Poco brings storied sound

The band was started by rock stars - Richie Furay and Jim Messina of Buffalo Springfield - and spawned a few. Messina went on to form, write for and produce hit machine Loggins & Messina; bassists Timothy B. Schmit and Randy Meisner went on to the Eagles.

But Young has been the constant, through lineup changes and reunions with various combinations of original members.

His signature pedal steel work - a clean sound with liberal use of bell-like harmonics - provides continuity throughout the band's changes.

Young says he came to the pedal steel from the pure country side of music, rather than being a rock guitarist who picked up the instrument to jump on the country and country-rock bandwagons.

Young started playing steel in Colorado as a six-year-old. He said it was common in those days - his parents had him start lessons in 1952 - for beginning guitarists to learn on lap steels, which are like a simplified steel guitar, tuned to a chord and played with a bar, but without any pedals to change the pitch of individual strings.

"I really loved it. I was good at it. After six months (playing lap steel), you could switch to guitar. I stuck with the steel," Young says.

A few years later, Young says, he was a 12-year-old playing in bars after church on Sundays.

The instrument was at the core of the sound of country music, and every band wanted a steel player.

So by the time he was 15 and got one of Fender's first pedal steel guitars, he was in demand enough that he got away with playing in bars underage.

It wasn't far from Colorado bars to the formation of Poco in the canyons of Los Angeles through a connection with a former Denver-area band mate.

Young says Poco was formed when he was brought in as recording session pedal steel player on a song written by Richie Furay for Buffalo Springfield's last album.

As Young tells it, after the studio session, he, Furay and bassist Jim Messina talked about putting a band together. They did, and it was eventually called Poco. It was first called Pogo, but "Pogo" comic strip creator Walt Kelly sued the band over the use of his character's and strip's name, and they rounded it off to Poco.

Any group that has been together as long as Poco is bound to have a few stories that the members would like to erase. For Young, there are a few misconceptions at the top of the list.

Young says he can usually predict what a fan is going to ask even before the first word comes out: "Are you Neil Young's brother?" I get that one every night," Young says.

Nope. No relation, says Young, though he understands how that might have come about, seeing as how Poco grew out of the collapse of Neil Young's first big group, Buffalo Springfield.

So people who read the liner notes on the album saw that there were two Youngs on the album and assumed they were brothers.

Seeing as Neil Young is about three months older, Rusty Young says it would have been tough on his mother.

At least he got a song out of that one. On Poco's upcoming album, there's a track Young wrote called "Neil Young Is Not My Brother." There's a link to a live video of Poco performing the song in which Rusty Young does a spot-on imitation of Neil Young's wheezy harmonica playing, his high voice and even his stage mannerisms.

But the other misconception he's interested in correcting is the relatively common belief that Graham Parsons, the Byrds or Buffalo Springfield created country rock.

Young says the way it really happened was that Parsons had been trying out for Poco while they were putting the band together in a Los Angeles canyon after Buffalo Springfield broke up. (Interestingly, he said Gregg Allman was another almost Poco member.)

At that time, Young says, "Graham was stone-cold country. That's all he did. He loved George Jones. What we were doing was taking country and stretching it, using country instruments. Graham watched that."

But then, says Young, Parsons told him and Furay that he wasn't interested in being in the band if they kept Jim Messina.

Young says Parsons trashed Messina, saying "the guy is never going to amount to anything."

They weren't going to dump Messina to get Parsons in the band, Young says, and Parsons joined the crumbling Byrds, who had lost key member David Crosby and were trying to put out a new album. He says Parsons took what he learned from the Poco sessions to the Byrds, and it became "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" - not a big seller but now considered a significant album by many because of its mating of country and rock.

He said the Byrds' album beat Poco to the radio and record stores with the new sound because the band already had a record contract, and Poco was still auditioning members and rehearsing in preparation for landing a recording deal.

Another myth Young would like to dispel is that 1960s and 1970s record executives were geniuses.

He said that when Poco was brought into the office of legendary CBS Records executive Clive Davis - "a guy that everybody thinks is a brilliant music guy" - to hear the final mix of their intended first radio single, they were dumbfounded. Young's pedal steel track was gone from the song.

When questioned, Young says, "Clive Davis said, 'You can't have a hit record with pedal steel on it.' "

To that, Young says, "What about the Everly Brothers? Or would he have told Jethro Tull, 'You can't have a hit with flute on it?' Lawyers running the music business ..., " Young says of that supposedly golden era.

The current band is made up of Young on pedal steel and guitar; longtime bassist Jack Sundrud; drummer George Lawrence; and Michael Webb on keyboards, mandolin, electric guitar. And, of course, everybody sings.

Expect to hear the radio hits and fan favorites, Young says, but don't expect carbon copies of their studio work. Young says the band members are too good to copy themselves, so there's a lot of improvisation. "It's different every night," Young says. "It's not like the Eagles, where the guitar solos are exactly the same every night. My impression is, the audience gets it."

If you go:

• What: Poco and Firefall in concert.

• When: June 2.

• Where: The Fox Theatre, 17 W. Congress St.

• How much: $20 to $60.

• Tickets: Fox box office or www.foxtucsontheatre.org