My "friend of a friend of ..." series may have been interrupted a bit lately, but it's not done yet. Consider this more along the lines of "halftime" in that series. None of the "connections" I've taken a look at so far would have been made if I hadn't had the opportunity to meet legendary blues and soul musician Lester Chambers in person at a birthday party in Petaluma, California, on New Year's Eve 2011.
Now, Lester Chambers' time has come.
Lester Chambers
After teaming with Reddit.com co-founder Alexis Ohanian on a successful Kickstarter funding campaign last winter, Lester has released a new album of music, "Lester Chambers' Time Has Come." And, as of today, he also has a new website at www.lester-chambers.com. The website has photos, videos, biographies, links to song samples, contact information, and a link to order the CD.
The album features Lester and his five-piece band, The Mud Stompers -- David Aguilar on guitar, Kenneth Roy Berry on keyboards and percussion, Marcia Miget on saxophone, Kenny "Mo" Susan on drums, and Baron Chase on bass along with music director, engineering, and producing duties.
Not surprisingly, the album includes a mix of rock, soul, blues, and gospel-tinged classics that harken back to the days when Lester and his siblings, The Chambers Brothers, rode the top of the charts in the 1960s and '70s on songs like "People Get Ready" and the timeless classic "Time Has Come Today," both part of the new album with a crisp, modern sound.
The band also shines on classic tunes like "Are You Ready?", "Let's Get Funky," "I Got The Blues," "Hold On," and "Boogie Children," along with the Christmas "teaser" tunes that were released early to Kickstarter donors, "Merry Xmas Happy New Year" and "Jingle Bells."
Now, after the fund-raising campaign followed by recording sessions and engineering and working out copyright issues, the album is ready.
Lester and The Mud Stompers are more than ready themselves. The time has come.
The "publicity train" for my musical friend Lester Chambers in his efforts to raise funds to record a new album with his band The Mud Stompers keeps moving along.
Lester Chambers and The Mud Stompers (left to right, Kenneth Roy Berry, Marcia Miget, Kenny Susan, Lester Chambers, Chick Peteresen, Baron Chase)
As of this writing, with less than three days to go before the end of the Kickstarter fundraising campaign (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lesterchambers/lesters-time-has-come-today) Lester has going with Reddit.com co-founder Alexis Ohanian, the drive has 2,128 backers and it's raised close to $60,000 -- nearly $21,000 over its minimum goal to cover expenses.
January 3 provided a prime example of how busy life has been lately for Lester and his friends. It started in the morning with an appearance at a television studio in San Jose for a recording on Press:Here on NBC -- with Alexis and Lester each being interviewed, followed by one of the funkiest performances of "Let's Get Funky" that I've heard yet out of the band.
From the television studio, the group packed up their gear and headed into downtown San Francisco, where they appeared with Alexis at WeWork Labs in front of an audience of close to 100 people for a Q&A and concert, designed to show how musicians can use the Internet to take greater control of their own artistic destinies.
It was an evening that was captured very well in an article by Drew Olanoff at TechCrunch.com.
It was a night of questions, answers, fascinating stories capturing moments in rock music history, and more musicianship from Lester and The Mud Stompers.
Since then, the phone calls continue at "Mud Stompers Headquarters." A new CD is now in the planning stages, and recording will begin soon.
Yeah, Lester Chambers' train just keeps on rollin' along. It could roll on to a marvelous comeback for a man who believes strongly in miracles, hopefully helping along the way to set the tone for musicians like him who want to be able to do something with their music, on their own terms.
Lester Chambers' campaign to raise funds to record a new album eclipsed its goal of $39,000 by Christmas Eve, and the campaign won't even be over until January 9.
The CNN interview projected on a wall. (Photo courtesy Dylan Chambers)
That made for a very nice Christmas gift for Lester and those close to him.
The day after Christmas, an early New Year's celebration started taking shape. That's because Lester and his son Dylan got up early for a limousine ride to a San Francisco area television studio for a live, cross-country interview on CNN.
This is how a Kickstarter project to raise money for new music can get exposure. It's good for musicians everywhere, and it's good for the fans. A win-win proposition.
Welcome to the modern world of recording music!
Here's an excerpt from Lester and Dylan's live interview from Wednesday morning.
Lester Chambers and Alexis Ohanian have reached a goal in a fundraising pledge drive that was launched less than two weeks ago in order for Lester and his band of Bay Area musicians, The Mud Stompers, to record a new album.
The goal was $39,000 to at least cover minimum expenses by January 9. They eclipsed that goal Monday afternoon. By Monday evening, Christmas Eve, the campaign had raised over $43,000. It doesn't have to stop there.
It helped to get an early Christmas present via a front page article on CNN.com. Click on the link below to read it yourself. The word is spreading. CNN.com: On Web, "Time Has Come" for '60s singer
I wrote here last week about Reddit.com co-founder Alexis Ohanian and soul/rock/blues/gospel music legend Lester Chambers teaming up on Kickstarter (at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1195088551/lesters-time-has-come-today) to launch a public funding campaign so Lester and his current group, The Mud Stompers, can record a new album in the coming months, and so Lester can "pay it forward" by giving money back to the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund charity with part of the proceeds from his new album going to Sweet Relief through Ohanian's Breadpig site.
Tomorrow will mark a full week since Lester and Alexis' Kickstarter campaign was launched, and the goal of reaching $39,000 just to cover recording expenses by January 9 is under one-fourth of the way there as of this writing.
It's a busy time of the year, that's for sure. One thing to consider during this time of giving might be to look at this campaign as a way of sharing a special gift for friends or loved ones in a variety of ways through the investment in/purchase of new music that could be given to music fans through the items that are available by pledging at the various levels: a digital copy of the new album for a pledge of $10 or more; a limited edition CD and more for a pledge of at least $20; all of these items plus a specially designed shirt or an autographed copy of the new CD ... it just gets better.
And don't think Lester and The Mud Stompers aren't ready to get this thing going. Here's a nearly half-hour taste of an appearance they made on a Bay Area public television program in the last few months.
Would you like to see and maybe be a part of a fascinating "Q&A" session with blues/soul/rock/gospel music great Lester Chambers on reddit.com?
The stories Lester tells in this "Ask Me Anything (AMA)" session on Reddit today are like a trip through music history. To see it all, click on the link below or copy and paste the address http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/14sk6a/i_am_lester_chambers_ama/
It's rare that I have or will ever "cross channels" between this blog and my other personal blog, but in this case I can't resist because it does involve music, and it involves my musical friend Lester Chambers.
Lester Chambers and Alexis Ohanian
Lester -- a part of the iconic 1960s and early '70s rock/soul/psychedelic/gospel group The Chambers Brothers -- is part of an impressive drive to get some new music of his out there. It's even more impressive to know that internet entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of the social news and entertainment website Reddit and an activist who played a key role in stopping SOPA legislation in Congress earlier this year, is helping to back up Lester's effort.
They're doing it by kicking off a fundraising drive through the Kickstarter public funding platform online. The effort was launched Tuesday morning.
New music has already been recorded by Lester and his group The Mud Stompers. The funding is designed to cover the expenses of recording a new album by Lester and The Mud Stompers, featuring members of the legendary Tower of Power horns and others. Part of the proceeds from the new album will go toward the non-profit charity Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, which has helped Lester himself through the years.
Organizers are hoping to raise at least $39,000 in order to record the album between now and January 9.
For more information, click on the link below to my article at the blog A View From The Middle (Class).
In the world of soul music, there's one song that I know I could go on and on with when it comes to all the different versions of a song that have been performed by scores of various musicians from all across the musical globe.
The song is "People Get Ready," written in the early 1960s by Curtis Mayfield and gaining popularity first with the group Mayfield was in, The Impressions. Rolling Stone magazine named it the 24th greatest song of all time, and deservedly so among modern music.
It's a song that is indeed timeless, and even though it's a gospel-tinged classic it touches the heart of just about anyone who listens to it.
I did a music playlist in another blog of mine back in early February of this year, back when my wife was thinking of performing this song herself. I included a variety of versions so she could get a good taste of how it's been done through the years. In that blog alone, I came up with 15 different videos of the same song.
It's too hard to pick just one favorite version of this song, because each one of them is performed with tons of heart, soul, and gospel feeling. You can't beat that.
One of the versions has been performed by The Chambers Brothers, with lead vocals done by my friend Lester Chambers. Lester's performing again Saturday night, October 20, at The Mystic Theatre in Petaluma, CA, along with his band The Mud Stompers. If you're in the area, I encourage you to check it out. Chances are that they'll do another rendition of "People Get Ready," and Lester will sing it with just as much heart, soul, and gospel feeling as he did in the 1960s. Lester Chambers and The Mud Stompers at The Mystic Theatre in Petaluma, CA
So, people, do get ready for a stone-cold soul classic. Don't feel like you have to choose the best version on this one. Just sit back and enjoy.
It looks like my friend Lester Chambers of the iconic 1960s and '70s rock/psychedelic/soul band The Chambers Brothers ("Time Has Come Today") has been recording in the studio! Just found a few photos from a recent session at Chick's Place Recording & Rehearsal Studio in San Rafael, California, on Facebook, and I'm sharing one with you here.
Can't wait to see what comes out of this!
Lester Chambers in the studio recording with The Mud Stompers recently. (Photo Courtesy Deborah Parrish)
That New Year's Eve birthday jam that I went to in the San Francisco Bay Area last year was quite the occasion. People poured into a modest home in Petaluma to wish my old friend Baron Chase a happy birthday, have fun, and just jam until the new year arrived.
Neil St. Andrew on keys (Photo By John G. Miller)
Chick Petersen was there to play some smooth guitar. Neil St. Andrew set up his keyboard and threw some nice curves into the mix, like the time he launched into a riff out of Led Zeppelin's "Rock N Roll" and ended up singing it country style like Dwight Yoakam, straight from out of left field.
When Baron took a break from playing the bass to chat with friends and later sat in on the drums, Jim Cervantes unleashed his bass to help keep the party going.
Baron Chase on drums and Jim Cervantes on bass. (Photo By John G. Miller)
One of my most memorable moments from that birthday jam, however, was when I had my back turned to the musicians who were playing away, fiddling with some camera equipment of mine that was underneath a futon. For the first time that night, Lyn Carpenter-Engelkes opened her mouth to sing. The first thing that went through my mind when I heard her soulful style of vocals was, "Who invited Joss Stone to this party?"
Lyn Carpenter-Engelkes (center) sings, with Lester Chambers, Steen Berrig, Chuck Steed, and Linda St. Andrew on New Year's Eve. (Photo By John G. Miller)
The house was rockin'.
It was hard to meet everyone personally at the party that night and get to know them, but the next day I asked the hosts to suggest people who were there as friends on Facebook. I put out requests for them, and I got acceptance.
Acceptance is always nice.
I also got invitations once those friendships started coming in to a gig by a band called The Mighty Groove. It turned out a few of those players from the birthday jam -- Chick, Neil, Jim, and Lyn -- were in the band. I had to fly back home to Utah a couple of days later, so me getting to see a gig by The Mighty Groove in California wasn't going to be possible.
But I did get to know a couple of those people a bit better in the weeks and months to come.
Chick Petersen was also part of Lester Chambers' Blues Revue, now known as The Mud Stompers. Lyn got to sing along with Lester and The Mud Stompers in a couple of live shows on Stageit.com, knocking 'em dead on a cover of the Bill Withers tune "Use Me."
These are just a few more examples of people with musical talent that's dying to be heard. It gets heard in live venues locally. It's the kind of talent, though, that ought to be heard by a bigger audience.
It's the kind of talent that needs to "get out there."
I told you yesterday about a trip I made last New Year's Eve to help my old college roommate/good friend/brother Baron Chase celebrate his 52nd birthday with an annual birthday jam at his place in the Bay Area.
I told you about how Baron serves as music director for Lester Chambers, a musician with a long and colorful history to tell from the world of music with many stories coming from his days with the iconic 1960s soul/psychedelic/rock/gospel group The Chambers Brothers and songs like "Time Has Come Today," "People Get Ready," and "Love Peace and Happiness."
I told you about how Lester lived just a few houses down from Baron at the time. It was quite a rush to me to sit in Baron's kitchen that afternoon, look out the window, and see a part of music history walk up the sidewalk to Baron's front door.
After he came in, we were introduced and shook hands.
"Hi, I'm Lester Chambers."
"Oh, yeah, I know who you are," I responded. "It's an honor to meet you."
From there, we kicked back and watched some NBA on the television before more guests arrived and the jamming began.
Lester Chambers sings "Dock of the Bay" (Photo By John G. Miller)
I sat in an easy chair. Lester sat on a love seat less than five feet away from me. When the people who were there felt like getting into the music and they launched into the Otis Redding classic "(Sittin' On The) Dock of the Bay," and Lester Chambers was singing it five feet away from me, I felt the need to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming. I grabbed my camera to record the moment.
It was a night to remember for sure. Lester is about the most decent, kind, gentle guy you'd ever want to meet. He's genuine. There's no "rock star aura" about him. Having him pull out a blues harp and start playing that is a treat all by itself. Vocally, he sings like a man who's traveled a few hard roads in his life and lived to tell the tales. He sang "Dock of the Bay" like he was telling a hard story about his life, and he sang it with love and care. When he sang Bob Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door," with the guest musicians jamming and singing along, it was like a prayer coming from Lester's heart. Everyone was captivated.
Dylan and Lester Chambers perform together.
Speaking of Dylan, there's Lester's son Dylan as well. Lester would love to come back strong in the music business himself, but he doesn't think so much of himself these days as he does promoting the career of Dylan Chambers.
Dylan's got some vocal talent himself, and he put it on display the night of the birthday jam. He's carrying on a family tradition. Dylan also rattled off tons of information about Lester and the rest of the Chambers Brothers for those more unfamiliar with them. He is an amazing historian when it comes to his famous father and uncles.
Lester and his brothers gave Dylan some great material of musically historic significance to work with. Songs like "Time Has Come Today" don't come around all that often and have the kind of lasting impact that tune has had.
Lester's still trying to leave his mark on the music world in his early 70s. He and Baron turned what was known as the Lester Chambers Blues Revue into a group called The Mud Stompers to note Lester's Mississippi roots, and they played two live shows online earlier this year on stageit.com. I tuned in to both of them and tried to help get the word out to anyone who wanted to tune in. Both stageit.com shows were top-notch in terms of musicianship and tightness, and Lester showed he still has the chops vocally and on that blues harp.
We can't forget Dylan Chambers either. He's determined to make people remember his father and uncles and the musical heritage they created. And he's working on doing something with his talents himself, with his group The Midnight Transit.
Baron Chase is one hell of a bass player. I've been saying that to anyone who'll listen for about 33 years now. I'm saying it even more now, trying to get even more people to pay attention to what he has done and can do.
No, Baron and I aren't blood brothers, but we might as well be. We became roommates in college in 1978, and our backgrounds were as different as could be -- Baron coming from the city around Washington, D.C., where they actually played progressive rock and jazz-fusion on the radio on a regular basis, and me coming from rural Idaho where radio never stretched beyond Top 40 hits.
Baron Chase plays his fretless bass. (Photo By John G. Miller)
Baron and I hooked up as roommates and became good friends, and the experiences we shared made us more like brothers both in the semester-plus we shared a dorm room together and in the few years after that when we'd get together whenever possible after I'd left school to take a shot at being a journalist or a radio disc jockey or whatever came along.
It was Baron who educated me on the "big picture" of progressive rock and jazz-fusion, and I soaked it all up like a sponge. He knew a music fanatic when he saw one. When he was without a vehicle, we'd load his bass into my car and drive off to jam sessions with his friends nearby. I went to a few of his bands' shows. I knew as far back as 1978-79 just what he could do with a bass, and I knew that if he stayed with it he could go far.
In 1984, we lost touch with each other. I found out later that he moved to the San Francisco area, and a while after that -- when I discovered that he had his own website (www.baronchase.com) -- I saw that he'd ended up playing with some of the people that we'd spent so much time together in college and beyond listening to and admiring.
I knew he could do it.
It took some effort, but Baron and I finally reconnected on the phone one night in the summer of 2008, around 24 years after we'd last seen each other. It was like we'd never been apart, even after all that time. Sure, we had a lot of catching up to do, but that closeness was still there like it was in the "old days."
Baron and me. (Photo By Chuck Steed)
Last December, Baron invited me to the Bay Area to visit with him in person (for the first time in over 27 years) and to help celebrate his 52nd birthday with one of his now-annual birthday jam sessions on New Year's Eve. In the past, he's celebrated at his jams with friends like former Santana and fusion percussion/drumming great Mingo Lewis. In the last birthday jam, I got to meet his good friend and neighbor and the guy Baron helps out as music director, Lester Chambers. That's Lester Chambers from the iconic 1960s soul/psychedelic/rock/gospel group The Chambers Brothers, the group that gave the world a song like "Time Has Come Today," the Lester Chambers who did lead vocals when The Chambers Brothers had a hit with the classic "People Get Ready."
Baron may have some great contacts in the world of music, he's done some impressive work with his playing and composing. That's not his full-time career, though, as much as he'd love it to be. And when guitar legend Steve Cropper played with Baron and Lester and their Blues Revue in a benefit show for the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund (a charity that's helped people like Lester through some rough times himself) at Yoshi's in the Bay Area a while back, it was Steve Cropper who looked Baron in the eyes and told him flat-out himself that Baron needs to become better-known.
Quite a compliment. I've been saying that for years.
There are a lot of musicians out there who could have similar stories. In the case of Baron Chase, though, we're talking about my bro.
