Reaching Back

Spencer Patterson

Friday, June 24, 2005 | 3:30 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

June 25-26, 2005

Who: Loggins & Messina.

When: 8 p.m. July 3.

Where: Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts.

Tickets: $45 to $75.

Information: 785-5000.

The duo that was "born to break up" is back together.

Twenty-nine years after their six-album commitment to one-another expired, Loggins & Messina are making music again.

On Friday the country-rock twosome kicked off their first tour since 1976 in Boise.

The Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts hosts date No. 5 on July 3. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., with the show scheduled to begin at 8.

Kenny Loggins, a songwriter whose tunes had been recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Jim Messina, a former member of Buffalo Springfield and Poco, teamed to record 1972's "Sittin' In."

Loggins & Messina went on to sell more than 16 million records worldwide, making their mark with such hits as "Your Mama Don't Dance," "House at Pooh Corner" and "Danny's Song."

Since going their separate ways, Loggins and Messina launched solo careers, and Messina reunited with his Poco mates for a time. Loggins has been the more visible of the two, earning a pair of Grammy awards and reaching the upper regions of the pop charts with movie soundtrack smashes such as "Footloose" and "Danger Zone" from "Top Gun."

On Monday the 57-year-old Loggins took time for a phone interview from his Santa Barbara, Calif., home to discuss his impending tour with Messina.

Las Vegas Sun: How did you and Jim get back together after all these years apart?

Kenny Loggins: Every couple of years we'd contact each other to kick it around, one or the other of us. I was always reluctant because the solo career was doing well, and I didn't want to mess with that. I was having too good a time.

And then this past year a lot of stuff hit the fan for me. Changes came down and I started to be more open to the idea of Loggins & Messina, on an emotional level.

Sun: Personal changes?

KL: Right. It was during this last year, through my divorce and separation ... you just take all the cards of your life and throw them up in the air. And in that process Jimmy showed up and helped me with a benefit concert I was doing in Santa Barbara and reached out to me as a friend and someone who's been through it.

We worked on a couple of benefit concerts together where we were rehearsing and working up old material and singing together. And I suddenly had this sense that it was the right time, that I was open to it emotionally and creatively. It felt like it could be fun. A few months of just going back and sort of collecting that part of myself from when I was 23 years old.

Sun: Were you and Jim close friends during the Loggins & Messina days?

KL: We weren't close. We never really hung out together. We're two very different people. We have some things in common, but we come at the world from different points of view.

When we came together originally I was an artist looking for a producer and he was a producer looking for an artist. So we've always pretty much had a business relationship that was glued together by the success of the music.

And when Loggins & Messina broke up, there really wasn't that much in common to keep us together, to keep us in communication, except for the six years of working together. But we never really had a sense of brotherhood like you and your best friends from high school would have.

Sun: Originally, the first Loggins & Messina album was supposed to be a Kenny Loggins solo LP. How did Jim wind up becoming a full half of the group?

KL: It's still a mystery (laughs). Like I said, I was looking for a producer and he was looking for an artist and we started working together on a Kenny Loggins project.

And then Jimmy got the idea that there would be a cool way to introduce me to his audience, having come from Buffalo Springfield and Poco, to do the "Sittin' In" angle, where he would sit in with me and we would do stuff together. And that sort of evolved into Loggins & Messina.

And then when we turned that "Sittin' In" album in to Columbia, Clive Davis insisted on a duo with a six-year commitment.

Sun: That's a pretty long commitment for someone who thought he was going solo.

KL: It is a big commitment. And I was emotionally ready to go solo from the beginning. So what makes Loggins & Messina different from any other duo is that we were born to break up. Most come together thinking they're gonna conquer the world and stay on forever.

But I was so ready to break loose by the time we were on our finale tour. I was totally ready.

Sun: What do you suppose the crowds will be like for this tour?

KL: I'm really really looking forward to seeing the people, the audience that comes for this reunion. It's probably going to be a different audience, essentially the core audience of my solo career, but a much bigger group.

I'm sure I left this audience behind years ago with my own changes musically, whether it was (1977 solo debut album) "Celebrate Me Home," which was sort of delving into the jazzier pop thing that was happening in the mid-'70s, or on into the "Footloose" movie time. I've gone through a lot of changes musically that have brought in new audiences and left some of the old audiences behind.

So it will be interesting to see this new audience and who they are and where they come from. The general feeling I'm getting is that there's so much gratitude at us getting back together again and the nostalgia of touching back into who we were then.

Sun: You and Jim have continued to include Loggins & Messina material in your solo sets over the years. Did the songs come together pretty naturally when you started rehearsing for this tour?

KL: That's actually what's made it the most difficult. Jimmy's had versions of some of these old tunes and I've had versions of the old tunes. And through the rehearsal process, we've been trying to glean the best moments of both solo versions and figure out where they fit into the original versions.

The song will have as its core the original version, and then it's what elements can we integrate into that, that lift it up and make it more interesting, if any.

Sun: How long did the two of you rehearse?

KL: About four weeks.

Sun: You guys announced plans for a "Sittin' In" segment of the show, during which other musicians will come onstage and play with you.

KL: That's what we're hoping for. We put the word out for a lot of our friends. But Richard Marx and Michael McDonald are touring this summer on their own, so it's gonna be tricky to get anybody cornered and happen to be in the right city at the right time.

Sun: You never know who might be in Las Vegas.

KL: Clint Holmes can come and do all of our songs.

Sun: Will you both also include solo tunes in the performances?

KL: Jim's gonna do a tune or two from his Poco days and I'm gonna do a song with Jimmy that I wrote with Clint Black called "Alive 'N' Kickin' " from my (2003) CD, "It's About Time." A lot of (that song) is about the Loggins & Messina days, and it is in that kind of country-rock style.

Sun: So no "Footloose," "Danger Zone" ...

KL: There are no plans for that.

Sun: Speaking of those songs, soundtracks have always been a good source of hits for you. Do you actively seek them out or do folks in the film industry see you as a sort of go-to guy?

KL: Those mostly came to me, and all of those were strokes of luck in one way or another.

The first one was "I'm Alright" from "Caddyshack" and that was based on a relationship I had with (executive producer) Jon Peters. I had a song in "A Star is Born" with Barbra Streisand, and I met Jon when he was with Barbra. So he called me to get a song for "Caddyshack."

"Footloose" was a favor to a friend. Dean Pitchford wrote the screenplay, and he and I had written a couple of songs together for my solo albums. He had a screenplay and knew it was a musical, so we wrote "Footloose" and I wrote "I'm Free (Heaven Helps the Man)."

"Danger Zone" I wasn't even supposed to perform. That was supposed to be, to my recollection, Toto singing "Danger Zone." And I guess the attorneys couldn't agree on it. So they dropped out. And next thing I knew, I was in there singing it. I think I was in the studio doing "Playing With the Boys," so I was in the right place at the right time. It was a great surprise.

Sun: So is this just a one-tour-and-done plan or might you two stay together and record some new music?

KL: Anything is possible. We don't have any plans for that, but in hanging out together, we're open to the possibility of something creative happening.

We sort of just want to get through this one and see what it feels like.

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