These days,
Loggins & Messina
are two men linked
by more than
just an ampersand...

Thirty-three years after first Sittin’ In together, and nearly thirty years since they last toured together, Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina are sitting side by side in Loggins’ living room. The two men are in the early stages of putting together their surprising and heartening Sittin’ In Again reunion tour as well as finalizing a new Loggins & Messina retrospective of the same name.

All this shared activity marks the unexpected and unlikely return of the most successful duo of the early Seventies – a group whose most enduring songs were so well crafted that they have never really gone away. At the same time, Loggins & Messina find themselves in the moving process of healing a personal connection fractured long ago.

“This is less about a musical reunion and more about reuniting a relationship that’s become more of a friendship than ever before,” says Jimmy Messina.

“Nothing like thirty years to be the great leveler,” Kenny Loggins says.

Though Loggins & Messina’s first greatest hits collection was called Best of Friends, both men confess that their relationship has long been a complex and sometimes difficult one. When they first met, Jim Messina was already a well-established success story, having produced and played with the legendary band Buffalo Springfield and later with the country-rock pioneers Poco. Loggins, meanwhile, was a young singer-songwriter with far less experience, but with talent to burn as evidenced by early compositions like “House At Pooh Corner” and “Danny’s Song.” Then Sittin’ In (1972), originally envisioned as a one-off joint release intended to introduce Loggins as part of a Messina six-album production deal with Columbia Records, became a major smash hit.

So as if by public demand, this accidental duo was created. In the next few years, a series of albums would follow in rapid order – 1972’s Loggins & Messina, 1973’s Full Sail, 1974’s double-live On Stage, the same year’s Mother Lode, 1975’s cover song set So Fine and 1976’s Native Sons. The Best of Friends collection followed later that year and in 1977 another live album fittingly called Finale. With that, Loggins & Messina, who had sold sixteen million albums and become one of rock’s most popular draws, was over and apparently done.

In retrospect, the once close connection between Loggins & Messina was torn apart by the unusual nature of their working relationship and by what Messina calls a “divide and conquer strategy that’s been around since Napoleonic times.”

“The trouble with duos is inevitably it becomes a competition,” explains Loggins. “It’s not just the press that pits you against one another – it’s everybody. It’s your business managers, your managers and your lawyers. Everybody wants to get on your good side.”

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