Peter Frampton has reunited with legendary producer-engineer Chris Kimsey for his latest album ‘Thank You Mr.Churchill’ released earlier this year. Kimsey played a crucial role in Frampton’s seven legendary ’70s albums — including Wind Of Change, Frampton Comes Alive! and I’m In You.
Frampton, while in the midst of a 46-date summer tour, explained that the kinship between him and Kimsey goes as far back as his Humble Pie days: [“Chris Kimsey and I started out virtually together. He’d been this assistant engineer on these Humble Pie records working under Glyn Johns. And I said, ‘I’m gonna do my first solo record,’ and he said, ‘I’m just about ready to start engineering in my own right.’ So that was it, I said, ‘Why don’t we do it together, y’know?’ And I knew him, so it was not like it was someone that I hadn’t spent time with. He — obviously — and I worked (together) for many albums — including Frampton Comes Alive! He went on and did the (Rolling) Stones for years.”]
* Frampton says the chemistry between the two is no different than during their 1970’s heyday: [“It’s pretty phenomenal and I have to say that he knows me so well that he knows my capabilities. He knows when to push me. He knows that two or three takes down it’s gonna click. And he’s right. He’s proved himself right (laughs) so many times already on this record, and he also know when to say, ‘I don’t think you’re gonna be happy with this. Let’s move on to something else and come back to this a little later.'”]
* Frampton’s new album features collaborations with legendary Motown house band the Funk Brothers, Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron, and Frampton’s first collaboration with 21-year-old son Julian.
* Kimsey engineered all of Frampton’s classic ’70s catalogue: Wind Of Change (1972); Frampton’s Camel (1973); Somethin’s Happening (1974); Frampton (1975); Frampton Comes Alive! (1976); I’m In You (1977): and Where I Should Be (1979) — which Kimsey produced with Frampton.
* Apart from that, Kimsey is best known for his engineering and production work on such Rolling Stones classics as Sticky Fingers, Some Girls, Emotional Rescue, Tattoo You, Undercover, Steel Wheels, Flashpoint, and Stripped, among others.
* Kimsey isn’t the first Frampton Comes Alive! Alumnus that Frampton has reunited with in recent years. Starting with his 1992 comeback tour, longtime guitarist/keyboardist Bob Mayo was a fixture at nearly all of Frampton’s shows until his death in 2004. That same year, drummer John Siomos, who had become an EMT worker in New York City, also died after reestablishing a friendship with Frampton.
* After nearly 30 years apart, bassist Stanley Sheldon teamed up with Frampton once again to cowrite and perform on “Ida y Vuelta (Out And Back)” from Frampton’s last album, the 2006 Grammy Award-winning instrumental collection, Fingerprints.
* Among the albums that Kimsey has engineered include ELP’s Brain Salad Surgery; Bill Wyman’s Monkey Grip; Bad Company’s Burnin’ Sky; as well as producing Joan Jett And The Blackhearts’ Glorious Results Of A Misspent Youth; Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe’s self-titled album; Knebworth: The Album, Duran Duran’s Liberty and Ordinary World; and INXS’s Full Moon, Dirty Hearts, among many others.