The tour kicks off September 1 at Macky Auditorium in Boulder, Colo., and features stops in well-known theatres across the country, including the Chicago Theatre (September 6), Ryman Auditorium in Nashville (September 12), Radio City Music Hall in New York City (September 15), the Orpheum Theatre in Boston (September 23), Massey Hall in Toronto (September 28-29), Gusman Theatre in Miami (October 31), the Majestic Theatre in Dallas (November 5), Kelly Auditorium in Portland, Ore. (November 12), and the Paramount Theatre in Seattle (November 14-15).

Opening duties will be shared by Piers Faccini and Donavon Frankenreiter.

Presale tickets for some shows are still available through www.benharper.net. Tickets for the rest of the dates are available through Ticketmaster.

The band’s new album, Lifeline, is due to hit the shelves August 28. The disc was recorded live over seven days in a Paris recording studio at the end of a nine month European tour.

Harper said he’d always wanted to record that way, but it had never been logistically possible until then.

“A dream of mine had always been to make a record in Paris,” Harper said. “But to fly everyone over and put them up, it would be too expensive; it just seemed like something I would never get to do.

“At the first soundcheck on the European tour, I was like, ‘Wait a minute – we’re in Europe for seven weeks with our best technicians and our best equipment…instead of soundchecking every day for seven weeks, how about we take that time and do pre-production for the next record?’ We used the soundchecks as pre-production, and every day we’d get to the stage and work on new material.”

The experience wasn’t a dream for everyone in the band though. Percussionist Leon Mobley said at first having so many strangers around during the creative process made the whole thing feel a little invasive.

“The process where we took the time from soundcheck to create was a bit touchy for me,” Mobley said. “The process of reaching into your inner feelings to put into the music is sometimes a very personal effort; having the venue people setting up, getting ready, made it very hard to reveal so much.”

Other members of the band, like bassist Juan Nelson, welcomed the opportunities writing new material this way provided.

“Usually, when we’re collaborating in the studio, the songs don’t really get a chance to evolve,” Nelson said. “But we really had a chance to really sit with the music.”

Harper acknowledges he and the band took a big chance in making a record this way and admits things were tough at times.

“It was a recipe for disaster,” he said. “You can’t book a studio on a possibility. We had only a week to record. But I stepped into it with complete confidence, in the music, in the band.

“But at the same time, it took some emotionally charged moments. It wasn’t a cakewalk; it wasn’t as simple as I think I’m making it sound.”

He said in the end the band ended up with something a little more than just a studio album.

“Collectively, the album works as a traveling musician’s journal. It’s like what’s going on in the mind of anyone who’s in the wind, where traveling musicians are. We were going on ten months touring in a year by the time we drug ourselves into that studio.

“One of the most exciting things about Lifeline, other than the accomplishment of making a record, is that this is a band.”