Shambrook Puts Faith in His Music : Pop: Orange County-based singer, who was once non-religious, has put spirituality in his music--and the other parts of his life.

As Peter Shambrook makes his way in the world of Christian pop, he should be able to get a rise out of concert audiences simply by telling them that he got his start in Naughty Knickers.

That was the name of the only restaurant in Shambrook’s hometown of Tugun, which is about 50 miles south of Brisbane on the eastern coast of Australia. It featured French food, waitresses in short skirts and leotards, and a tall, 16-year-old surfer who crooned Neil Young and James Taylor tunes for the dinner crowd.

Shambrook recalled his first paying gig Tuesday as he relaxed on the pastel-shaded living-room carpet of his in-laws’ house in Fullerton.

During the interview, Shambrook’s wide-eyed, 9-month-old son, Dane, crawled over to pluck at one of his favorite objects--his daddy’s acoustic guitar. Shambrook’s wife, Patti, trundled off with him after his 6-foot-5 father dandled him for a while in his lap.

Shambrook, 28, would be leaving those domestic comforts the next day: On Wednesday, he was scheduled to fly to Nashville to begin his first national tour, a four-month, 75-show trek on the Christian-pop circuit. Shambrook will play in churches, college auditoriums and concert halls opening for headliner Margaret Becker and second-billed Rick Elias, the former Orange County rocker who produced Shambrook’s debut album for Newport Beach-based Frontline Records.

“A friend and I were walking by one day, coming back from surfing,” Shambrook said, picking up the story of how he came to play at Naughty Knickers. “I was saying, ‘I need a way to get some money,’ and I looked up and saw this place. He dared me to approach the (manager) about playing there. I played there during my senior year of high school for $4 an hour, which is about $2 American.”

The restaurant’s naughty name didn’t offend any Christian sensibilities on the singer’s part, because he didn’t have any.

“I had no religious upbringing at all,” Shambrook said. “In fact, I was dead against it. I was very anti-anything that had to do with God.”

Shambrook did worship his older brother, Greg, an ace rugby player who also was a guitarist. “He was my hero, so I wanted to play guitar, too,” said Shambrook, who also followed his brother’s steps onto the rugby field until a broken wrist persuaded him to drop the bone-jarring sport.

Shambrook drew his musical influences from the record collections of his four older siblings, listening to everything from Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles to the Fifth Dimension. Later, he was drawn to the vibrant Australian pub scene of the early ‘80s, where he watched bands such as Midnight Oil and INXS do their woodshedding before they became international stars.

In 1986, Shambrook moved to England in hopes of starting a rock band. “Friends of mine said: ‘If you’re going to do music, don’t do it in Australia. Do it somewhere else if you want to be successful.’ ”

Instead of finding a band, Shambrook, who had been a carpenter’s apprentice in Australia, found himself driving a dump truck.

“I woke up one morning in the middle of the summer, and it was snowing outside my window. I said: ‘I’m out of here.’ ”

Shambrook came to Los Angeles in the spring of 1986. There he quickly found both a manager and his wife-to-be.

The manager introduced him to a writing partner who had been in Eddie Money’s band. Patti, who was studying sociology at UCLA, introduced him to a new way of looking at religious faith.

“She was key in showing me you didn’t have to be nerdy and mentally submissive to be a Christian,” Shambrook said. “She was living it, and other people I met were doing the same thing. I was being shown, as opposed to being told. I found you could listen to somebody talk about God and not get bored.”

Shambrook lost faith in the songs on which he and his writing partner were working. “I couldn’t emote on them. I was blowing my voice out, and I’d never done that before. I think it was a subconscious rebellion. I didn’t want to be singing those songs, so maybe I sabotaged that.”

About two years after becoming a Christian, Shambrook began writing songs from a spiritual perspective. In 1990, he started playing in Orange County bars and restaurants (Margaritaville in Newport Beach is the spot he plays most frequently).

For the most part, Shambrook applies his exceptional vocal range and reedy-husky timbre to other people’s hits, the required approach for a solo acoustic act on the bar-and-restaurant circuit. But he has worked some of his originals into those shows. Shambrook says he wasn’t sure at first how listeners would take the numbers with overtly Christian imagery and messages.

“Even now, I expect people to come up and say, ‘What are you doing? Cut that out!’ because they’re spiritual in nature,” he said. “But they never have.”

Shambrook said the strong reception he got for “Walk Away,” a ballad that appears on his album, persuaded him that his spiritually based material could speak to people who weren’t thinking in spiritual terms. Shambrook wrote the song about his own struggles not to “walk away” from a close relationship with God, but he is open to earthier interpretations.

“I’ve had people say: ‘That’s a great song. It reminds me of when I broke up with my boyfriend.’ I say: ‘That’s great. I’ll tell you what I wrote it about, but I want you to hang on to what it means to you.’ For anybody to get a message, it has to be receivable on their terms. That’s the way I write. Some of the songs directly mention Christ, and some don’t.”

Shambrook said he wants to avoid the blandly formulaic pronouncements that turned him off to religion when he was growing up.

“I find it hard to listen to songs that say ‘Jesus my Lord and savior.’ He is my Lord and savior, but to hear that (in a song) doesn’t appeal to me. I’m used to hearing Hendrix and Paul McCartney. In a world the way it is, you’ve got to show some reality.”

On his album, “Peter Shambrook,” the declarations of faith have an embattled tone, suggesting that keeping faith is a matter not only of joy, but also of hardship and struggle. Elsewhere, Shambrook looks at some harsh, worldly realities (“Clouds of Thunder” portrays the emptiness that comes with marital breakup) and indulges in some fantasy (“Jungle Drum,” a tough, Stones-flavored rocker, creates a made-up Christian Rambo scenario in which a “born-again” biker named Mr. Lawley combats South American drug lords on their home turf).

On his upcoming tour, which includes a March 27 show at Rose Drive Friends Church in Yorba Linda, Shambrook will continue to play as a solo act. “The acoustic guitar thing is very convenient. You can pull it out and just go,” he said. “The Christian audiences are more accepting of that in major concerts. But getting a band together is definitely on the agenda.”

Frontline markets its records to the Christian audience, selling primarily through religious bookstores. Eventually, Shambrook would like to graduate to a mainstream label.

“Yeah, I want to make music for God. But it’s important for me to get to the audience I came from, which is in the bars and pubs.”