Loggins & Messina - Biography

"one of the reasons
we were successful
is that we spoke
to a generation,
not just to
a radio station..."

continued from page 1

Complicating matters, Loggins & Messina’s partnership was from the inception not one of equals. “In our original relationship, I came in and auditioned for Jimmy,” Loggins remembers. “Right from the beginning, Jimmy was the producer, I was the artist. I’d never made a record. I’d never put a band together. I’d never found a manager or an agent. So Jimmy was the lead and in that way, he became my mentor. The inevitable thing when you grow through a mentor is you have to leave and go off on your own. Our relationship had become teacher-student, father-son, big brother little brother and eventually it was not healthy for me. I had a lot to prove to myself and, subconsciously I think, I had a lot to prove to Jimmy too.”

In the decades apart, Loggins established himself as a solo artist with a series of albums starting with 1977’s Celebrate Me Home, 1978’s Nightwatch, 1979’s Keep The Fire, 1980’s Alive, 1982’s High Adventure, 1985’s Vox Humana, 1988’s Bacl to Avalon, 1991’s Leap of Faith, 1993’s Outside: From The Redwoods, 1994’s Return To Pooh Corner, 1997’s Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: The Greatest Hits of Kenny Loggins and The Unimaginable Life, 1998’s December, 2000’s More Songs From Pooh Corner, 2002’s The Essential Kenny Loggins, 2003's It's About Time, as well as a number of soundtrack contributions.

During this time, Jim Messina recorded five solo albums: 1979’s Oasis, 1981’s Messina, 1983’s One More Mile and 1996’s Watching The River Run. Messina also reunited with Poco for the 1989 album Legacy, as well as establishing the Songwriters’ Performance Workshop. “The purpose of the workshop is to empower amateurs,” explains Messina.

Today, Jim Messina explains that he has no desire to be in charge. “The nice thing is I get to work with Kenny again, but with him having had all his solo success,” Messina says. “So instead of me being the successful one, now Kenny brings that to this relationship. Quite honestly, I feel good about it now because I can relax. This time I’m looking forward to just being an artist. I’m very excited about playing our music listening to our arrangements and pulling out my dusty mandolin to see if it still works.

Until a recent series of low-key benefit performance together, there had been precious little contact between the two men. “There was just very little bridge left to cross back during those years,” Loggins admits. “There’s the career and there are the wives. Wives will tend to take people in different directions – that’s the cleanest way I can put it.”

When Jimmy joined Kenny at a benefit at Santa Barbara’s Arlington Theater last year, Loggins noticed something else. “As soon as we hit the harmonies, I was struck by the fact that I hadn’t heard that sound in a long time,” he says. “It hit me like the Everly Brothers hit me the first time they got back together. There was something that in thirty years I had not been able to duplicate with anyone else. There’s a spark here that I’ve completely forgotten about.”

Both men see Sittin’ In Again as a chance to look back at what they’ve achieved.

“This album is about more than hits,” says Messina. “I think one of the reasons we were successful is that we spoke to a generation, not just to a radio station.”

“I wanted this new retrospective to accurately depict who Loggins and Messina was,” adds Loggins. “I wasn’t too concerned with who we became or what songs spoke better now than they did then. I want this to be the quintessential element of who we were then.”

“You know I spent years trying to forget this crap,” Loggins jokes to Messina. Today, he seems struck by the harmonic convergence and of the sound of their original band -- Al Garth, Jon Clark, Michael Omartian, Merle Brigante, and Milt Holland. “All the forces came together to create one hell of a band,” Loggins recalls. “We were very lucky.”

As for the Sittin’ In Again tour, both men want to celebrate the past while leaving the future an open and intriguing question. They want their show to feature a Sittin’ In segment that will allow other musical associates and possibly former band members to join them onstage.

As they head back to work auditioning new band members, Loggins & Messina both sound genuinely excited and fully engaged.

For Loggins: “There’s a message of reconciliation here that hearts will heal over time. We’re not the same people, but in some ways, we’re exactly who we were. Essentially, I’m still pretty much naïve. I look back on the last thirty years and think, how the hell did I do that in a world where they try to beat it out of you? So when people ask, ‘What do you see coming for Loggins and Messina?’ I see that we have an incredible second chance at actually having fun and dropping some of the competitive thing. I remember we were so tight at the beginning we’d walk into a clothing shop and both reach for the same shirt or boots.”

For both men the chance to be Sittin’ In Again represents what Jimmy Messina calls “a great and meaningful opportunity.”

“I’m really looking forward to the audiences,” says Kenny Loggins. “I’m looking forward to seeing good friends from long ago and, I’m hoping, some of the friends I’ve picked up along the way. And then . . .well, and then we’ll just see where it goes from there.”