There’s Still Something Happening Here
Jimmy Messina picked up his first guitar at the age of five, influenced by the giants of early rock and roll, Scotty Moore (Elvis) and James Burton (Ricky Nelson). Highly proficient at the young age of 15, he formed a teenage surf band called THE JESTERS modeled after Dick Dale’s music and that of The Champs. With a recording deal in hand, his album The Dragsters came out at the tail end of the surf music era and didn’t sell much.
He then immersed himself in all aspects of the music business, gaining acclaim and experience as an engineer working at Sunset Sound Recorders on sessions that produced gold records by Lee Michaels, Joni Mitchell and the legendary band, The Buffalo Springfield, famous for their mega-hit record, “For What It’s Worth.” But… with Steve Stills and Neil Young at the beginning of their well-documented stormy relationship, the critically acclaimed music was stalled.
Ahmet Ertegun, legendary head of Atlantic Records, recognized Jim’s talents and asked him if he would be willing to produce and deliver the unfinished album that the Springfield had started. Initially hired to engineer the Springfield, Jim by then had already replaced Bruce Palmer on bass guitar, when asked by Ahmet and the band to produce what was to become their final album, “Last Time Around.”
He then joined forces with fellow Springfield member Richie Furay to form the seminal country-rock band, Poco. In 1970, Clive Davis of Columbia Records offered him an in-house producer’s job and his first project was with the then-unknown Kenny Loggins. The result of this collaboration was record sales of over 20 million and gigs everywhere, including a memorable one at Carnegie Hall in 1972, opening for Delaney and Bonnie and Friends. Messina’s artistic inclinations beyond music range from building furniture, welding sculptures and painting in acrylic and watercolors.
What kind of painting set up do you have?
I have several but I bought an old military desk that might have been an order desk out of the 1940s that was painted battleship grey. After I tore away a little piece of chipped paint, it turned out to be solid maple. So I had it stripped down and refinished. It’s very cool. With its top midsection slightly slanted, it is easier for me to sit and paint when I am working at home in watercolor. I can see well when I paint and the water doesn’t readily trial down on the surface of the painting. I also use a fairly large easel designed more for oils than watercolors, which I use for my acrylic paintings. If I am painting out in the field, I pack all my gear and things that I need, from brushes to bottles, boards to easels and three or four different types of clothing that I can take off or put on, depending on the weather.
When I first started working in watercolor, I used a couple of analog Nikons—one loaded with black and white, and the other with color film. The black and white shots allowed me later to check my grey tones and light values. Then I would shoot the same scenes in color. I could then see what the colors actually were and compare them against the grey tone and light values shots. This allowed me later to really see how the shadows, the light and the colors, all played out, something that was hard to keep in mind after I left the site.
I would then start drawing out what I saw. Sometimes it would be an easy process; sometimes I would sit there for a whole day or two. I would start with the background, such as the sky and clouds and work my way down through the mountain or horizon details. Sometimes, like in the summer in California Gold Country (too hot), or in Hawaii (the humidity gets too high) it would be impossible to paint in watercolor. The pigment wouldn’t flow evenly inside a “wet on wet” wash.
If the ambient temperature was too high and too dry, the wash would absorb too quickly leaving the sky to become simply puddles of color. That was about the time I began to realize that being there to have the initial experience gave me a real sense of the dimensions and sunlight. I would also grab paint chips or a piece of the brick or stone, which was a big part of the process that I could later use at home when finishing up the painting, as in The Wells Fargo Building. It was built in 1857 in the California’s gold country. Clint Eastwood made a number of films in and around it and Kenny and I shot our “Mother Lode” album cover in front of it in 1974, so it had some history for me. I like doing architecture like Pueblos, 19th century Victorians, or old farm houses—things that have a sense of peace and history.
I went back to Colombia, CA to paint the Wells Fargo Building in the 1980s, after Kenny and I had broken up, spending a number of days camped out in there in my VW van, drawing and shooting color and black and white photos and getting the drawing the way I felt it should look. What made it most difficult was that the building is crooked from years of settling and I feared there would be those would say, “This guy can’t draw a straight line. HEAVEN FORBID.
In any event, as I was standing in the street looking at the building some 30 years later, I felt as though I had stepped into my painting! But I immediately sensed something was missing. For me, once a drawing or painting is committed to canvas, it freezes it in time. Then finally I got it! A very large tree that once stood in front of the Wells Fargo Building from back in the late 1880s was missing. It had been chopped down.
How does this compare with your songwriting process?
Songwriting is very similar. I was explaining this point at a concert one night, explaining to the audience that this next song reminds me of one of my paintings and how when I step into it, I see how things have now changed. The song is entitled “Traveling Blues” recorded in the 1970s on a Loggins & Messina record. In those days I didn’t have any children. Now that I do, I experience a totally different set of emotions when I sing the song. These new emotions weren’t there when the song was simply a projection, or an emotional fantasy of an experience, when the song was first conceived.
Another way that painting relates to me as a recording engineer is that over the years playing with colors and pigments, I noticed that the cool colors recede and the warm colors pull forward. It’s the same as mixing sound. The cooler colors or parts —such as echo, reverb and room ambience— have a tendency to recede inside the mix. The warmer colors or parts—vocals and instrumental solos—want to be up front. So it is kind of a dichotomy to put too much echo, reverb or ambience on the warm stuff. That being said, it is done most often for an effect. At times the rule doesn’t always rule.
When did you begin painting seriously?
Art for me came at a point in time when I had not been working that much in the music business. My mother and grandmother were both artists, so it was in my blood to paint. Painting fulfills the creativity that is sometimes lost in a business where no one really knows why or how music becomes successful, other than those who spend a lot of money promoting it. But it doesn’t change the artist who has the artistic desire and need to express oneself.
I love wood and metal, so I learned to weld and to do woodworking. I’ve built cowboy furniture out of lodge pole pine, as well as pine furniture in the style of Irish and Scottish farm I love wood and metal, so I learned to weld and to do woodworking.
I’ve built cowboy furniture out of lodge pole pine, as well as pine furniture in the style of Irish and Scottish farm furnishings. As a technical engineer, I enjoy circuit wiring, repairing gear and using the soldering tools as well as reading schematics. It’s all interrelated to me.
As a young man, I had a lot of passion toward my music—to be a somebody— but I was a nobody, just a little, skinny Italian kid, from Colton, California. I knew then that I wanted to know the music business from the pots and resistors in my guitar amp through and including the words that made up the legalese in the contracts I had signed, and all that was in-between.
In heart to heart conversations I’ve had with myself and from those commitments I’ve made, I have come to realize and understand that I can forge my destiny by virtue of my thoughts. Continued and perpetual success? Well, that’s another story. As the Romans would say (if you are a Spartacus fan, as I am), “The Gods may have other plans.”
Tell us about your musical past.
I first began working with the Buffalo Springfield on their second album, “Again” as a recording engineer. “Bluebird” was on this album; I thought it was their best song and truly a tribute to Steven’s talent as a songwriter and musician. The very first Springfield session is when I met Neil Young. I recall my initial impression was that Neil was their producer. He and I worked well together to create a very fine piece of work for the band on that album.
The third Buffalo Springfield album, “Last Time Around,” was the album that I engineered, produced and played bass on. Multi-track recorders were all eight-track machines in those days so tracks were limited for overdubbing. Partway through the making of “Last Time Around,” I learned that Neil had quit the band, leaving Steven, Richie, Dewey and myself to continue on our own.
The band, even when Neil was there, seldom recorded all together. I would work with each of them independently. Steven had songs and musicians he wanted recorded, as did Neil. Richie had songs and musicians that needed to be recorded. Dewey would sing on a song here and there. I had enough bits and pieces from each of them that would allow me to finish the album, as Ahmet Ertegun wanted it done. Near the end, Neil came in with the master of “I Am A Child” which he recorded in studio “C” at Sunset Sound. It sounded great and I was pleased to see that he had decided to contribute to the project.
It was a lot of work to finish “Last Time Around” as everyone was so scattered all the time. I never made a dime as a producer off of that album and years later, according to Ahmet, the album never went gold. But what seemed very odd to me was over time I didn’t know of anyone in my generation who didn’t own a copy of “Last Time Around.”
Poco evolved out of this?
After the Buffalo Springfield dissolved in 1968, I started working with Richie cutting a demo, doing music that was something kind of country but kind of rock. It was during the Buffalo Springfield sessions, we brought in a pedal steel player named Rusty Young who overdubbed on “Kind Woman.” Richie and I didn’t know what the group was going to be yet. It was then that Richie and I thought Rusty was the kind of guy we wanted to have in a group of our own.
We had been watching Ricky Nelson perform with the Stone Canyon band, (by the way, his “Garden Party” era was a great moment for him) and he had a bass player named Randy Meisner. We wooed Randy and he decided to join our band, which we initially called POGO. We did our first gig at the Troubadour. That’s when we heard from a guy by the name of Walt Kelly who served us with a lawsuit saying, his cartoon character POGO was off limits, “Stop using that name or go to court.” That’s when our manager Richard Davis suggested that we use a spelling that made up the word “POCO” instead. Good call.
I produced and performed on three albums with POCO and toured from 68-70. No matter where we played, we’d always sell out. But we didn’t have the record sales we needed to survive. Our second album contained a song that I wrote and sang lead on entitled, “You Better Think Twice.” It kept our momentum going for a bit longer. The last album I produced and performed on POCO was “Deliverin’”, a live album.
So you just wanted to produce records?
Yes. I left POCO on October 31, 1970 to produce for Columbia. It was during my last tour with Poco that Don Ellis, who worked in artist development there, asked if I might consider listening to the little brother of a co-worker of his. Two months later, I was introduced to Kenny Loggins when he came at my invitation to my house for dinner. He was poor in those days and didn’t own a guitar of his own. I lent him one of mine and he sat down and sang a number of his songs into my tape recorder. After he left, I told my wife Jenny there’s something very special about this guy.
The fact that he could just sit down and feel comfortable about singing his songs into a tape recorder was refreshing to me after the way the Springfield and POCO recorded. The thing that most scared me was that he had never been on tour nor did he have an attorney, manager or agent. All of that had to be in place if there was ever going to be a single record sold. Nonetheless, I agreed to take him on as an artist to produce.
It was during the process of gathering his material and trying to find a manager and an agent for him that I realized nobody was interested in him, which was a shock to me. I then thought maybe the best thing to do would be to introduce him to the audiences and fans I accrued while in the Springfield and POCO by performing on an album with him like the old jazz guys did—“Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sitting In”—was the concept I thought that would most help him.
Clive Davis was not too pleased initially. He said I’d be starting a group that would break up after it’s first record, something he did not want to see. I pointed out to him that Delaney and Bonnie and Friends with Leon Russell, Eric Clapton and Duane Allman all performing as featured artists had been successful with that concept. In addition, there had been a number of albums in the jazz realm similar to what I was proposing, Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd to name another. I commented that I felt this was the best option to start on the right track. Clive reluctantly agreed and with his blessings, I was able to find a manager who then secured an agent and we were off and running with an album and a tour. I thought once the train was rolling I could jump off at the next station and just produce Kenny’s albums after that.
But as it turned out the album was so well-received that Clive suggested I consider staying with Kenny. We agreed that I would continue to produce and perform with Kenny as an artist. Hence… the birth of Loggins and Messina. We had five or six very successful years, selling around 20 million records. Kenny always envisioned himself as a solo artist so this concept enabled him to launch that solo career.
After L & M disbanded, I released an album entitled “Oasis” on Columbia Records. Now… the same guy—Don Ellis—who came to me for help to get Kenny Loggins started, had somehow managed to work himself up the ranks and into the A & R department there. However, this time he wasn’t asking, he was telling. Standing before me and representing the record label he said, “I’m not happy with your album because this isn’t the album I expected.” When I asked him “What did you expect? He said, ‘I was expecting an album that sounded more like Loggins and Messina.’ I said, “I’m not sure if you are aware of this or not, but… Loggins and Messina broke up and … quite some time ago too.’ It was no use; he had already decided to kill my album before that meeting. Even so, I toured behind “Oasis”, financing it with my own money. Surprisingly, it sold about 150,000 units, approximately the same amount the first L & M “Sittin’ In” sold and without any promotion! But still and yet, with no help coming from the label, I asked my attorney to please get me a release. A number of months later, I signed with Warner Bros. where I recorded my next two solo albums.
How did all this impact your creativity?
I realized that I needed to find other creative outlets until things changed. That’s how I got into my artwork. I enjoyed hanging out with painters and took watercolor classes, one with Marilyn Simandle in Sutter’s Creek, California Gold Country. While I had been painting only casually and for fun, her class asked that we only work with her palette in order to try and recreate what she was doing with the colors to which she had limited herself. That’s when I became aware of how a specific palette, via the pigments and the colors, can establish a unique style and look for an artist.
You’re kind of a traditionalist in your painting.
I’ve learned over the years that to plagiarize will only work against you as far as being able to be unique. At the Taos Pueblo—visitors were not supposed to take pictures so they wouldn’t let me use my Nikon. I had a “point and click” with me, but would have preferred to just sit and draw and then paint.
However, that was either forbidden or there was a fee involved, I can’t rightly remember now. But for me, being able to sit and draw is the difference between getting something to feel threedimensional as opposed to just two-dimensional. When I am there and looking at an object, I can see all the little twists and turns that add to the depth of field.
I seek to get at least four dimensions inside a painting. Starting with one plant, then to a wall, and then from that wall to a chair. From the chair to the wall behind it and on and on, thus giving a very dimensional perspective to the painting. To me, all adobe walls are the same color: adobe. Cow skulls are all white and the sky over New Mexico, with its unbelievably beautiful blue, is always the same color, only just brighter or a little darker. The turquoise and corals, together with the blacks, Indian reds and whites combined with the various blues and blue greens with petroglyphs set in silver jewelry are in everything. Yet, no two paintings are the same in the hands of a fluid master. Somehow, all these very skilled and miraculous New Mexican and Native Indian painters can take the same images that one sees all over Santa Fe and find many different ways to make a landscape appear so very different and yet feel the same.
For me, the unique territorial architecture (which I adore) combines the Native American adobe architecture with the Victorian architecture of the 1800s and is so absolutely phenomenal and beautiful to look at. I think that will be my next series.
I saw recently where Young, Stills and Furay are going out as the Buffalo Springfield. Are you going to join them?
Actually, no one called to ask if I might like to participate in the reunion. And … it would have been nice to have at least received a call explaining how they were conceiving this reunion to be. I am reminded by your question of the old adage that says, “No good deed goes unpunished.” That having been said, I must add that without Steven, Neil, Richie and Dewey I may not have traveled the path that led me to the successes I have earned and enjoy today. The Buffalo Springfield was a good starting point for me.
In addition, as anyone who has followed my career would attest, my songwriting, musicianship and productions have evolved significantly and are quite diversified and sophisticated since 1967, when I was the bass player in The Buffalo Springfield.
In the Springfield, I learned about folk and folk rock. In POCO, I explored combining folk, country and rock. In Loggins and Messina, I took out all the stops and Kenny and I had success not only with folk music with songs such as “Danny’s Song”, or country hits with songs such as “Listen to a Country Song” by Lynn Anderson, but also rock hits like “Your Mama Don’t Dance” and “Angry Eyes.” We also brought to the stage classical music compositions and orchestrations like “Be Free” featuring violins, mandolins and oboes. Some of the most fun and sophisticated orchestrations I performed on record and on stage lie in the Latin jazz and Latin rock genres on my “Oasis” album that expanded upon Salsa with the use of a horn section, percussion and keyboards set in a warm bed of chord changes.
So, I’m not sure exactly how much fun it would be for me to stand on stage and just play a bass, especially if my fellow compadres considered me only a sideman while in the Springfield. Nonetheless, I am extremely excited for Richie. I feel this will be a great opportunity for him in so many ways to heal (if any) old wounds that may have lingered between the three of them during their relationships as young men. It’s all good there.
And…it’s all good here for me, too, because I am excited about touring as a solo act this summer. I have put together a wonderful group of musicians and we will be doing songs from all of those groups above. I am so looking forward to performing to all the fans I have made throughout the years since 1967 and plan to have my art available for those who wish to buy it at the shows. I look forward to seeing you there.