Rap poet, fire-and-blues preacher, and fearless philosopher Ben Larson died unexpectedly during the night at his Duluth home on Thursday, Feb. 15. He was 44. 

Larson produced some of the most creative and inspiring Minnesota music of the past two decades with the groundbreaking rap outfit Crew Jones and later with the genre-defying four-piece Southwire. The latter earned critical acclaim for its 2013 debut album and passionate live shows. Larson leaves behind his partner, singer-songwriter Sarah Krueger, who performs as Lanue, and their one-year-old daughter.

“I am at a complete and utter loss and so incredibly heartbroken. My tiny family has lost its pillar,” wrote Krueger in a Facebook message shared with friends and fans. “The grief is immense, but I hear Ben saying: ‘Babe you got this, I’m proud of you. This is hard but we can do hard things together.’”

Krueger wrote Larson had a larger-than-life stage presence and his music served as a conduit for  lessons that sent an audience on a search for a deeper truth. Larson and Krueger’s performance together at the 2013 Duluth Homegrown Music Festival sparked their relationship, she said, and a few years later Larson began to withdraw from the spotlight and embrace “old age.”

“To be quite honest, Ben resented this idea that an ‘artist’ was a person on a stage doing mystified magic tricks,” Krueger wrote. “He always said he wished he could be seen as a whole person. He felt truly seen by just a handful of people in his time here on earth.”

Krueger called Larson a deep, multi-layered person who in the end embraced fatherhood, tended to a large garden, and cooked meals for his family instead of performing to big audiences.

“Although he would be pleased to lead a revolution when the time came, he decided instead to continue going inward,” she wrote. “He focused on his most substantial art project yet - a tiny microcosm of a greater life that he envisioned and hoped for all.”

Krueger said in his last Valentine’s Day card to his family, Larson wrote that the year was easily the best and most profound part of his life.

Larson grew up in St. Paul where he met his longtime friend, bandmate and producer Sean Elmquist in junior high. After high school and some college, Elmquist and Larson moved to the Grand Marais woods where they lived in a trailer and developed a new, cutting-edge hip-hop sound as Crew Jones. Larson adopted the stage moniker Burly Burlesque and took over lead vocals.

“He was freestyling, just improvising, and everything was so fully formed. He was able to form these full thoughts and sentences in a completely new way,” Elmquist tells The Current. “He took it very, very seriously.”

Elmquist says Larson wasn’t concerned with a follow-up to their popular 2003 second album Who’s Beach, instead he thrived on live audiences. “We played shows and that’s where he really refined his stage presence and his message,” he says. “He was very, very focused on his philosophical and political projects and he channeled that into his live performance. That’s what he cared about.”

Elmquist and Larson collaborated with singer-songwriter Jerree Small to form Southwire in 2010. The more reserved, heavy folk sound provided a different platform for Larson to share his work and brought the band to bigger Twin Cities stages like First Avenue and the Dakota.

“People loved it,” says Elmquist. “Crew Jones was very contentious and divisive towards the end, so (Southwire) was a huge breath of fresh air. Crew Jones was more like punk rock, a confrontational musical project. Southwire – the edges were definitely rounded off. It created opportunities to explore things at a greater depth, which was really good for him, more mature.”

Small provided gentle, pretty melodies and Larson, sitting in a chair with a guitar, served as a boisterous counterpoint. “He was able to channel it into an evangelical, charismatic, street preacher type of vibe. Which he was very into,” says Elmquist. “Both of us were very much students of the American music form. Rap music was very, very important up to the day he died, but American music and its roots were very important, too.”

Small says Larson brought a Sister Rosetta Tharpe song to the Southwire setlist.

“Both Ben and Sean, their love of music ran so deep. They were more knowledgeable about folk and folk history than I ever was,” says Small. “It was such an honor to work with them.”

Alan Sparhawk, guitarist and co-founder of the Duluth band Low, said in a message that Larson was not only well-read, but able to translate his knowledge into words of wisdom. “I’ve seen him take the most gallant risks on stage, struggling with the moment, searching right there in front of you and just when it seemed that all was chaos, fire would begin to come out of his mouth and time would stand still for a few minutes while the air burned with truth.”

Duluth musician Marc Gartman said Larson could stare down an audience like a bullfighter and take full control of the proceedings. Gartman attended the Homegrown performance when Krueger and Larson traded verses on Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing).” “It was the sexiest little courting ritual for all of us to witness,” he said in an email. “Dancing and singing across the stage in unison, playing off each other with unabashed flirt. Perfectly in sync, snug together as a puzzle piece.”

Elmquist says too many years of rock ’n’ roll partying took its toll, leading Larson away from music-making and into a quieter life with Krueger. 

Sparhawk agrees, saying the move worked out for Larson: “When he became a father, I think every other father who knew him had to tip their hat, knowing he would be one of the greatest.”

Krueger’s friend Hally Sharrow established a GoFundMe campaign to help Krueger and her daughter Luella with the financial burdens that come with such an unexpected loss. “Sarah is so loved and supported by everyone in the community we just want to support her anyway we can,” said Sharrow. “It’s pretty moving to see all the touching stories and tributes.”

Small said she will miss Larson’s deep friendship and creative power. “When we’re lucky, we cross paths with a few key people at a few key moments who infuse our lives with passion and magic. Ben Larson will always be one of those people,” she wrote in an email. “It is heartbreaking and impossible to think of him as gone. I treasure the chance to have shared a few songs in this life and I hope we'll sing together again on some other side.”

A visitation to remember Ben Larson will be from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. with a service at 3 p.m. on Saturday, March 9, at Sacred Heart Music Center, 201 W. 4th Street, Duluth.