Jim Messina spoke with us about his life in music.
Q - Well Jim, last year (2020) there wasn't much of a performing industry. So, how did you spend your time? Writing songs? Recording? What did you do?
A - Well, we had just moved to our new residence maybe six or eight months before I had to go back on tour, so we had a lot of things that were still, as we still do, that needed some attention. So I, to be honest with you, I just thought this is a good time for me to reorganize my studio 'cause everything was still in boxes. I had been in pretty much construction mode since that point in time, unpacking gear, setting up consoles. Just getting the place ready for me to actually start recording and getting some work done. I had a full facility in Santa Barbara. So, it's been quite an undertaking. The big problem obviously is I can't get anybody in here that you don't know 'cause you don't want to spread COVID. So this has had to be done on my own. I am a carpenter and a welder. I don't mind picking up a paint brush, painting. I own all the gear and tools. I'm your classic home improvement guy. So part of me is like a turtle in mud, just really enjoying the time off working, but I'm getting to the point now where I'm ready, even though I'm not finished, to get out and do what I do for a living. So I'm in the process of getting recordings, set lists made, and looking forward to the future. We've had to move a lot of dates. We were supposed to go out in March (2021) and April (2021), but those have all been moved to early July and beyond.
Q - Do you have a song publishing business?
A - Well, I've always owned all my own publishing and been well represented through the years, yes.
Q - Do you publish other people's material or just yourself?
A - Mainly myself. When I write with other people or co-write with other people, we obviously share the copyright on those, but generally if there's any work to be done, I'll do it on mine as well as theirs. Kenny and I own the copyright that we own together.
Q - You're the creator of The Songwriters Performance Workshop. What is that all about? Do you critique people's songs? And can you really teach someone how to write a good song?
A - Well, that's a very good question because first of all, I don't critique. That's not part of the process. As far as teaching someone how to write a great song, that's truly up to the individual. My workshop focuses primarily on giving people the tools on how to get inside of themselves and understand the emotions and feelings and visualizations that go into expressing themselves and finding ways in which to do that, how to recognize it, how to put it on paper, learning how to understand the construct from inside yourself, looking at the core works from your emotional state to your feeling state to that state where you either see images or how words that are then translated to a verbal state where you put notes, melody or words to those expressions. Then the other side of the equation is the human being that's listening. The listener will hear the words and they'll either have visions or thoughts that either related to a feeling that's created subsequent to which if it goes deeper, it has some emotional reaction. So, my workshop is primarily about how to be in touch with yourself and to get in touch with your listener, the listening audience, to be able to convey what it is you are feeling. I'm not there to criticize what they say. I'm just there to facilitate what they're saying in front of a group of people and give them an audience in which to say whether or not they feel or hear or see what it is they're singing or talking about.
Q - How many people are in that workshop?
A - I haven't been teaching this workshop since I left California because of the changeover and also because of the COVID, but there's been a number of people that have run through the workshop.
Q - How many people do you have in a workshop?
A - I really don't like working with more than twelve, to be honest with you. That's still a lot. You need at least about eight to have a really good audience for your material. I say that because in order to get everyone and have equal time, some people need more time, some get it quicker. Twelve people in a workshop is plenty.
Q - You started off playing guitar. Then you switched to bass. Then you went back to guitar. That takes some kind of skill, doesn't it?
A - Oh, I don't think so. It just takes the ability to first of all to be able to understand what each instrument does. The guitar is a lot more melodic instrument. In fact, the six, five and four strings pretty much are a bass pattern when you're playing on a guitar, whereas the G, B, and A strings, where you're creating a melody if you're finger picking on a bass. It's really looking at where the song is going, what key you are in and what passing tones do you want to lead up to the next cue or the next chord or the next change, whether you're going from a one changes to a minor two changes to a five change, to a four change. It's something you feel, you sense. If you're inspired by music and you can find whether you're playing a bass guitar or a tuba, it's all the same kind of thing. It's kind of a perceptual, intellectual experience where you need the intellect to understand it, but the perceptual part to feel it and be able to move with it.
Q - How much success in the music business did your father have and what advice did he give you that maybe you followed?
A - Well, my father was a first born, Italian immigrant. He had a little band with three pieces back in the '40s. He had a guy who played steel guitar and a guy who was on rhythm guitar. They all played keys. They weren't quite in the Gibson range at that point. They all had cowboy shirts on. They probably played Western Swing, probably the stuff that Willie Nelson was into in those days. He liked Western Swing. They were never successful. They were just truck drivers and people who loved music and played their instruments on weekends to entertain friends and family.
Q - Clive Davis needed some convincing when you approached him about recording with Kenny Loggins, didn't he?
A - Yeah.
Q - If it was anyone else, other than Clive Davis, do you think you would have been able to make your case? Clive Davis was not only a business man, but he had a real ear for music.
A - Clive Davis does have a good ear, no question. But first and foremost he is also a businessman. He's an attorney and a brilliant one at that. The question was, when I brought up the idea of doing an album where I was sitting in with Kenny, which was what the real subject was, whether or not I should be sitting in with Kenny and doing an album as a guest artist. He was concerned because first of all I was his producer. Second of all, he had done many, many groups in those days where people... they'd invest a lot of money in a group to only have them break up, and then this investment is all gone. His biggest concern was that people would see this as I was working with him, they'd buy the album and I wouldn't be on the next album and they wouldn't buy the album. And why would he want to make that investment? That's a good point. He raised a very good point. I went from the standpoint that, first of all Kenny was a very, very new artist. He'd never had a record deal, never had an attorney, never had a manager. Never really had an accountant. He was totally a new babe in the woods. If they were going to invest money in him, I felt the best investment would be to allow me to sit in with him and introduce Kenny to my past audiences like Buffalo Springfield and Poco and it wouldn't be any different than Stan Getz and Charlie Boyd or Leon Russell sitting in with Joe Cocker or any of those others. It would bring some attention to Kenny and hopefully give him one leg up on being able to proceed to the next album, with me still being there as his producer, perhaps sitting there playing. I wasn't going anywhere, but the first one (album) I wanted to be there to get him started. He'd never been on the road before. He needed a crew. He needed a band. He needed an attorney. He needed a manager. He needed so many things. He needed an agency in order to make this record happen, in my opinion. When I went through all those aspects about it with Clive Davis, he understood. He definitely understood. And he trusted that what I was saying was true, not that it wasn't correct, but am I going to be there to continue the process and just how I would be there. And I explained it to him and eventually he decided yes, that we would do that. To his credit, rather than coming back to me feeling he had underestimated the situation; he actually came back to me and said, "Listen, this was such a successful project that I think you should think about staying with it as Loggins And Messina." Something like this only happens once in a lifetime. It's very right. At the time I didn't think so 'cause you're young and you think this stuff can happen over and over, but I took his advice. I sat down with Kenny and said, "What do you think?" He said, "Everything is working great. Why change anything?" I said, "As long as I continue to be the producer on these projects and you understand if there's something I don't agree with and want to do it my way, that's the way it will be, as it was before." And Kenny said, "I'm okay with that." So that's how we actually started off our Loggins And Messina career. Clive was doing the right thing. I would do the same thing. I would question whether or not this is the right decision, but I think he trusted my integrity. I think he saw I genuinely was serious about what it is I was saying.
Q - Was he asking to hear the recorded material before the album came out?
A - Oh, absolutely. I actually recorded that album as a demo a full eight months before it was ever produced so he could hear. That's when he asked me, "Gee, I hear a lot of you on this record. I thought you didn't want to tour. I thought you wanted to be home and produce." I said, "I do." Kenny didn't even own a guitar at the time. He was borrowing instruments from me. I was loaning him amps for his band. He just had not developed enough yet to where he could really be in that arena without any help. Otherwise He would've been there before. He was given plenty of opportunities. He was recorded by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. He knew all those guys. They were out on the road and working. I think if he would have had the tools to do it himself, he would've done it sooner, whether it had been me or anybody else, it needed to be done. That was the way I felt it should be done.
Q - How fortunate he was to have been able to connect with someone like yourself. It raises the question if there aren't other Kenny Loggins out there who will never get a break, who will never get discovered.
A - Well, there are. I will tell you without mentioning names. I've run across a couple, one during that period of time. In fact, Kenny and I both tried to help this person after Kenny had become successful. But some people I believe are really afraid of success. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. There are a lot of people who get to that point where opportunity knocks, but they're just not prepared to take it. I look at it this way: narcissism is a disease. It's incurable. I also believe that this phenomenon that happens with certain people who are talented and gifted, but when they get the opportunity to actually make it happen, they do things that are not in their best interest. They sabotage it. I don't think you can heal that either. Even if they become successful, there's a good chance they would sabotage it at some point in time by the way they're wired. So, I think it's something that a lot of producers take risks with people like that. Those folks become very successful and they're very talented, but something happens along the line whether it's drugs or some form of craziness, they fall off the horse.
Q - Like a Janis Joplin. She threw it all away.
A - Yeah. A lot of it is insecurity. Because this country (United States) has looked at psychology for so many years as being a bad thing if you go to a psychologist and seek help. It'd be like saying just because you have fever blisters on your lips and you go to a doctor, that makes you a bad person. Mental health has been an issue for many, many centuries. Sometimes when people are ill they don't get the attention they need and drugs have a tendency to make people fall into that a lot quicker because it lets their defenses down and they're less adept at hiding their true nature. Drugs and alcohol are really an artists downfall. It can be.
Q - How much touring did you and Kenny do at the height of your success?
A - I can't tell you exactly. I know the times we didn't work, we were making an album. We usually rehearsed for two to three weeks and then we recorded the album for two to three weeks. So, six weeks out of the year we didn't tour and we didn't tour for two weeks out of the year during the holidays. I cut two albums a year, sometimes every eighteen months. So, I'll let you do the math out of the five years.
Q - On your website it's mentioned that you and Kenny were one of Rock's most successful recording duos ever. That being the case, why did you guys go your separate ways?
A - Well, you have to also realize that touring is extremely stressful. When you're not home and in a place, in an environment where you're able to adapt; I know for me that's the point where I couldn't adjust to the environment I was going into. I constantly had allergies. Constantly had sore throats, fevers, tonsillitis. The stress of moving from day to day when you're young doesn't seem like a big deal, but as I got older I realized much of what I was feeling was sleep deprivation, exhaustion. I was extremely skinny in those days. More than what I should be. I wasn't eating right. I think that stuff over a period of time when you get into three, four, five years of that kind of behavior begins to affect you. That's the physical aspect. And the mental aspect of this is you've got to realize that Kenny went into this whole situation wanting to be a solo artist and Jimmy Messina sort of interrupted that process in order to help make him successful. By the time we had done five years together, from 1970, and our last tour was in 1976, some of that time we weren't on the road. It was the learning and recording process and getting a band together for him and all the things I needed to do to make him road ready. He put his own career on hold and he really wanted to start working as a solo artist. By 1975 he was really ready to do that. To be honest with you, I was ready to stop. I'd gone through Springfield, Poco, Loggins And Messina. That's ten years of this kind of stressful life. And it had taken its toll on me. It was time for us to either take off for a year, give it a break, or even two years, who knows? But he was still ready and eager and didn't bear as much of the stress that I did 'cause I was also the producer and gathering material and working the record company and getting all the things that needed to be done to keep us rehearsed ahead of time and get those two albums made every year or year and a half. I was ready to stop. He was ready to work on his career. It was just a natural progression that would happen. It's one of the reasons there wasn't such a big blowout at the end of it. I think we respectfully made the decision to break up a year in advance. We went back. I asked that we do that 'cause there were a lot of promoters who had spent a lot of money on us promoting shows, some of which, because of no fault of our own whether they be rain or weather, inclement weather, had lost money. I wanted to give everybody an opportunity to make one final score, get them whole again and leave on a good note.
Q - Your website bio says, "Jim says that he's enjoying discovering who he is, where he's been, and most significantly where he's going." I think I can answer two of the three questions. Who you are:" You're a singer/songwriter. Where you've been: To the top of the music business. Where you're going.: I can't answer that one, but where are you going?
A - Well, I don't know where I'm going. (laughs) I do know where I'm headed. I have a great life here in Tennessee. I'm in the process of getting my band together for our tours which we hope will begin in July (2021). I'm going to start adding some of my solo works to my set lists. In the past I've been getting a combination of Springfield, Poco and Loggins And Massina. I'd like t start doing a little bit more of my own solo works, adding some of that and probably only one or two of Springfield or Poco tunes in the set. Loggins And Messina is a big part of my songwriting life, so a lot of the songs that I wrote and produced in L And M are in my set. I'd like to start bringing in some of the Latin Jazz stuff that I've done in my solo works like the "Oasis" album and the "Messina" album and the "One More Mile" album. I'd like to bring some of that stuff into my live set. I do like recording live for a number of reasons. It has the energy that sometimes you can't get in the studio and the audience is always a wonderful inspiration to play to, and nowadays with recording techniques being as well as the are, if we can record a really good set, everything is isolated and it's clean. I can create a good product. If necessary we can do more than one or two shows in order to bring the quality up, but that gives my listeners a chance to hear me not only as a performer, but some of the wonderful musicians that perform with me and have performed with me over the years.
Official Website: www.JimMessina.com
