![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/DSCN8011-768x1024.jpg\")
(Photo by Mike Morsch)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Poco\u2019s first album, Pickin\u2019 Up the Pieces<\/em>, released May 19, 1969, on the Epic Label \u2014 which Messina would produce \u2014 was one of the earliest examples of what we now know as the \u201ccountry rock\u201d genre, but didn\u2019t make a huge splash upon release, peaking at No. 63 on the U.S. Billboard 200 Albums chart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Messina believes that one of the reasons is that it just didn\u2019t sound as good as it could have. (Another was that the record was \u201ctoo country\u201d for rock radio stations and \u201ctoo rock\u201d for country radio stations.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was extremely disappointed with it (Pickin\u2019 Up the Pieces<\/em>),\u201d said Messina in a recent telephone interview from his home outside Nashville, Tenn. \u201cThe engineer was a nice person, but he was just all thumbs when he was in the studio.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Originally, Messina was signed by Epic Records as an \u201cengineer-producer-artist,\u201d but it wasn\u2019t until after the deal was signed that Messina realize he was not allowed to touch the board because of a collective bargaining agreement with the union that stated artists could not touch the recording console. If they did, a portion of the artist\u2019s royalties would go to the union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy hands were tied at what I was really good at and able to do pretty intuitively. And that was suddenly cut off,\u201d said Messina. \u201cThen to try and explain to somebody who\u2019d never really done it before why I wanted leveling amplifiers on overheads or why I wanted to compress the snare or the bass. Or why I wanted a distorted guitar sound and how to get that without hurting their equipment was confusing to them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So when Poco went into the studio to record its second album, the self-titled Poco<\/em>, Messina, who was once again producing, wanted to work with an engineer who understood what it was the band was trying to accomplish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI met an engineer named Alex Kazengras. He was a new engineer there and had been working in rock and roll, and he had a great feel for sounds,\u201d said Messina, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the release of that album. \u201cHe understood. So when I said we\u2019re going to create a fuzz tone guitar distortion, he knew we were creating it in the studio and that he would pad the microphone with a 20dB pad, and record correctly. It became really wonderful to be back in the studio with an engineer who understood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Getting the right sound with the second Poco album \u2014 a sound that was something different than what Buffalo Springfield had done \u2014 was critical to Messina. For example, when Ahmet Ertegun produced the Springfield, he put the kick drum on one track, then put the other drums on one track. That didn\u2019t create a very good stereophonic sound, according to Messina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo with Alex Kazengras, I said I\u2019d like to do something different. I\u2019d like to keep the kick drum on a separate track, but I\u2019d also like to keep the snare drum on a separate track, the high-hat on a separate track and then everything else as far as overheads and tom-toms, goes on two tracks, which will make a stereo track,\u201d said Messina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Messina said that when one listens to Pickin\u2019 Up the Pieces<\/em> and compares it to the Poco<\/em> album, the drums sound bigger and more dramatic on the second album. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn those days, we had stereo, but we didn\u2019t have pan pots early on,\u201d said Messina. (Panning is the distribution of a sound signal, either through monaural or stereophonic pairs, into a new stereo or multi-channel sound field determined by a pan control setting. A pan pot, short for \u201cpanning potentiometer,\u201d is an analog control with a position indicator that splits audio signals into left and right channels.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo what happens is you would put something in the center, especially if it was two tracks, and it would jump up 3DB (decibels) in the center,\u201d said Messina. \u201cWe had to learn how to place those faders in a way where we wouldn\u2019t get a huge bump in the center. Now with overheads, they\u2019re going to pick up the snare a bit, which was good because it helps to get that balance in a drum kit. By bringing the snare a little underneath it, you get the definition. And with the high hat on one side, I\u2019m able to bring the high hat up into that mix. And I was able to create a really nice, wonderful drum sound on that album.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the songs on the album, the Messina-penned \u201cYou Better Think Twice,\u201d would eventually go on to become one of the band\u2019s signature songs. It was the first single from the band that got any attention, making it to No. 72 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Messina said the song is about a girlfriend he had at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was smitten with her and she had a boyfriend, but she was in and out with him. Then again, she was in and out with me, too,\u201d said Messina. \u201cI was kind of going through a little bit of an abandonment issue there with her. The song came out of wanting her to care for me and be with me. It was a little bit of a love song, but also a little bit of angst and frustration about somebody not wanting to necessarily be with me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Poco<\/em> album, released on May 6, 1970, got favorable reviews at time, getting to No. 58 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It would also be the first album featuring bassist Timothy B. Schmit in the place of Randy Meisner, who had quit the band over a dispute with Richie Furay \u2014 that Messina said he was unaware of at the time \u2014 during the mixing of Pickin\u2019 Up the Pieces.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJimmy and Richie were in the studio. We\u2019d finished the recording and had started the mix,\u201d said Meisner in a Rockceller<\/em> magazine interview with Ken Sharp in 2016. \u201cI called down and said, \u2018I\u2019d like to listen to it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But according to Meisner, Furay said no, only he and Messina were going to mix the record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI said, \u2018Wait a minute, I made the music, too. I\u2019d like to listen to the mixes.\u2019 But Richie said, \u2018No, just Jimmy and I are going to do it.\u2019 So I said, \u2018If you\u2019re not gonna let me down there, I\u2019m just gonna quit.\u2019 And it was simple as that,\u201d said Meisner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Schmit, who was in a Sacramento, Calif.-based band called New Breed that had changed its name to Glad in 1968, had interviewed for a spot in Poco during its formation. (Messina and Furay also auditioned Gregg Allman and Gram Parsons \u2014 of the Byrds and later the Flying Burrito Brothers \u2014 for spots as well, but didn\u2019t choose either of them.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI had a friend, this girl, who knew some of guys from Buffalo Springfield,\u201d said Schmit in a 2017 interview for The Vinyl Dialogues. \u201cShe put it in their ear that I was around and I auditioned for them. They seemed to really like me and they asked me to come back in two days. It turned out they had somebody else come in the following day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That somebody else was Meisner, who recalls the story a little differently. Buffalo Springfield\u2019s equipment manager, Miles Thomas, had tipped Meisner that Furay and Messina were looking for a bass player. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAfter Miles told me that Jimmy and Richie were starting a group, they wanted me to do a tryout,\u201d said Meisner in the Rockceller <\/em>magazine interview. \u201cI went out to Laurel Canyon and here\u2019s Timothy Schmit just walking out as I\u2019m going in. I played for a while and they said, \u2018You\u2019re in.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Schmidt believes he didn\u2019t get the gig initially because Rusty Young, George Grantham and Meisner were all from Denver, Colo., and they already knew each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe other thing was, there was a Selective Service issue on my part. So it was questionable as to weather I would be available,\u201d said Schmit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So when Meisner quit Poco \u2014 he would eventually go on to join the Eagles soon thereafter \u2014 Schmit was available and became the obvious replacement choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRichie especially wanted me int he band, so I knew there must be something there,\u201d said Schmit. \u201cIt was exactly what I wanted to do at the time and it was doubly sweet because I had been originally turned down for the gig. I thought that it was my only chance to really do music at that level and that I blew it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Messina liked Schmit as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe was a great fit. Timmy brought some life, he brought some balance and creativity, had a good voice and the willingness to try new things,\u201d said Messina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the band went into the studio to record the Poco<\/em> album, Schmit said the other band members were looking for not only someone who could play bass, but who also was a good singer and songwriter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI hadn\u2019t been much of a songwriter to that point, but I always wanted to be,\u201d said Schmit. \u201cI told them I was good at all three \u2014 bass playing, singing and songwriting \u2014 so I started writing songs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of the seven songs on the Poco album, Schmit ended up co-writing \u201cKeep on Believin\u2019\u201d with Furay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe just got together a few times and threw around some ideas for that song,\u201d said Schmit. \u201cI learned a lot from Richie.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the Poco<\/em> album did better than Pickin\u2019 Up the Pieces <\/em>on the charts, the band still hadn\u2019t caught fire like its members and record company had wanted it to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And there was some continuing internal strife that exacerbated the lack of record sales. In addition to that whole \u201ctoo rock for country and too country for rock\u201d thing, Messina thought the band hadn\u2019t shown enough diversity in its music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRichie at the time was starting to get a little bit uptight, probably because the first record really didn\u2019t happen for us,\u201d said Messina. \u201cI kind of felt squeezed a little bit by that as well. Richie had issues with Randy, so there was that stress going on as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Epic Records loved the band, though, and wanted to see it succeed. But Messina was looking to get out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to be critical because we are what we are when we\u2019re there. For me, one of the reasons I wanted to leave was that musically, it wasn\u2019t growing in a way where I felt things were going,\u201d said Messina. \u201cLook at Leon Russell, Bonnie and Delaney, Dave Mason, John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival \u2014 that music had some energy to it that I just didn\u2019t think we were getting. I tried to do it with \u2018You Better Think Twice,\u2019 tried to move things, to do something that was a little more rock and roll, but still stayed with a country vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Messina believes that may have frustrated Furay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe really wanted to be successful and wanted his songs to be successful,\u201d said Messina. \u201cAnd he worked hard. But when you\u2019re in a group, it takes a whole team to make things work and it means supporting each other. It just felt like Richie \u2014 I don\u2019t know if it was envy or disappointment \u2014 but those feelings began to happen with me. I thought, well, I don\u2019t want this thing to turn ugly. I\u2019d rather just go back to producing and spend time with my wife.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Messina went to Clive Davis, then president of Columbia Records, and told him he wanted to leave Poco. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe was kind enough to say, \u2018Look, get the next record finished and then find somebody to replace you who is good for the group and then you can leave the group in good standing so that they can be as successful as they can be,\u2019\u201d said Messina. \u201cAll of which I wanted to do anyway, but I thought it was great advice and it gave me incentive to stay there, deliver an album, make sure everybody was OK.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Messina finished producing and mastering Poco\u2019s third album, its first live album called Deliverin\u2019 \u2014<\/em> and then left the band before its release in January 1971.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul Cotton was chosen to replace Messina. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI roomed with Paul for a few weeks to teach him parts and make sure he was comfortable before he went onstage. I found him to be a gentleman and a great replacement for me,\u201d said Messina. \u201cSo when I left, I left feeling good about having done it in a way where it wouldn\u2019t cripple Poco. I\u2019m not so sure they felt that way about me, but you can only do what you can do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fifty years later, Messina is at peace with that decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHaving left Poco with one studio album that sounded that good, and with a great live album that had lots of spirited performances on it, I felt I was able to come back after a bad first-sounding album,\u201d said Messina. \u201cPickin\u2019 Up the Pieces<\/em> has some good tunes on it, I just don\u2019t think the engineering department allowed us to make the best record we could.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Schmit, too, would leave Poco in 1977 to join the Eagles, once again replacing Meisner as the band\u2019s bass player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t have a hit record with Poco, but this new thing (country rock) was Poco, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Pure Prairie League, that was kind of the evolution,\u201d said Schmit. \u201cWe knew a lot of people weren\u2019t doing it, but we also knew there was an audience for it. There was a lot of hype around Poco. We were going to be the next really big thing, but it didn\u2019t quite pan out that way. I was fortunate to sort of grab onto something that was already happening.\u201d As a producer, Jim Messina became very aware while working at CBS studios that most of the engineers at the Epic Records label there were quite competent at what they had been doing, which was jazz, pop and classical music. But when it came to rock and roll, Messina believed it just didn\u2019t register with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":1285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[132,209],"class_list":["post-1283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tvdbook","tag-jim-messina","tag-poco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1283"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1348,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283\/revisions\/1348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/PocoJMPic1.jpg\")
(Photo courtesy of Jim Messina)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/DSCN8576-copy-1024x990.jpg\")
(Photo by Mike Morsch)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/PocoPic2.jpg\")
(Photo courtesy of Poco)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/PocoPic1.jpg\")
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