BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD, POCO, LOGGINS & MESSINA

MUSIC LEGEND  

J I M   M E S S I N A

ON THE RAY SHASHO SHOW

Loggins & Messina, Poco, Buffalo Springfield; these are just a few of the monumental musical groups that singer/songwriter/guitarist Jim Messina has been involved with. As an artist his resume speaks for itself, with a string of hits including “Your Mama Don’t Dance,” “Angry Eyes,” “Peace of Mind,” among others. As a producer and engineer he’s done sessions with some of the greatest in rock and pop, such as Kenny Loggins, the Doors, Lee Michaels, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass and the aforementioned Buffalo Springfield (where he also replaced bassist Bruce Palmer for the band’s final album).

The year 2016 finds Messina active and creative as ever, with a new live album In the Groove. “The album was made in anticipation of the fact that I changed booking agents to the Roots Agency,” says Messina. “They did a tremendous amount of research and found that there are a lot of areas I had not been to and where people would like to see me. They wanted to book me in those places.”

Messina knew that a key component to the tour would be a new album. “But an album of new material at this point in time would be difficult,” he says, “when, in fact, most people wanna see me for who I am in terms of what I’ve done over the years and all the bands I’ve been in.” So, in September of 2015 he took his band into the Clark Center for the Performing Arts in Arroyo Grande, CA and the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara, CA for two nights of the singer/songwriter’s retrospective catalog.

As a special guest for the evening, Messina invited longtime collaborator and former Poco steel guitarist Rusty Young to join in on those songs that they made musical history with together. The icing on the cake for Messina was to invite respected audio expert Paul Wolff, of Paul Wolff Designs, to record the shows.

Wolff relates, “I streamed it live with HD video, while mixing front of house, while mixing front row seats, while mixing mono mix for the monitor guy, while mixing side fills, while tracking. We took two nights and mixed for three months and released the USB and vinyl double––Chris Mara of Welcome to 1979 made the vinyl lacquers and the mother stampers––without any record companies, iTunes or CDbaby. We used Indiegogo and are about to do another with PledgeMusic, as we have a friend that runs it.”

As Wolff stated, the album is available in USB format because the inventive and farthinking Messina wanted to take things a step further. “I believe we’re moving into times now where the CD is basically gone,” says Messina. “There will always be people with CD players, but moving forward I did some research. My wife actually told me about this. She handed me this little flash card at a convention we were at. She said it was a hard drive. So I started to play around with it, put some MP3s on it and put it on my computer. I played it in my truck. I thought this might be just the thing that we as an industry might need to focus on.”