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Let’s be perfectly honest here. There are so many excellent players in the big wide world of the blues guitar that you really can’t fault a fan for missing one now and again. But, when a prestigious publication like Britain’s Guitarist Magazine ranks someone among the top 50 blues guitar players of the last century, you have to take notice. You simply can’t miss the unrestrained six-string alchemy of Sean Chambers.
A life-long resident of Florida, Chambers was born in Satellite Beach moving to his current base of Tampa when he was a toddler of four. He received his first guitar as a Christmas present at the age of ten.
While Chambers’ early musical inclinations leaned heavily towards the rock and metal icons of the day, in 1984, at the age of sixteen, he experienced an epiphany in Jimi Hendrix. “I couldn’t believe my ears,” he declares. “I had never heard someone play guitar like that; with so much feeling and energy. I decided at that moment that this was exactly what I wanted to do.”
In 1987, the year that Chambers formed Blue Code, his first serious band, he discovered his second major influence, Stevie Ray Vaughan and through Vaughan, blues greats like Freddie and Albert King, Albert Collins, Johnny Winter and Buddy Guy. “I was born again,” says Chambers.
Two years on the road as a Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute band fortified Chambers with the courage to strike out on the strength of his own sound and material. “I had to start over from scratch,” he confides recalling the consequences of that tough decision. “I went from touring the country, playing two hour sets and making decent money to doing three sets a night in small bars for a handful of people and very little money.”
A pivotal year, 1998 saw the release of Chambers’ first CD, Strong Temptation “The most impressive blues debut since Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Texas Flood,” according to Total Guitar Magazine. It was also in 1998 that he began four years of touring the world as bandleader for Hubert Sumlin long-time sideman of the legendary Howlin’ Wolf. “I learned so much during my time playing with Hubert,” says Chambers. “I consider it my college education.”
2004 began on a positive note with the release of Chambers’ second CD, Humble Spirits but turned disastrous when he was flooded out of his home by the sodden blasts of Hurricanes Francis and Gene. I would take four years at a day job for him to get his life and finances back on track.
Down but never out, Chambers charged back into the fray in 2009 to record Ten ‘Til Midnight. His most accomplished and acclaimed effort yet, the CD features seven original songs spotlighting the fret fury of his signature odes to Chicago and Texas blues and his nimble string picking on acoustic Delta fare.
Sean Chambers easily vaults over the pack of his peers with a free-falling, cart-wheeling style delivered with fret-melting intensity. Lovers of blues rock step this way!
Ken Wright
