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PERPETUAL POCO

Rusty Young talks about the legendary country rockers Poco
and how that group have gone from strength to strength over the years

What an all-star line-up Poco had! At one point this group contained members Jim Messina (Loggins and Messina), Richie Furay (Buffalo Springfield), Randy Meisner (The Eagles) and Timothy B Schmidt (The Eagles). Rusty Young has managed to keep the group together year after year…
GJ: The critics always liked Poco didn't they? How important was that to the band. if the LA Times raves about your record, does it make a difference? RY I don't think it really made a difference. No. Critical claim is great and all that stuff but it didn't translate to album sales or radio airplay. GJ: Do you agree with the author Irwin Stambler's comments that the band 'always seemed on the verge of supergroup status in the early 1970s but never achieved the hoped for mass-audience appeal' ? RY That's absolutely true. We never had that breakthrough, that "one song" until 'Crazy Love' in 1978. And that was the end of the seventies. GJ: Your 1969 debut album sold over 100,000 copies. Was that good in those days? RY Yeah. It was good enough to lead to another album. GJ: Poco made its debut in November 1968 at The Troubadour in LA. What sort of audience did you have at that time? RY These were pretty interesting times because everyone wanted to come and see us. Richie had really come up with the concept of the country rock thing that wasn't already being done. Everybody was ready to jump on the bandwagon. In The Troubadour there would be Ricky Nelson, The Smothers Brothers, George Harrison and John Lennon. George came down because they tried to sign us to Apple at one point. GJ: Was this nerve-wracking for you? RY It was a lot of fun. Richie carried the band so I didn't feel any pressure at all. GJ: The comedian Phil Hartman designed one of the Poco album covers didn't he? RY A bunch of 'em, actually. His brother John Hartman managed America, Poco and Crosby, Stills and Nash. We were all part of this little family. Phil was head of the art department, although he did the comedy thing as well. Phil as a good friend. GJ: How were you supporting yourself in the summer and fall of '68 while poco was rehearsing? RY I was doing really well in Colorado before I moved out, playing in local bands and local bars and giving guitar lessons and selling guitars. I sold everything I had and went out to LA and a friend there got me the job playing on 'Kind Woman'. he was road managing The Turtles and I stayed at his house while he was on the road. GJ: Do you have a new record deal in the works at the moment? RY Well, we're completing the new CD. In the old days you couldn't afford to make a CD yourself, 10 years ago when we made the 'Legacy' record it cost half a million dollars to make. This time, I've paid for and own the record and it's as good as, and better sounding, than anything we've done. Because things have changed so much with the Internet you can make distribution deals. These days for a band like Poco, we're not going to get played on mainstream rock 'n' roll radio. It just isn't going to happen. So you don't have to spend the money going after that. We can be more selective. I don't need a label to do that. I can hire the same distribution, the same promotion and publicity people. In the past 'Legacy' sold close to a million copies but none us in the band ever saw a penny from it. GJ: Why is that? RY Because the record company makes all the money and they charge you for everything. The studio time, promotion, and then they take all the profit. But a lot of people have learned the hard way and so the John Prine's and the Ricky Scaggs of this world have their own label because they've been dropped by the majors. You don't have to sell half a million records to make money. We own our new record and there are labels that are interested. I then have to decide whether it's a good deal or whether we'll do it ourselves. GJ: Are you the only original band member? RY No, there is Paul Cotton. He's been in the band since 1970. And there's George Grantham who has been in the band for almost as long. Of the four original guys from the mid-70s the only one missing is Tim Schmidt, who is obviously not going to quit The Eagles to play with us. © 2002 Gary James. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved.

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