50% of a Duo = 100% Entertainment

Pop music has been kind to quite a few musician duos: Steely Dan, Hall & Oates, Everly Brothers (Don and Phil), Carpenters (Karen and Richard), Simon and Garfunkel, Sonny & Cher, Richard and Linda Thompson, Captain and Tenille. (Query: Which of these former duo members have appeared at the Landmark?) For fans of a particular era, there’s little doubt that Loggins and Messina belong on any such listicle.

So how do you start a show that has half its already distant memory blurred out?

Like this: The band, sans Messina, quietly positions themselves onstage while Landmark management thanks contributors. When the credits are done, Messina, wearing a characteristic Western shirt perhaps fresh off a Tennessee garment rack where he has taken up residence, assumed a quiet sitting pose with an acoustic guitar.

Inside the Catalog

Any doubt as to whether the audience was in synch with the Messina entourage was removed in short order. “Watching the River Run” and the sentimental favorite “House on Pooh Corner” soon had the audience singing along in what sounded like loud whispers. Sure, they knew the lyrics. “Danny’s Song” would be even easier to remember.

Messina then reached back even further in his catalog, to his Buffalo Springfield days. “Kind Woman” (1968) may be an old song, but proposes that “love's an ageless old rhyme.” Whether love proves ageless among us mortals remains to be seen, but those in attendance discovered something ageless in the airwaves.

Messina's acoustic guitar was done for the evening.

“Follow Your Dreams,” the next song, was lifted from Messina’s later Poco stint (1989), and then by Poco’s “You Better Think Twice” (1971).

But “Listen to a Country Song” brought the audience back to the duo’s core and the memorable image of sister “Sue,” who “throws him [Second cousin Jack] on the ground without turning around / 'Cause she knows a lotta jujitsu.” This was classic L&M: a light, playful touch (except "Changes," which tellingly wasn't on the agenda.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EId97tw_b4k

The song “Trilogy: Lovin' Me / To Make a Woman Feel Wanted / Peace of Mind” (representing a seriously substantial body of lyric to have memorized) carried the audience on a gentle ride to its repeated incantation, “peace of mind, just a little peace of mind.” It doesn’t get any easier for an audience to sing along and grab a little of the sweet stuff along the way.

Ascending to the Next Level

The show moved to a different level when the stagehand brought out Messina’s mandolin. This cued more sophisticated song structures, harmony, improvisation. And it was handed to Messina, not to violinist Gary Olevar (mandolin and violin tunings are identical, albeit with strings doubled for the mandolin) – somehow a special treat.

For diehard Loggins & Messina fans, this act signaled it was time to “Be Free.” “Be Free” is a Russian Doll container of tunefulness, jigs, unisons and tempo changes.

The band then exceeded all expectation with the duo’s masterpiece “Angry Eyes,” an “extended play” song which called on the best from each band member. Dave Beyer and Michael Brady on percussion and bass respectively were faithfully steady, while violin and woodwind solos from Gary Oleyar and Craig Thomas were equally top of form.

The show closed with a rousing mix of rock and improvisation with “You Need a Man” and the wedding band anthem, “Your Mama Don’t Dance." For most men in the audience, the memory of "Out the car, longhair!" quip long outlived the hair. No hashtag required.

The Messina Guitar Method

Messina’s guitar style is an understated force of nature – at least within the mini-verse of the Loggins & Messina catalog.

Determined to uncover a few of Messina’s guitarist secrets, this reviewer consulted Long Island guitarist Scott O’Hare, who’s lately been performing with Tequila Mockingbird but is so knowledgeable about the six-string juggernaut.

We began with tunings. In interviews, Messina mentioned a fondness for alternate tunings – so much so that for a time while touring he used a Roland G-5 VG Stratocaster. This guitar featured electronic instead of mechanical tuning, which meant Messina didn’t need to carry as many instruments on his tours. Messina cites his songs “Angry Eyes, “ “You Better Think Twice, “ “Changes, “ and “Same Old Wine” as all having modal tunings. These alternate tunings, it’s said, were influenced by Messina’s early exposure to Hawaiian Slack-key. Slack-key, then, is a more expansive use of the more common “dropped D,” in which the low E is lowered to a D. Multiple strings may be retuned, sometimes forming entire chords, or additional unisons.

In “Good Friend,” Messina introduced a slight twang that would become widely used in country rock later in the decade. Mostly borrowed from rockabilly [], it was front and center in the evening’s rendition of “You Need a Man / Coming to You,” along with phrasal idioms that one might associate with guitarists like Vince Gill (“One More Last Chance,” “What Do Cowgirls Do”), Jerry Reed (“The Claw,” “East Bound and Down”) or the Landmark visitor, Tommy Emmanuel (“Deep River Blues”) or as shown here in a product demo by Johnny Hiland: https://youtu.be/WcKGIf5F-lI.

The last part of the Messina style worth mentioning is his thumb picking. In fact, in the previous night’s performance at Landmark, O’Hare reminds us, the meticulous playing style of Cliff Eberhardt also included a forceful downstroke – typically on the low E string – which delivered a ringing, accented note that hung in the air, even on his acoustic guitar. When Messina adopts this method, he adds a metal thumb pick for additional attack, sometimes deadens the strings judiciously for effect, then lets the tone do the talking.

The result isn’t flourish or shred. You don’t pine to play that fast or that loud. You just let the tone dance across you, breeze by, then hang shimmering in the wake of that crisply launched note for a few delicious seconds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFM-VaUO_CE

Which is why this audience found it exceeding hard to stay angry during “Angry Eyes” – or after.

The night's entertainment was complete and "ful" despite the missing "L."

Next Up at Landmark

The Carbon Leaf Brothers in Arms Tour arrives at the Landmark on 15 March 2020.