Mavis Staples - We Get By (2019) [Hi-Res]

A clarion call to love, faith, justice and brotherhood lies at the heart of We Get By, Mavis Staples’ spectacular twelfth studio album and first full-length collaboration with multi-GRAMMY Award-winner Ben Harper.

Backed by her longtime touring band, Staples breathes extraordinary life into Harper’s compositions on the record, delivering roof-raising performances with both a youthful vigor and a commanding maturity. The arrangements here are spare but weighty, matched by Harper’s suitably lean and thoughtful production, and Staples seizes the opportunity to showcase her remarkable and continued evolution as an artist, one still growing and exploring more than half a century into her storied career.

Today Staples has also released the album’s title track, a duet with Harper; they will perform “We Get By” together for the first time on Jimmy Kimmel Live! this Monday, May 20. Watch footage from their recording session of the song and listen to it HERE.

Staples will also host her third of three 80th birthday shows at Los Angeles’s Theatre at the Ace Hotel on Wednesday, May 22. Called ‘Mavis & Friends: Celebrating 80 Years of Mavis Staples’, the trio of shows – with the first two taking place earlier this month at New York City’s Apollo Theater and Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium - will feature Mavis and new special guests each night including Grace Potter, Jason Isbell, Lucius, Phoebe Bridgers, Elle King, Benjamin Booker and more. Proceeds from the Mavis & Friends shows will go directly towards extending the Newport Folk Festivals Foundation’s support of music education programs.

With Harper at the helm, Mavis and her band recorded We Get By live at Henson Studio in Hollywood, CA, capturing the kind of powerhouse energy and deep pocket grooves that have come to define Staples’ legendary concerts. While Harper had a distinct vision for the sound of the record, he purposely kept his demos to skeletal sketches, leaving space for Mavis and the band to interpret and give flight to his songs in the inimitable way that only they could.

“When I first started reading the lyrics Ben wrote for me, I said to myself, ‘My God, he’s saying everything that needs to be said right now,’” Staples remembers. “But the songs were also true to my journey and the stories I’ve been singing all my life. There’s a spirituality and an honesty to Ben’s writing that took me back to church.”

"We Get By" reminds us that the civil rights work The Staples Singers set out to do a half century ago is still to be done. It's one of her best.” (NPR Music)

“Staples maintains a peer approval rating roughly on par with sunny days and ice cream cones. In an age of walls, she continues to see only bridges.” (The New Yorker)

“The husky confidence of her voice brooks no argument.” (The New York Times)

Mavis Staples, vocals
Rick Holmstrom, guitar
Jeff Turmes, bass
Stephen Hodges, drums
Donny Gerrard, vocals
C. C. White, backing vocals
Laura Mace, backing vocals

Recorded at Henson studio, Hollywood CA.
Recorded and mixed by Ethan Allen at Royal Triton Studio
Produced by Ben Harper