Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals

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“I can change the world, with my own 2 hands! Make a better place, oh with my own 2 hands, with my own, with my own 2 hands!”
A couple of thousand people with both hands in the air singing along, holy shit this concert was awesome!!

After a full on week @ camp me n Ying (1 of the US staff) drove to Royal Oak a nicer suburb of Detroit. The Royal Oak music theater is an old school theater with big high ceilings, balcony, seating and plenty of standing room.

When we got there a guy called Tim Freud was playing and he was pretty good. I went to get a beer from 1 of the downstairs bars and had to wait 15 mins to get it and it was my first one so I was thirsty as! We went up to the balcony and it was a awesome view ( up high centre stage), right on the railing not too crowded, next to 2 hot yanks and the bar was 5m behind me and no wait, so we stayed there all night!!

Then Ben and The Innocent Criminals came out to a tremendous cheer. @ the back 2 drum kits adorned with every percussion instrument imaginable, to the left the big black bassist, to the right the white dude on the keys and centre, front the chair with Ben and his lap steel.

They played steal my kisses, diamonds on the inside, burn 1 down, with my own 2 hands, burn to shine, wicked man (of the new album) just to name a few. They bought this old dude out to do harmonica for a few tracks, he was amazing. And there was an extra guy on electric for a lot of the songs.
Then they went of and Ben came back and did some solo stuff please bleed, amen omen and a few cruisy ones and he played one of Tim Freud's songs with him. Then he went off and then they all came back for an encore of about 5 songs with a huge drum solo battle between the 2 innocent crims drummers! All up he played for over 3 and half hours, it was tops!

I took my camera and got a heap of movies of all the top songs so I don’t forget but it would be impossible to forget, this was such a good concert!!

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