There are few musicians who share as intimate a history with Southern California as local luminary Jim Messina. While working as a recording engineer in Los Angeles, Messina crossed paths with Buffalo Springfield, and it wasn’t long before he was drafted into the line-up. The foundations were thus laid for a career that explored the very frontier of contemporary music. When Buffalo Springfield gave way to Poco, with it came country rock. And, when the demise of the latter opened the door to Loggins and Messina, a musical legacy as intrinsic to California as sunshine was forged.
Life doesn’t come any more intimate than in the Santa Ynez Valley, either. Residing in the creatively rich rural retreat, Messina has been known to warm things up with a show at the Maverick Saloon when the road starts to beckon and a new tour looms. And, in rounding up his band for a West Coast tour next month, Messina once again named Maverick his first port of call. He met the saloon’s proprietor—Mark Bennett—when the latter owned a local printing business. Since he had the only copier in town large enough to print sheet music, Bennett quickly won a place in Messina’s heart.
“It really was the only one that was big enough,” Messina laughed. “I would go there when I was writing charts so I could get the music to my musicians. He has since acquired The Maverick, and I brought Poco over there before we went out on the road to play Stagecoach. Over the years, I’ve learned that the most enjoyable way of performing is to be prepared. Warm up dates like this are a good way to figure out what we’re going to need to take with us and to see if the set is falling into the right time slot.”
Intimacy is also something that’s characterized Messina’s career. From the meticulous and methodical work he performed while engineering in the recording studios of Hollywood to the emotive nature of his own musical undertakings, Messina has long strived to make the musical experience as personal as possible. But music is a two-way street, and, from his humble beginnings as a musically obsessed fan to occupying the upper echelons of the medium itself, that’s something he’s always been acutely aware of.
“When I was a kid, I would go and see people like Johnny Cash and Lefty Purcell play, and I would be so excited and get right up front and watch them playing,” he recalled. “I think in the early days, when I was then the one standing up there, I felt like I was being judged. But you’re really not. People don’t go home and give you an A or a B or an F. They come to enjoy themselves and be a part of what they love about the music. That’s something I lost when I became one of the people being watched. It was more about wanting to be my very best. Now I relate to the excitement the audience is feeling, and that has relaxed me a lot more.”
When Messina takes to the Maverick stage for a preview of his forthcoming tour, listeners will be treated to a set that fluctuates with musical temperament through songs drawn from across his considerable career. Within a career that has yielded an album with Buffalo Springfield, four recordings with Poco, and nine albums with Loggins and Messina, Messina has also released four solo albums. He recently added a new EP titled Under a Mojito Moon to that armory.
As a child, Messina was exposed to his mother’s musical heart—embracing everything from ’40s music to Elvis Presley—and his father’s affinity with the country side of the musical medium. Since Messina split his childhood between Texas and California, Mexican and Latin music were also intrinsic to his musical evolution. While that element can be traced professionally all the way back to early Poco undertakings such as “Hurry Up” and “Nobody’s Fool/El Tonto de Nadie, Regresa,” the gorgeous cascade of acoustically presented Latin rhythm defines his latest recording. The undertaking owes its origins to Ry Cooder.
“A while back I had read that Ry Cooder had gone to Cuba, which is one place I had always wanted to go, and when I found out that he had made the album with Buena Vista Social Club, I bought the album,” Messina explained. “It was so phenomenal, and I began to hear, in this group of musicians that had been isolated as long as some of their 1950 Chevrolets, musical influences that I had as a child growing up from what my mom used to play. I just found it to be such a wonderful sophisticated but raw melodic music.”
While social networking fueled Cooder’s exploration, Messina channeled his musical affinity with Latin music into something a little more introspective.
“I kind of got bored there for a while with electric and steel string guitars and had brought a nylon classical guitar,” Messina said. “Under a Mojito Moon was a study project. It was an exercise in rhythms that I love dearly, using one instrument to express myself. But I probably have to thank Ry Cooder in going over to Cuba and pulling all those wonderful musicians together, because that really inspired me to do something that was sort of in the back of my mind that I never did.”
While Messina might owe a debt of gratitude to Cooder for the inspiration, countless other musicians feel the same about Messina. As Buffalo Springfield dissipated and Messina and Richie Furay—along with Rusty Young—moved on to Poco, their collaborative sound also progressed. The result was a unique blend of country rock. And while Messina and Furay might have been intent on simply keeping their musical heads above water, they inadvertently set about sculpting a sound that was to help define a genre.
“When Richie and I were leaving Buffalo Springfield, the band was breaking up,” Messina recalled. “That was our livelihood, and we were both very nervous about what to do. I think that decision that you’re talking about was not a conscious decision. The decision was simply made from, ‘What are we going to do?’ We weren’t interested in doing folk rock anymore, but we were interested in doing stuff that had a country base to it. It just naturally became country rock, because that’s where we were musically. But it was also a way of life. It was our job: Do or die. When you are committed to something, if the passion and the love is focused in a certain direction as an artist, you just have to do it.”
Freelancer Brett Leigh Dicks don’t dance. Contact him through Arts Editor Shelly Cone at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 22-29, 2010.