Loggins & Messina find harmony on reunion tour
By CHRIS HANSEN ORF
Get Out

For two musicians who never intended to be a performing duo, Loggins & Messina ended up doing pretty well for themselves.

“When I I first met Kenny (Loggins) it was over a taco dinner, and it was one of those situations where he was a starving artist,” recalls Jim Messina, a guitarist who founded country rockers Poco in the ’60s. “He didn't own an instrument and he was driving a VW bus. It meant accepting working with him as a real major job of building an artist.”

As a record producer, Messina felt that, at the time, folk music was on the way out, so he ended up sitting in on the sessions to provide a more up-tempo direction to Loggins’ songs. The resulting album was planned as a Loggins solo album titled “Kenny Loggins With Jim Messina Sittin’ In,” but the success of the record led to the two joining creative forces as a performing duo. Loggins & Messina, as they were called for their forthcoming records, went on to be the most successful duo of the early to mid-’70s, scoring several Top 20 hits, releasing four platinum-selling albums and garnering a few Grammy nominations along the way.

Then, at the height of their success, Loggins & Messina parted ways. “At first I think Kenny liked the idea having his producer working with him,” Messina says of the split. “And then I think it became a situation where he was moving away from having someone that he'd go to for answers to creating (his) own answers.”

Loggins went on to become a solo star in the ’80s, and the duo lost touch over the years before Messina and Loggins began performing separately at each other’s charitable causes in the early 2000s. The two started hanging out as friends again and performing together became the next logical step. A reunion tour was booked and the duo is having fun again after nearly 30 years apart.

“It's mind-blowing to hear that the sound is still there,” Loggins says of their vocal harmonies. “It's very familiar, like an old sweater. When it's working I can't help but smile — it's like ‘Oh yeah, this was what we did.’

On a nostalgic level it's a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to seeing the audiences again. It's like a family.”