Jim Messina arrived at Buffalo Springfield the way the best accidents happen. He went in as their engineer and producer, stepped up as bassist when the position came open, and found himself helping shape one of rock’s defining moments almost before he’d planned to be in the room at all. That sideways entry, that willingness to follow a project wherever it leads, has characterized the whole of his career: Poco, Loggins & Messina, a solo chapter, and now The Road Runners, the band with which he continues to tour. On Wednesday, November 18, he brings a full career retrospective to Cohoes Music Hall at 7 p.m.
About the Show
The evening covers Messina’s career across three seminal groups. The Cohoes Music Hall calendar describes it as “a show that highlights Messina’s musical career, spanning the decades,” and that’s no small ground to cover.
After his Buffalo Springfield years, spent as producer, audio engineer, and eventual bassist for the Rock & Roll Hall of Famers, Messina co-founded Poco with Richie Furay in 1968. The band held auditions that included Gregg Allman and Gram Parsons before settling on a lineup that helped establish country rock as a genre with a shape and a vocabulary. Messina left in 1970, newly married and ready for something beyond the road, and took a job as an independent producer for Columbia Records.
That’s where the third act began. Brought in to produce an unknown artist named Kenny Loggins, Messina found the sessions becoming something he hadn’t set out to make. The resulting album, Kenny Loggins with Jim Messina Sittin’ In, launched an accidental duo that spent seven years releasing eight albums — “Danny’s Song,” “House at Pooh Corner,” the co-written “Your Mama Don’t Dance” among them — and sold over 16 million copies. Loggins and Messina moved to solo careers in 1976. Messina now performs the retrospective with The Road Runners, the band behind his live record Here, There & Everywhere. No supporting acts have been announced.
Venue & Logistics
Cohoes Music Hall is a 350-seat historic theater at 58 Remsen St. in Cohoes, in the Capital Region. For a show this concentrated on the studio craft and arrangements that defined three different eras of Messina’s work, a room this size is a genuine fit.
Tickets
No ticket price was available from sources at the time of publication. Tickets are on sale now. Buy tickets