Terry Haggerty revisits his songbook on new album "Family"

Terry Haggerty, longtime guitarist for the San Francisco band Sons of Champlin, will release a new solo album, Family, on September 7 through Little Village, JamBase reported. The record was built from songs spanning Haggerty's decades-long career, made with his brother Tim Haggerty on keyboards and bass and his nephew Aaron Haggerty on drums.

"Throughout my musical career I've been primarily known as the lead guitarist for the seminal '60s and '70s band, the Sons of Champlin," Haggerty said. "I have wanted to do a CD of my songwriting for a while now, and here I have the opportunity to do just that." Sons of Champlin emerged from the San Francisco scene alongside acts like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, and Jerry Garcia once called Haggerty "a unique and original player, who is highly inventive."

For Family, the Haggerty trio stripped the vocals from older recordings and rebuilt many of the songs substantially; the track "Tears Of Time" began as an operatic, heavy-metal-leaning song in the 1980s before becoming a ballad for this record. Other reworked tracks include "Who Can You Trust," "Greater Plan" and "Dogs Are Us," alongside three new instrumentals, "Wish You Were Here," "Latin Hags" and "New Frontiers."

Guest vocalists on the eleven-track album include Phil Perry, Mike Duke, Cliff Payne and Sons of Champlin bandmate Bill Champlin, with David Aguilar contributing guitar on several tracks. Family, due September 7 and now on the release calendar, is Haggerty's first full solo record built around reworking his own songbook rather than new original material.