Entertainment

<< Previous   of   Next >> (click to enlarge) Kenny Loggins performs Tuesday at Tulalip Amphitheatre.   ADVERTISEMENT   Kenny Loggins 7 p.m. Tuesday, Tulalip Amphitheatre; $40-$60, 206-628-0888.   CONTACT THE HERALD Melanie Munk, Features Editor munk@heraldnet.com   Published: Friday, July 4, 2008 Loggins returns to birthplace for show The Everett-born pop star of "Footloose" fame has been writing chart-topping songs since the 1970s. By Sharon Wootton Special to The Herald Everett-born singer-songwriter Kenny Loggins returns to the area, to visit relatives and perform Tuesday at Tulalip Amphitheatre. Loggins was a short-timer here. By the time he was 1, his family had moved away. He grew up mostly in California. The roots-rock soft-rock musician and former Loggins & Messina partner had hit singles in four straight decades, earned a pair of Grammy awards and is still excited about music. On this tour, he's finding some fun on the road with a more-electric show, a combination of material from his latest album, "How About Now," and some music from soundtracks. "How About Now" covered the heartbreak and reconstruction of Loggins' relationships deeper than he had done before. "I knew that was where it was headed; I'd been journaling like mad for two years or more, but I didn't write songs because I wasn't ready to go that deeply," he said. Loggins has been one of the film industry's most successful soundtrack songwriters. His credits include "I'm Alright" ("Caddyshack"), "Danger Zone" ("Top Gun"), "Nobody's Fool" ("Caddyshack II"), and the Oscar-nominated "Footloose" ("Footloose") and "For the First Time" ("One Fine Day"). In movies, "you've got the emotional content handed to you on a silver platter. As a songwriter, it's about how I relate to that moment in my own life. You have to draw an emotion that underscores that visual moment without being literal. "When writing my own album, it's more like pages from a journal and I write the soundtrack to the last two years of my life." He's also released two popular albums for children: "Return to Pooh Corner" and "More Songs from Pooh Corner." Loggins has five children: 10-year-old Hana ("She's going to be a musician, singer and dancer. There's no doubt in my mind"); Luke, 15, who has his eye on a Major League Baseball roster spot; Cody, 26, trying to get into the voice-over business and become a comedian; 20-year-old Bella, a college music major; and Crosby, 27. Singer-songwriter Crosby Loggins recently won MTV's "Rock the Cradle" contest with an original song, "Good Enough." "I certainly didn't encourage him, because I know how difficult and what a crap shoot it is; how you can be incredibly talented and not make a dime. I know what (constant traveling) does to the marriage. "It was like watching him join the Navy, going on long tours without your family and it's rough. He saw me do that, knew what it felt like to see me gone … He came to me after his first tour and said, 'I don't know if I want your life.'" "I said, 'You don't have to have it … you could go back to school and learn something else.' But he's stuck. He's a player, a good writer and has turned into a fine performer." The father sees a bit of himself in Crosby's music, the very strong sense of melody and the effort to write words that matter. Loggins said he learned a lesson when he looked back at his best work. When touring with Jim Messina, his writing was mostly in the third person about characters real or imagined. "I learned that the music that lived on past the initial release was more personal ("House at Pooh Corner," "Danny's Song") so I tried to draw more from that, to write songs that touch people's hearts and affect lives," Loggins said. They had staying power because he created songs that would become the soundtrack to people's lives. "Forever," for instance, started as a wedding song but has gone full circle. "It's been adopted as a theme songs for AIDS walks and cancer gatherings. It's now really about, 'I'll always remember you.' It's become appropriate for those situations as well. Ironically, it's still played as a wedding song."

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