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.
