Bill Champlin has made his mark in music largely as a member of the groups
the Sons of Champlin (1965-1977) and
Chicago (since 1982). But he has also been a singer and musician for hire, with sideman credits on numerous albums and lots of other moonlighting work. In the late '70s and early '80s, in between his band affiliations, he even made a couple of solo albums, and his solo career was reawakened, offshore anyway, when "The Night," a song he cut for a Japanese commercial, became a hit in Japan, leading to the Far Eastern release of a 1990 EP,
No Wasted Moments. Now, another Japanese firm has financed a whole
Champlin album (which he has licensed to companies in other countries, including the independent label Turnip the Music Group in the U.S.).
Burn Down the Night, originally released in 1992, may come as a surprise to the relatively few fans who have heard his first two solo discs, not to mention those psychedelic stalwarts who followed
the Sons of Champlin. Working with co-producer
Greg Mathieson, who also co-wrote some of the material,
Champlin came up with a much more substantive batch of songs and performed them in a synth rock style that has some elements of his characteristic white soul approach (especially in his always expressive vocals), but aims for a contemporary sound. The ten-song collection basically breaks down into three groups of three, plus a climax. In the first three songs,
Champlin is concerned with philosophical and political matters. "Highest Stakes" is a tribute to the younger generation, expressing hope that it will clean up the mess left by its predecessors. "The Thunder," a ballad dominated by
Champlin's guitar interplay with
the Sons of Champlin's lead guitarist,
Terry Haggerty, is another, more general song of affirmation and camaraderie. "For Less than a Song," on the other hand, is a political diatribe that indicts a comfortable public for tolerating corruption, a song hard to misinterpret in the 12th year of Republican presidential administrations.