Genuine Legend Jim Messina plays Longview’s Columbia Theatre

I love those old theaters,” said Jim Messina by phone from his ranch outside Nashville. “They tend to have great stages and great sound.” Messina and his band will play the Columbia Theatre in Longview Friday, May 19th.

Messina ought to know. In Los Angeles in the mid-1960s, emigrated from Harlingen, Texas, he started poking around doing arrangements, engineering and eventually playing bass for a ragged group of musicians pioneering the sound later dubbed country rock.

“Neil and Stephen were both really serious about the music. There may have been some friction going on but I didn’t catch wind of it.” That fledgling group was called Buffalo Springfield, and along with their contemporaries the Byrds, they were founding princes of the LA 60s sound. Neil and Stephen were, of course, Young and Stills, respectively.

One of the last songs recorded by the Springfield was the classic “Kind Woman,” written by another Springfield member, singer-songwriter Richie Furay. “I wanted to bring a little more country sound to it,” said Messina. He and Furay brought in a steel guitar prodigy from Denver named Rusty Young, and the nucleus of Jim’s next band, Poco, was born. “We’d been talking about forming our own band, and Rusty was a perfect fit.”

Many credit Poco, especially after adding bassist Timothy B. Schmidt (later bass player for Eagles), as being the prototypical countryrock band. One critic called their live disc Deliverin’ recorded in Boston and New York in 1970, “among the finest live albums ever laid down.” Glenn Frey and Don Henley, playing with Linda Ronstadt at the time, admired the Poco sound. “We just wanted to be like Poco,” said Frey, and they emulated it in forming Eagles a few months later.

“For me it’s all about the audiences,” Messina said. “I’m amazed that at age 75 I can still play my music and there are people out there singing along with the words.” Messina is as much craftsman as performer, and rests his reputation on producing records as well as performing on them. “These are very much arrangements, not jams,” he said. “I come up with a set for each tour, which we rehearse

By Hal Calbom

ahead of time, and we play that same set. It can be complicated stuff and I want it right.”

Despite its strong critical reception and revered status in the music business, Poco never broke through with Eagleslike visibility or stardom. Messina left the band after producing Deliverin ’, looking for new musical direction, and was hired as an in-house producer by Columbia Records and assigned a “project” by Columbia president Clive Davis. The “project” was a lanky songwriter with braces on his teeth and virtually no studio experience named Kenny Loggins.

The first time Loggins sang for a skeptical Messina, out popped “Danny’s Song” and “House at Pooh Corner,” genredefying classics still played today. “I was playing a bigger and bigger part of the arrangements with Kenny,” said Messina, “and we came up with the idea of an album called Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sittin’ In.”

Sittin’ In sold more than 16 million copies, and the duo, now formally Loggins and Messina, rocketed to the top of the charts with later hits like “Angry Eyes” and “Watching the River Run,” (both of which will be in Jim’s Columbia Theatre set) and jukebox staples like “Your Momma Don’t Dance.”

Messina’s career is a name dropper’s dream. He credits Stephen Spielberg with a key musical inspiration. Asking the director how he came up with music for his movie scores, he was told it depended entirely on the script. “I got the message that the words of a song are very much like a script, like a chapter in a book, and I try to shape the music to fit it,” said Messina. His general knowledge of music is impressive — he spoke of adding “baroque” touches to Loggins’s “Pooh Corner” that reinforced the deeper resonances in the song.

Today he works out of a home studio at his ranch in Franklin, Tennessee. I began my interview by asking

Friday, May 19, 7:30pm

Tickets $22.50 – $60

Columbia Theatre for the Performing Arts 1231 Vandercook Way, Longview, Wash. Box Office 360-575-8499 • www,columbiatheatre.com him what was outside his window. “Two jackasses, a horse, chickens, donkeys…should I go on?” he laughed. “My wife is sort of like Snow White, animals love her, they show up at the door. We’re very blessed with where we live.”

Jim Messina is a genuine legend, who brings the same passion and commitment to the stage he demonstrated years ago trying to get “Neil and Stephen” to show up for work on time. We’re in for a treat. See you at the Columbia.

In 2013, the Community Foundation for Southwest Washington launched the annual 24-hour online fundraiser GiveMore24! to help non-profits in Cowlitz, Clark and Skamania Counties nonprofits raise awareness, develop donors and provide an easy means of online giving.

Effective this year, Give More 24! is being phased out and replaced by GiveBIG, a statewide fundraising campaign where individuals and organizations across Washington come together to invest in their communities.

The nonprofit 501 Commons manages the website “Washington Gives” at www.wagives.org and hosts two primary fundraisers each year — GiveBIG, set for May 2 and 3, and GivingTuesday, on Nov. 29.

Numerous local non-profit organizations have registered with GiveBIG. For the compete list, visit cfsww.org

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