Sons of Champlin - brings music to the ears

By Brooks Larios

San Diego Beacon Feb. 26, 2004.

Few bands stand the test of time and Sons of Champlin is among the elite. Never quite fitting into a single genre, the band fuses jazz, '70s funk, blues and rock. Now, they are going to be fitting into the San Diego music scene with their appearance Saturday, March 6 at 7:30 and 10 p.m. at Humphrey's By the Bay's Backstage Lounge, 2241 Shelter Island Drive.

"We've always done pretty well in San Diego," said Bill Champlin, who plays guitar and organ in the band and sings. "There's nothing like a pretty major league band in a small venue. There's something about it that's really a gas - or it can be anyway."

Champlin's notable accolades include receiving Grammy awards for co-writing Earth, Wind and Fire's "After the Love is Gone" with David Foster and Jay Graydon and, with Toto guitarist Steve Lukather and Graydon, co-writing "Turn Your Love Around" for George Benson.

"A lot of times it's the collaboration that really makes tunes happen," Champlin said.

Now on the road again nearing San Diego, Champlin said Sons of Champlin used to play in San Diego when Qualcomm Stadium was still known as Jack Murphy Stadium. Their fame took flight in the '60s and '70s as they released seven albums in a ten year time frame. In 1977, the band took a 20-year break, reuniting in 1997.

Originally from the Bay Area, Champlin has called Los Angeles his home for 27 years. For 22 of those years, he has toured with the band "Chicago." Even with this level of notoriety, Champlin stays humble and continues to learn.

"I try to stay on the front of it because it's really easy at some level to just say, 'Hey, I know enough,'" Champlin said. "I think one of the things about maturity, one of the things you've got to watch out for when you start to mature as a musician, is to go, 'Well, I think that's all I need to know.'"

Champlin is joined by a band of top notch musicians, including original members Geoff Palmer, on the keyboard, vibraphone and baritone saxophone; bassist
David Schallock and James Preston on the drums. Guitarist Tal Morris; and guest alto and tenor saxophonist Marc Russo, add layers to the music.

"Tal Morris is our main guitar player, or pretty much our lead guy, and he's bad. He's just bad bad bad," Champlin said, of course meaning bad in the "couldn't be better" sense of the word.

Mic Gillette, who played for Tower of Power, also gigs with the Sons on trombone and tuba.

"I can't imagine what his lips feel like doing that because one is a real tight little mouth piece and the other looks like the other end of the horn," Champlin said.

For a band that has been around as long as Sons of Champlin, it is amazing how relatively unchanged part of their muse is.

"Philosophically, if you look at the songs that are written, I mean, when we started we were up against the Vietnam War. Way early on, just about everybody was writing about that in their own way," he said. "If you lift up the newspaper and you look around now, the songs all pretty much speak to the same things going on now. Now, we've got a lot of the same problems in front of us now that we did then. That's usually one of the things that causes writers to start writing things down."

Sons of Champlin's latest creation "Secret" can be found in multiple locations. It is a CD and DVD recorded at a concert last year. The band keeps busy with other projects under its belt as well, including a studio album to be released next.