Southern Serenade

RELEASE
1995
LABEL
Turnip The Music Group/Borderline
"Southern Serenade," with its references to life below the Mason-Dixon Line, is a highlight of Bill Champlin's album He Started to Sing, making it an appropriate title song for this EP, which also includes the lively duet between Champlin and his wife Tamara Champlin, "Love Is Gonna Find You." But the real find here is an eight-minute live medley of two older songs, "Lovers Tonight" and "Take It Uptown," recorded in December 1994. Champlin plays and sings funky yet sophisticated pop/R&B, sounding let off the leash from his day job with Chicago when he gets to be a frontman, and this disc is a good sampler of what he can do.
William Ruhlmann, Rovi