Richmond’s ‘Champions’ back in Charlottesville

On a warm summer evening in Richmond, a large, friendly dog named Sterling pokes his head into a basement rehearsal studio. The old rugs and carpets that line the walls do a great job of keeping sound out, but a poor one keeping the music in, and the Weimaraner wants to be part of the fun.
“Get out of here, Sterling,” Matt Walton shouts from his corner, and the door is shut behind the clatter of canine toe nails.

Walton trails his own bare foot absently over his guitar pedals — distortion, delay, fade. Rope lights and exposed incandescent bulbs glow dimly from the ceiling. Posters of Bob Marley and the Grateful Dead hang between the sound-mufflers. An ancient-looking fan oscillates from atop a stool. The Former Champions, who return to Is Venue in Charlottesville on Friday, have paused in their practice to get a mid-song transition just right.
“Why don’t you guys sing that part — the new part — together,” drummer Geoff Bakel suggests, “and then you come in over it?” Walton is more than willing to give that idea the old college try, but, after another go, it’s the joining and splitting with keyboardist Ben White that troubles him.
“Can the unison come earlier?” Walton asks White. “And then maybe you …” he trails off, demonstrating a line on his six-string. White, for his part, is silent, frowning down at his keys as if they were misbehaving children.
“Ben, you need to take that synth to the street,” Bakel calls encouragingly.

The Former Champions are a jam band, and mostly that’s what they do: jam. A stop for this long is unusual. But the group’s cheerfully funky and chaotic rock/jazz fusion sound takes a lot of effort. Sometimes a member closes his eyes, just grooving on the music he and his mates are making; sometimes eye contact is crucial, as two sync up or someone new takes the lead.
But if there’s method in the madness, there’s madness in the method too. The roles within a song are constantly changing — who’s the rhythm section, who plays the melody, who improvises up into the stratosphere. Different performances of a song are rarely exactly the same, and the quartet records all their rehearsal sessions for future analysis.

“A big thing is reaching commercial viability without sacrificing artistic integrity,” says bassist David Ashby as the Champs take a break a couple rooms away. Sterling clatters around knees and ankles. A widescreen TV plays the Discovery Channel on mute. “We try to always strive to make our songs enjoyable for us to play as much as make other people enjoy them.
“Songs are never really done.”
“There’s nothing we don’t add to,” Bakel agrees.
All of this originality and experimentation makes them well-suited for small, intimate venues, like Is, with its double-bar reverberating design, and the Champs are happy to be back.
“We want,” Walton says, his fret hand tapping on the table, “to truly improvise with each other in, like, any setting. It’s a cool space for that.”

The Former Champions cite influences like Frank Zappa, Phish and Pink Floyd, but all four have a background in jazz (for one, Ashby, that background can be traced to Albemarle High School’s jazz band). It might not be too much to say they play rock songs in a jazz style. You know — they jam.
“Musically what I’m striving for,” says White, “is to create, like, a united sound that is completely unique to us four … one that can’t be recreated by anyone else.”
“That’s deep, man,” Ashby grins at him.
And what about that fatalistic name, which seems to speak of glories finished, not lying ahead?
“Well, we used to be really good,” Bakel jokes.
Everyone laughs, stretches, gathers himself and heads back to his instrument for more practice. Free-flowing, spontaneous improvisation can sure be a lot of work.