Long journey home: It's been a trip for Streator's Chalfant

[tater1977]

Long journey home: It's been a trip for Streator's Chalfant

http://www.pantagraph.com/print-specifi ... 1435a.html

For The Pantagraph


Streator native Kevin Chalfant has been associated with rock legends Journey for more than 25 years now, hence his new project, Kevin Chalfant's Journey Experience.

Dan Craft dcraft@pantagraph.com


At a glance

What: Journey to the Cure featuring Kevin Chalfant's Journey Experience and Derek St. Holmes, with Robert Brown Band and Averice

When: 5 p.m.-1 a.m. Saturday

Where: Freakster's Roadhouse grounds, 902 W. Custer Ave., Pontiac

Tickets: $20

Information: 815-842-6827

Additional appearance: Kevin Chalfant's Journey Experience is also the headliner Sept. 6 at the El Paso Corn Festival in El Paso



Mapping the journey
1968: Kevin, 13, forms his first garage band, Streator's The Outside Chance
1970s: Joins his most famous local bands, The Jones Family and its direct heir, Fortran, which played “all over” the Bloomington-Normal area ... in particular, downtown Bloomington's fabled Red Lion Inn.
1980: Old Streator band mate George Tutko links him up with West Coast band 707, which scores a hit with “Mega Force.”
1983: Joins the group Steel Breeze, which bats out two Top 40 hits (“You Don't Want Me Anymore,” “Temptation Eyes”)
1986: Joins The Vu, with Tubes drummer Prairie Prince and former Journey member Ross Valory.
1990: Three members of The Vu – Chalfant, Valory, Josh Ramos – team up with two more Journey ex-pats, Gregg Rolie and Steve Smith, to form Chalfant's signature group, The Storm.
1993: For one night only, Chalfant subs as Journey's lead singer at a San Francisco gig Steve Perry couldn't make.
1994-2005: The solo years
2006: Briefly joins the Kansas City-based Shooting Star
2014: Touring with Kelvin Chalfant's Journey Experience, a concert record of his associations with the band.



It's hard not to make with the "journey" metaphors when it comes to the long and winding music career of Streator native Kevin Chalfant.

The occasion for the metaphors: Saturday night's (ahem) "Journey to the Cure" benefit, headlined by Chalfant and staged outdoors on the Freakster's Roadhouse grounds in Pontiac (formerly the Crystal Palace)....

[Gina3008]

Quote from above article by Dan Craft “Then came the surreal night in 1993 when Perry couldn't make a big benefit gig in San Francisco ... and guess who wound up taking over the lead vocals for the real Journey?
"So they just said, 'would you mind jumping in and singing some songs with us?" Chalfant recalls. "I said, 'let me think about it for 13 seconds.' Before I got to 10 seconds, I was there."

I am not discounting that Kevin Chalfant had a relationship with Journey around this time and I realize that this was a benefit gig, but could the highlighted part of the above statement be true? Or is it just clever phrasing to lend importance to Chalfant's "one night only" (per Dan Craft) with Journey? I know that Steve Perry was not "divorced" from the group until later but did not realize that Perry was still doing any gigs with Journey in 1993. Not debating, not trivializing Chalfant's stepping in that night, but just curious....