Description
He’s been called the best-known unknown singer in the world, a musician’s musician, a full-tilt street poet. He’s Bill Champlin, a founding member of the now legendary San Francisco band Sons of Champlin, and a masterful songwriter with two GRAMMY® awards and six critically-acclaimed solo albums to his credit. Fed up with the suits running the music industry, he hasn’t released a solo album in over 10 years – leading fans to ask, “Where have you been?” This cult figure has been hiding in plain sight: playing in the band Chicago and singing some of its biggest hits, and all the while penning a remarkable collection of songs that showcase his own personal artistic sensibility.
With No Place Left to Fall, Bill Champlin has made the album he was born to make, a career-defining record with an honesty and immediacy that reflect his old-school approach to music – and his complete disregard for the old-model music industry.
“It’s not completely auto-tuned and processed like a lot of CDs are lately,” says Champlin. “It may not be dead-on perfect, but I think the dead-on perfect records are just that – dead.”
No Place Left to Fall captures the many sides of Champlin, thanks to Mark Eddinger and Dennis D’Amico at indie label DreamMakers Music who helped him sort through four CDs worth of material to find the 13 gems that best exemplified the range of his artistry. Rather than insist Champlin deliver a particular kind of album that would fit neatly within a genre bin of the now nearly extinct species we knew as record stores, they encouraged him to do it all – ballsy blues numbers, jazz, straight ahead rock ‘n’ roll, funk, R&B and achingly beautiful pop songs that don’t give a damn if they exceed three minutes. “I felt Bill deserved to make a record without having a set of rules,” says Eddinger.
“I went, ‘Wow, you mean somebody wants me to be myself? Dig that!’” says Champlin, who has time and again had to tell major label executives that no, he wasn’t interested in making an album that sounds like the latest flavor of the month. (Go to Champlin’s MySpace page and you’ll see only one artist listed after the obligatory “sounds like” section: Bill Champlin.)
The French get where he’s coming from: “Le grand retour de Mister Groove…Magique,” raved crossrock.com, a French melodic rock website, when No Place Left to Fall was released in Europe last year. The sentiment was echoed from the Netherlands to Italy to Belgium. Writing about Champlin for Jambase and Relix Magazine, Dennis Cook says: “Age has done nothing to diminish his powers, and in fact, brings nuances to the material that a young cat just can't muster.”
Thus far the album has been available only as a download in the United States, but DreamMakers Music will give No Place Left to Fall its physical release in August of 2009. Fans who purchase the physical CD will receive a bonus DVD with a documentary directed by news anchor and longtime Champlin fan Rod Simons on the making of the album and lots of other cool extras, including live footage of Champlin performing recently with the Sons.
It is a solo album, to be sure, but one that reflects an incredible group effort. For years, Champlin had been talking with a group of close friends – guitarist Bruce Gaitsch (Madonna, Celine Dion), bassist George Hawkins, Jr. (John Fogerty, The Zoo) and drummer Billy Ward (B.B. King, Joan Osborne) – about making this album. With DreamMakers behind them, the time was finally right. They spent a few days rehearsing the songs in Nashville (“just until everybody felt good about it – we tried not to overdo it,” recalls Eddinger) and then got out of town so they could focus strictly on recording.
Holed up at The Barber Shop Studios, an old Hopatcong, NJ church converted into a recording studio, they laid down all the basic tracks with Champlin and Eddinger, who also played some keyboards, co-producing. Rather than employ a bunch of digital tricks, they kept ProTools running basically as a tape machine, capturing the musicians playing live together, giving the album a raw, organic quality. (Champlin later laid down background vocals in Nashville in his quintessential stacking style, wherein he does all the parts – a technique used to extraordinary effect in “Never Let Go.”)
The album kicks off in high gear with the first notes of Champlin’s Hammond B3 organ on the fiery, funky “Total Control” followed by the bluesy, jammin’ “Tuggin’ on Your Sleeve,” performed by what Champlin likes to call “the whole fam damnly.” The song features Bill trading lead vocals with his wife, singer-songwriter Tamara Champlin, and their son Will (also a performer), who co-wrote it with Bill and Michael Caruso.
Champlin has always had a gift for evoking the emotional subtleties of romantic relationships and here he hits a nerve once more with the heartbreaking title track, co-written with Tamara and Caruso and taken over the top by bassist Hawkins’ powerful succession of eight notes. But where “No Place Left to Fall” and the exquisite “Never Been Afraid” (co-written with Andreas Carlsson and featuring Champlin and Michael English on lead vocals, Peter Cetera on backing vocals and Steve Lukather on guitar) detail a love in ruins, the contemplative album closer, “All Along,” sends spirits soaring with its message of hope.
Coming from a decidedly more visceral place, Champlin and company kick ass with swampy numbers like “I Want You to Stay” and “Angelina.” The later is a tongue in cheek tune that came about spontaneously. “We were just jivin’ around in my kitchen,” remembers Champlin. “George started playing this little bass line that was so infectious we went, ‘ok, let’s go with that’ and I just started singing, ‘Take me Angelina…’” To those who might jump to the conclusion that the song was penned with a certain movie star in mind, Champlin says: “Sorry to disappoint, but no, I’m not looking to be adopted.”
The collection also includes a version of “Look Away,” the Diane Warren-penned song that Bill and Chicago took to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100. Here the power ballad is stripped way down, similar to the way it was performed live. Keith Howland, lead guitarist for Chicago, guests on the track.
“A lot of times somebody from a band puts out a solo album and you realize it’s just an extension of that band,” says Champlin, who plans to hit the road soon with the guys on No Place Left to Fall. “That ain’t what this is. This album is an extension of what I do and where I’ve been coming from. Just wait ‘til you hear the live versions of these songs!”
For more information, visit http://www.billchamplin.net/ and http://www.chicagotheband.com/