Making Time to Re-Establish Chambers Music

Brother Joe Chambers believes the time has come for a Chambers Brothers renaissance.

The harmonizing gospel-funk-rock group, best known for its throbbing 1968 hit “Time Has Come Today,” is back together after nearly 15 years and looking for a record deal. Meanwhile, Sony / Legacy will be releasing a career retrospective, “The Time Has Come for the Best of the Chambers Brothers,” early next month.

Original members George and Lester Chambers have given up on secular music and have gone on to separate solo careers singing gospel. But singer-guitarists Willie and Joe--who wrote and sang “Time Has Come Today”--continue to bear the torch, abetted now by guitarist “T-Bone” Jones, bassist “Lamp,” keyboardist Dave Robbins and drummer Rufus “Rooftop” Clay.

The group, which appears Saturday at the Galaxy Concert Theatre in Santa Ana, has alternately been headlining nightclubs and appearing at festivals since its recent re-formation. The goals remain lofty: Joe said the Chambers Brothers want to claim a position as one of the top groups of the day.

“We’re very anxious to do that, and we’re in the process right now of writing, collecting and working on material,” he said in a recent phone interview from his manager’s home in Los Angeles. “Hopefully, we’ll get some good record companies interested.

“I mean, if R.E.M. can go out and make an $80-million record deal,” he said, “we ought to be able to get a fraction of that. We’re an established group. We should be able to pick up some kind of good contract.”

There aren’t a lot of examples of old rock groups reuniting and making it back to the top. But while the Chambers Brothers would seem to have an uphill battle, stranger things have happened. Who, for instance, would have predicted that Tony Bennett would become a hot property in the ‘90s?

Still, the brothers hold a deep-seated belief that the sound of the ‘60s is relevant in the ‘90s.

“The kids want the spirit of the ‘60s back again,” Joe Chambers, 54, said. “The ‘60s is trying to stick its head up again. In the ‘60s, kids were giving flowers to one another instead of doing all the things to each other that these gangs are doing. It was a world of difference.

“The ‘60s . . . well, it was very psychedelic,” he continued with a laugh. “A lot of flashes. I saw a few streaks go by myself. I saw auras and all that stuff--that’s about all I really want to say about that part of it. . . .

“And it was one of the most magical and creative periods in the history of the music industry as far as I’m concerned. When I listen to the music of the ‘60s, it touches my heart. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Otis Redding--we played with all of them. When I listen to the music of the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, it doesn’t have as much substance for me.”

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The Chambers Brothers started singing together long before the ‘60s. There were eight brothers in the rural Mississippi-bred Chambers family, all sons of a dirt-poor sharecropper.

Four of those brothers took to harmonizing together and first sang at the Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Lee County. George, the eldest, moved to Los Angeles in the late ‘50s and eventually was joined by the rest of his singing brothers.

The Chambers Brothers recorded for the small gospel label, Vault Records, before being signed by Columbia in 1966. By 1972, the group disbanded but re-formed many times over the course of the decade. In the ‘80s, Joe and Willie busied themselves doing session work and commercials but decided a few years ago to put the group back together and make another go of it.

“The bottom line is that the music has to speak for itself,” Joe Chambers said. “We’re making Chambers Brothers music. We’re doing some of the old tunes, we’re introducing some new tunes, and the fans seem to love it. They don’t care what the age of the performers are, as long as the music is there.”

* The Chambers Brothers play Saturday with Brave Ulysses at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. 8 p.m. $15. (714) 957-0600.