John Fogerty - The Long Road Home

With Viet Nam and the draft hanging over our heads like a bad moon rising, we feared and partied with equal fervor, sometimes doing one to avoid the other. We depended on our music to transport us through both. In 1970, John Fogerty, the fortunate son, stopped the rain and provided much needed respites with his music. We stood down on the corner, wished our brothers did not have to run through the jungle or panic on swift boats, but could instead be rolling down the river on Proud Mary.

Like déjà vu all over again, Fogerty brings his music to offer a break from the storm of another war thirty years later.

In his The Long Road Home concert, sixty-one-year-old Fogerty defies era and age with a timeless performance. He opens the show proclaiming, "What I'm about is plain rock and roll," and then proceeds to deliver everything but plain. With swift guitar changes between each song, few words to fill space, and even fewer flashes or gimmicks, he performs a veritable guitar-feast and thread of the top-ten songs he wrote and performed during his time with Creedence Clearwater Revival, as well as an assortment of newer material. Erasing decades from himself and his music, he bridges the gap between young and once-young fans, and crams twenty-five soulful rock songs into ninety-eight minutes of high-energy, top-notch entertainment.

Born in 1945, in Berkeley, California, Fogerty started performing in the late fifties with his brother, Tom. In 1968, with the band Creedence Clearwater Revival, he produced his first hit with "Susie Q." Between 1969 and 1972, the band released a number of hit singles, including "Bad Moon Rising", "Born on the Bayou", "Down On the Corner", "Fortunate Son", "Green River", "Lookin' Out My Backdoor", "Proud Mary", "Run Through the Jungle", "Travelin' Band", "Up Around the Bend", and "Who'll Stop the Rain". Nine of these became top-ten songs; many have become standards.

In 1973, Fogerty left Creedence Clearwater Revival and began a solo career, originally playing all instruments and calling himself Blue Ridge Rangers. He produced two hits during this period: "Rockin' All Over the World" and "Almost Saturday Night," both songs covered by other artists later.

Even during his low profile years, Fogerty went on to earn a number of awards and recognitions. Rolling Stone named him the 40th greatest guitarist of all time, and the group Creedence Clearwater Revival was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. After a period of retirement, Fogerty returned in 1997 with "Blue Moon Swamp," which won a Grammy for the best rock album of 1998. In 2004, he released "Déjà Vu (All Over Again), as his denunciation of the Iraq war as another Vietnam, and appeared with Bruce Springsteen on MoveOn.org's Vote For Change tour as part of the John Kerry presidential campaign tour.

In 2005, Fogerty was inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame, returned to Fantasy Records, and released "The Long Road Home, a compilation of his Creedence and solo hits, and in 2006, he released a DVD version of "The Long Road Home – In Concert." This high-quality disk delivers Fogerty's strong-as-ever, well-seasoned voice and showmanship with such clarity I caught myself jumping off the couch to cheer with the audience several times.

Recently, John completed a European tour and is currently performing dates throughout the United States with Willie Nelson. His latest CD, Déjà vu (All Over Again) is available in record stores, as is the DVD The Long Road Home – In Concert (arranged and produced by John Fogerty, through Concord Records. He will tour in Australia starting November 2006.

I urge everyone to invite John Fogerty into their homes through The Long Road Home - In Concert DVD. It's an evening you won't forget soon, and will want to repeat often.