thoughts on Early Poco

[Tony Prior]

The Loggins and Messina thing was certainly excellent and Jimmy played very well with that band but you had to LOOK hard to find the Guitar pickin'. This was not really a Guitar Picker band such as Poco was.

Of course a few classics Guitar tunes came out of that band, Holdiday Hotel, Momma or course, Angel Eyes, Country song, all excellent examples of Jimmy's style .

I never got to see Poco with Jimmy but did see Loggins and Jimmy a couple of times . I did see Poco with Paul a few times, I liked it fine but it was missing a very important ingredient for me. The very last time I saw Poco it was just before Richie left and it was pretty , well I'll be very kind being a big fan and all, it was very lack luster. They were now playing very long jam songs with Rusty playing his BEAR thing. I pretty much went to see and hear Richie sing and it never really happened.

Regarding Loggins and Messina, the duo, I heard this was actually an accident. Messina produced the Kenny Loggins album with Jim Messina Sittin in, and he contributed so much Music and voice to the tracks that it was apparent that this was a DUO . I don't know this to be totally factual but it makes sense.

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[Barry Scott]

I was lucky enough to have played shows with every incarnation of the band except the line up that preceded Randy Meisner's replacement by Timothy Schmidt. ALWAYS a thrill !! Somewhere I have home movies of Richie at the Holiday Inn in Norfolk, Va. in a pre show lounge around the pool. Also some great pictures of the show from that particular night that I will post if I can locate them today. I always thought that the first lp with Paul Cotton was a great record. I t just suffered from that dark 70's production popular at the time. And I would be surprised to find that "You Better Think Twice" was recorded in an open tuning. I never saw Jimmy play it that way and though it's not the easiest lick to play, it sounds correct in standard tuning.

[Dennis Olearchik]

I always thought of Jim Messina as having a "classic Tele" sound. What I mean by "classic", is that when you heard him play, you knew without doubt that he was playing a Tele. Oddly enough, I saw him playing a "Strat" with Loggins on their re-union tour. Anyone remember him playing a Strat during the '70's with Loggins?

[Mat Rhodes]

From the age of about 7-11, my parents played the Loggins & Messina live album (that taupe-ish colored one) all the time. "Holiday Hotel", "Angry Eyes", and "Christoper Robinson" were songs that stuck with me, even though I haven't heard them in 20 some-odd years.

But I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that my first encounter with Poco was when I was learning how to crawl. My father still tells me stories of how he wanted to drop-kick me as a baby because I used his Poco album (yes, out of the jacket - I believe it was navy blue colored) as a crawl-facilitating "slide" mechanism along the floor. No wonder I became a steel guy. Rusty Young even had influence through non-auditory osmosis.

[Jim Cohen]

My father still tells me stories of how he wanted to drop-kick me as a baby because I used his Poco album as a crawl-facilitating "slide" mechanism along the floor.

I get that.

[Barry Scott]

These picks are from the first tour with Paul Cotton just after the release of "From The Inside". I found the pics yesterday and also the negatives. I will post some close ups of Rusty when I get some more copies made. I gave all the ones I had to him the last time I saw him. And that's a Sho-Bud I think. Sorry for the poor quality...these are pictures of pics. The only way I could get them on my computer.