
During the 1980s, in his teen years, Harper began to play the slide guitar, mimicking the style of Robert Johnson. Career Īt the age of 12, Harper played his first gig. It was, according to Harper, an important influence. In 1978, at the age of 9, Harper attended Bob Marley's performance in Burbank, California, where Marley was joined by former bandmate Peter Tosh for the encore. His maternal grandparents' music store, the Folk Music Center and Museum, laid a foundation of folk and blues for the artist, complemented by regular patrons Leonard Cohen, Taj Mahal, John Darnielle, and David Lindley and quotes of William Shakespeare and Robert Frost made often by his grandfather. Harper has two brothers, Joel Harper and Peter Harper. His parents divorced when he was five years old, and he grew up with his mother's family. His maternal great-grandmother was a Russian- Lithuanian Jew.


His late father, Leonard Harper, was of African-American and Cherokee ancestry, and his mother, Ellen Verdries Chase Harper, is Jewish.
