Take 6 Takes a New Tack to Richness and Harmony : The vocal group is backed by a band for the first time. It’s diversifying without abandoning its gospel-jazz base.

Armed only with voices and an exceptional weaving ability with harmonies, they came, they sang, they conquered. Six years after its startling debut on Warner Bros., the vocal group Take 6 is in a field of its own.

When the a cappella group’s debut album was released in 1988, the rich, intricate harmonies and stirring soulfulness wowed critics in jazz and pop worlds and netted three Grammies. Take 6, founded at a college in Huntsville, Ala., suddenly found itself with an international profile.

But the Take 6 you’ll hear this year, and at its show at the Ventura Theatre on Saturday, is something slightly different. The aptly titled new album, “Join the Band,” finds the group diversifying without abandoning its gospel-jazz base. The singers swing from trademark, rich vocal tapestries to R&B; tracks on which they join an actual band.

Guests include Ray Charles, enmeshed in the soulful vocal stew of “My Friend,” Stevie Wonder, who co-wrote, plays and sings on “Why I Feel This Way,” and Queen Latifah, who gently raps her way through “Harmony.”

Without a doubt, this is the group’s most commercially viable album to date, and some jazz-minded aficionados could liken the R&B; emphasis to Al Jarreau’s shift from jazz singer to pop-soul star. But there is enough of a connection to the group’s roots to keep integrity intact.

Member David Thomas spoke from a tour stop in Japan, where the band had been doing several dates. They were in Tokyo on the day the earthquake struck but later traveled to hard-hit Osaka.

With this new album, you went in a different direction. Or maybe I should say you went in many directions. Was that the plan?

I don’t know if going in many directions was the game plan. We always tell ourselves that we want to try new things all the time, so we just decided we’d try using a band this time, and seeing where that could take us.

The first thing we wanted to do was make sure the songs would be enjoyable to people, so we concentrated on writing the songs. After that, we felt that if the song could be better exploited with a band or if it would better exploited with an a cappella arrangement, that’s the way we did it.

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Your first album on Warner Bros. impressed a lot of people with its sophisticated harmonies, which seemed to come out of jazz and gospel, equally. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, that’s fair to say. We grew up in Christian families, so gospel roots were instilled pretty early. Then, as each of us grew older, we started having an ear for more sophisticated styles of music.

At that time, the contemporary Christian music industry hadn’t taken off like it has now. So in order to listen to other styles of music, we had to go outside of the gospel realm. We started listening to a lot of jazz. As a musician, the things you hear just become a part of you. We started incorporating those things into our arrangements.

When Claude (McKnight) started the group, it was more in a barbershop style, doing basic quartet songs. When Mark (Kibble) joined the group, he brought the big band voicings into our arrangements. We go back to families that listened to Mahalia Jackson, the Swan Silvertones and a lot of the old gospel quartets and singers. The jazz came a little bit later.

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When that first album came out, complex a cappella music like this made you a rare bird on the scene. Were you surprised at how well you did?

Indeed. We were surprised from the very beginning because when we first decided to see if we could do this professionally, we courted several Christian record labels, and they weren’t interested at all. We invited them to a showcase, and they either didn’t show up or left before we even started singing.

Warner Bros. came out completely uninvited, sat and stayed. When other secular record companies heard that (Warner’s was) coming, they came as well. A couple days after the showcase, Warner Bros. offered us a contract.

We were surprised at that. Then when we got nominated for three Grammies for that first record and the record sales shot through the roof, we were really surprised. Warner Bros. told us if they sold 25,000 copies of the record, they would be happy. We ended up selling a million.

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As it turns out, now you seem to have started something in the R&B; world, with current vocal groups like Boyz II Men.

I think it’s just that we were the first ones in a natural progression of things. There were a lot of vocal groups before the ‘80s, when technology came in and blossomed fully into the digital world. Then we came along, at the same time as Bobby McFerrin and Tracy Chapman. We went drastically the other way. We didn’t have any instruments. Tracy Chapman was all acoustic. That seemed to start a new wave.

So it started a new getting-back-to-acoustic wave. Since then, a lot of vocal groups have been coming out. Now, I think we’re getting to a place where we have a pretty good blend. Vocals are not neglected and the synthesizers and electronic equipment have blended in. I think we’re headed for an era of really good music.

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Do you think of your music as an antidote to rap?

I don’t think of it as an antidote to rap. Each thing has its own place. A lot of people talk negatively about rap music, without understanding where it comes from. I think both gospel music and rap come from experiences. This is what these young people have grown up experiencing, and that’s what they’re talking about. In gospel music, too, we’re talking about an experience that we’ve had. I think that, while rap music talks about the problem, I think our music recognizes the problem and tries to offer an answer. In that sense, I guess it could be an antidote.

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What do you see as the future of the group? Will you return to an a cappella situation, or do you like having a band behind you?

I personally like doing both. The way we had this album planned out, we wanted to do a little more a cappella than we did. It just so happened that those songs got weeded out. I think we’ll move closer to a half-and-half situation.

Details

* WHO: Take 6.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday.

* WHERE: Ventura Theatre, 26 S. Chestnut St., Ventura.

* HOW MUCH: $21.50.

* CALL: 648-1888.