Q+A: Bill Champlin

Monday, Sept. 17, 2007 | 7:14 a.m.

Who: Sons of Champlin

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday

Where: South Point Showroom

Tickets: $30-$40; 797-8055

More info: sonsofchamplin.com

Also: Bill Champlin will sit in with Santa Fe and the Fat City Horns tonight at the Palms. He plays as a member of Chicago on Oct. 18-31 at the MGM Grand's Hollywood Theatre.

Bill Champlin, 60-year-old singer, guitarist and keyboard player, is so busy he sometimes meets himself coming and going.

Champlin is best known as a member of the legendary band Chicago. He joined in 1981 before "Chicago 16"; the band's now up to "Chicago XXX."

He's also written Grammy-winning songs for George Benson and Earth, Wind and Fire.

Back in 1965, he founded the Sons of Champlin, which carved out a reputation as a funky horn band in the middle of San Francisco's psychedelic scene.

The group still gets together a couple of times a year "for some slammin'," as Champlin likes to say.

Chicago pays the bills. The Sons remain a labor of love.

So tonight when Chicago plays a gig in Northern California, Champlin will be missing.

"After 26 years, I can send a substitute," Champlin said last week during a telephone interview from Sons' rehearsals in Marin County, the scenic suburbs north of San Francisco where the band began. Two of the band members still live there, one is now in Mendocino, and Champlin lives in Nashville. The band now uses guest artists to fill out its horn section.

The Sons are getting ready for their first Las Vegas engagement - Tuesday and Wednesday at the South Point.

Chicago has performed here countless times.

When Chicago plays at the MGM Grand next month, Champlin promises he won't send a substitute.

He'll be there.

Slammin'.

Q How are the Sons of Champlin doing?

The Sons are up and runnin', man. We're up and runnin' when we can do it, get our little team together and get goin'.

(Guitarist) Terry Haggerty isn't playing with us anymore. Out of 21 songs, 19 were guitar solos and that just wasn't enough for him. We've got Carmen Grillo now. He's awesome. He played with Tower of Power eight or nine years and then bailed out of that scene. I've known Carmen for years. He's one of the best guitar players I know, plus he sings his (butt) off. It's ridiculous. We've still got Jimmy Preston on drums and Dave Schallock on bass and Geoff Palmer, who plays vibes and keyboards. Guitarist Carmen Grillo has replaced Haggerty. It's still slammin'.

How often do you guys get together to perform?

Whenever we have time. A lot of it has to do with how much Chicago is working, and it's been working a lot the last couple of years. For the past 10 years the Sons have toured maybe twice a year, a couple of weeks twice a year. That's about the only time I can find, usually. But the last two years we've just gotten together once a year. But when get into rehearsal and set to go, it's like, "Wow. We don't have as much chance to play as we use to." So we just get right into slammin'.

Do you prefer the Sons or Chicago?

I'd like to do Sons more often. But it's kind of hard. I hate to get into the situation of choosing, Sons or Chicago. I like to do them both. They both have something. That's been the gift that keeps on giving. It's not just the money. It's been a pretty cool thing.

What was it like for you in the Bay Area in the '60s?

I was married while I was still in high school. I had to write myself a note in my senior year to the principal. "Sorry, Bill was absent last week. His wife just had a baby." So I'm handing a note to the principal and a cigar at the same time. It was a real classic move. I still graduated. Then a couple of years later I rolled a joint in my diploma and smoked it. It wasn't very good paper, but it was saying something. I'm not sure what it was saying. The '60s. I remember a few moments, and that was one of them.

What's your take on the San Francisco music scene from that time?

It was slammin'. The weird thing about the San Francisco scene was that the stuff that really got the international notice was really kind of skittle band stuff, kind of a little folky - the (Jefferson) Airplane and the (Grateful) Dead and all that kind of stuff. It really didn't come from any kind of real slammin' place. We kind of grew up listening to James Brown, just like Tower of Power did. But the whole East Bay music scene was awesome in the early days.

We didn't get rich and move to Marin County like everybody else. We grew up here. I'd go get all my records over in Berkeley. I used to go to the Fillmore (legendary music venue in San Francisco) when it was a chitlin' circuit gig (late '50s, early '60s). I mean I saw the Bobby ("Blue") Bland revue in the Fillmore. It was cool, man. You look back on it. I went to a matinee there once. It was the Jefferson Airplane and the Charles Lloyd Quintet (jazz). I went and saw Jack Casady on the same show with Keith Jarrett. It was awesome.

The late Bill Graham, who owned the Fillmore, was a genius. Did you end up playing there?

Yeah. His billing was awesome. He did some crazy stuff. We did one gig, it was the Grateful Dead, Sons of Champlin and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Who would throw together that kind of show? Most promoters would try to get things that kind of seem the same, you know? But Bill would go the complete opposite way with it. Sly and the Family Stone and the Young Rascals. Wow. Except it was Sly before they ever got really big.

B.B. King performed there. Bill was responsible for bringing blues back, I think. Bringing the Paul Butterfield Blues Band out. That whole scene. Between Bill Graham and FM radio, it was a pretty awesome time in the Bay Area. I watched FM radio start here and grow. The first FM station, KMPX, had Larry Miller on from 12 at night till 6 in the morning. He broke (Jimi) Hendrix. He broke all kinds of English groups. Now we're watching all this Internet stuff pick up and grow the way FM did.

How do you account for the fact that the Sons of Champlin never achieved the success of the more famous groups that came out of the Bay Area?

Between you and me, I think we smoked away our whole career. We bought into that whole "stay high all the time" thing. I look at it now, being relatively clean and sober, and go, "Wow, if I'd had only a little bit more clarity on what this career could be and on how hard it was to make it, I would have really cashed in on a lot more of the opportunities we did have." I always say every time opportunity knocked we answered the phone.

We kind of bought the whole hippie hype of that era. Get high and stay that way. And I don't think we had really great managers or great producers. We were kind of an unproduceable band. We just did it the way we did it. We just made a lot of mistakes, I think. People say, "Those guys chose not to become stars." No. We would have been glad to. The breaks just didn't come our way, the way they should have.

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