A New Time - A New Day
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Album Summary
The Chambers Brothers dropped 'A New Time - A New Day' in 1968 on Columbia Records, and it arrived like a second wave from a group that had already turned the music world upside down. Produced during that same blazing creative stretch that defined their late-sixties output, this record found Lester, George, Willie, and Joe Chambers — along with their indispensable drummer Brian Keenan — reaching deeper into the well of gospel fire, blues grit, hard rock electricity, and psychedelic soul that made them unlike anything else walking the earth at that moment. Recorded and released in one of the most turbulent years in American history, the album captured a band that refused to stand still, pressing further into the countercultural frontier while never losing the sanctified Southern soul that was in their blood from the very beginning.
Reception
- The album performed modestly on the charts, carried by the group's fierce live reputation and the momentum they had built through their prior commercial breakthrough, though it did not reach those same commercial peaks on its own.
- Critical response recognized the record as a solid and authentic representation of the Chambers Brothers' boundary-crossing style, with some reviewers noting it consolidated rather than dramatically expanded the sonic ground the group had already claimed.
- Among the late-sixties rock and soul underground, the album found a warm and loyal audience, particularly with listeners who had already given themselves over to the group's one-of-a-kind gospel-drenched psychedelia.
Significance
- 'A New Time - A New Day' stands as a powerful document of the Chambers Brothers' singular place in American music history — Black artists operating fearlessly at the crossroads of psychedelic rock, soul, and gospel during one of the most racially and socially charged years the country had ever seen.
- The record is a mirror held up to 1968 itself, and the Chambers Brothers were among the very few acts with the courage and the credibility to bridge the predominantly white rock festival world with the deep roots of African American musical tradition.
- The album cements the group's enduring legacy as true forerunners of psychedelic soul, pointing the way forward for generations of artists who would follow their lead in fusing spiritual intensity with experimental rock and roll abandon.
Tracklist
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A1 I Can't Turn You Loose —
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A2 Guess Who 142
4:21
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A3 Do Your Thing 157
3:19
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A4 Where Have All The Flowers Gone 93
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A5 Love Is All I Have 124
2:45
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A6 You Got The Power-To Turn Me On —
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B1 I Wish It Would Rain 79
3:23
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B2 Rock Me Mama 171
6:09
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B3 No, No, No, Don't Say Good-By —
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B4 Satisfy You 79
3:56
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B5 A New Time - A New Day 138
7:26
Artist Details
The Chambers Brothers were a soulful, groundbreaking outfit that came together in Los Angeles in the early 1960s, four brothers from Mississippi — Lester, George, Willie, and Joe — who blended gospel roots with blues, rock, and psychedelia in a way that nobody else was doing at the time. Their 1968 masterpiece "Time Has Come Today" stretched an already electric track into an eleven-minute mind-bending journey that put them right at the crossroads of the counterculture revolution, earning them a legendary spot at the Fillmore and making them one of the first Black acts to truly break into the psychedelic rock scene. Their significance runs deep, because The Chambers Brothers proved that soul and rock were never really separate rivers — they were always the same mighty stream, and these brothers were bold enough to swim it all the way to the other side.
