neither too polished nor too sloppy.

”I wanted it to be unsteady, but I wanted it to be sought out, but not to the point to where you lose that immediacy that the Blind Boys have such a command over,” he said. ”I’ll settle for perfectly imperfect.”

Even so, recording ”Both Sides” did nothing to change Harper’s long-held feeling that each song, each album and each show feels like the first time, he said.

”Music feels more fresh to me with each new song I write and with each show. It’s not to say that I’m going to be at this pace for 20 more years or anything, but right now it sure does feel right.”

If you go

What: Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals, Bedouin Soundclash

When: 6 tonight, 5 p.m. doors

Where: Les Schwab Amphitheater, 344 S.W. Shevlin Hixon Drive, Bend

Cost: $30 advance plus service charges, $35 plus service charges at the gate, if available; advance tickets available at all Ticketmaster outlets, including all G.I. Joe’s stores, select Fred Meyer stores, and at The Ticket Mill at The Shops at The Old Mill, as well as online at ticketmaster.com or by calling (866) 886-4502

Contact: 322-9383