As we begin another year, we want to wish all of our readers and those grandmothers that might still be in the Coachmen Fan Club all the best. As our time honored tradition of sending out a Christmas greeting now lapsed over forty years, here is Terry performing Don’t Cry For Me Argentina.
I woke up this morning thinking about snow.
First because it was snowing then imagining how deep in silent snow Mountain Bird Ranch was at this moment. The frosty stillness of the ranch always impressed me. Dan’s spirit is up there silently skiing through the meadows.
Dan Fogelberg and Suzy Drell circa 1970 on Claude Jink's front porch
Special thanks to Dave and Dennis for this bit of history!
It was a Halloween tradition. Dan loved to play Modest Moussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain right at midnight to freak his friends out. Thank God the bells would toll and we would be safe again for another year. Was there something else involved that might have propelled us to another level? Were we the Disney generation on acid? Happy Halloween! Whew safe for another year…
Reuniting with the Coachmen was simple. We just picked back up and began to play like it was yesterday not 42 years ago. Here is the reunion video. Special thanks to Jeffery Nelson and 747 Productions, Peoria, Illinois.
The Coachmen with Troy, current owner of Terry’s basement
Left to right: Jon, Tom, Terry, Troy, and Robyn
The Coachmen attended the Dan Fogelberg Memorial in Peoria Illinois this weekend. Terry surprised us by contacting the current owner of the property and arranging for us to take a tour on the way to the memorial dedication ceremony on Saturday afternoon. Just for a moment in time we were able to stir the ghosts up a bit. Here is a video of what we found there.
Somewhere buried deep in Epic’s video archives is a music video of Dan riding a Mardi Gras float playing his telecaster to “She Don’t Look Back”. Probably one of the most bizarre and lavish story lines ever created in an 80′s music video-dead and forgotten-until I found it had resurfaced on Youtube.
I was in New Orleans at the time learning piano techniques having landed there after driving Anastasia’s parents to Metarie. Professor Longhair, Dr. John, James Booker to name few were my heros. I stayed there for over a month and caught both weekends of jazz festival living on red beans and rice and crawfish from the Tipitina’s happy hour. I immersed myself in the culture and stayed out late every night listening to greats like Earl King, The Neville Brothers, Alan Toussaint, to name but a few. Such a night… It was May 1987 for those interested in dates.
I remember filming the cemetery scenes at night and spending the night watching millions of cockroaches coming out of the tombs or were they going in. The lights were bright and kinda shook things up. It was a weird eerie place and I stayed close to the crew. Not someplace you wanted to wander around at night alone.
Somewhere in the mardi gras crowd I was lurking as an extra.
