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July 13, 2001

The Denver Post

G. Brown


'Quiet Man of Music' to play in Denver


Dan Fogelberg's heavily sentimental singer-songwriter style has always been more popular with audiences than with critics. And what his devoted following wants now is solo acoustic tours - his current trek will bring him to the Paramount Theatre on Monday night.
"It's funny how things in your life occur and you just go where it feels right," Fogelberg said recently.

"It all grew out of a finger injury that I had back in '96 - I didn't know if I'd ever perform again. Since then, my love of playing acoustic music has gone through the roof. Most of the music that I've written in the last five years is all acoustic as well. I've reconnected with an appreciation of what it is to play and sing. It's such a pure experience."

Fogelberg never liked the star-making machinery of the West Coast, so the "quiet man of music," to borrow one of his better-known lyrics, moved to Colorado in the mid-'70s.

"Living far away from the madness of Los Angeles has allowed me to focus on what's real in life - so music is a joy, a pleasure," he said. "I've done a lot of hard work in the last 10 years, but it hasn't been the mainstream stuff I was known for. I did a jazzy instrumental thing with Tim Weisberg, and then a Christmas album, and then a live album last year. And the boxed set."

That would be "Portrait," the 4-CD, 62-song collection of 1997.

"That was my baby - produced and compiled it, did the artwork, the whole nine yards. But we discussed eventually releasing an updated greatest hits on a single disc. Not everybody's going to want to spend $60. There are more casual listeners who say, "Well, I'd really love to have those radio songs.'"

So "The Very Best of Dan Fogelberg" has arrived in stores, a single-CD compilation that spans his 1974 debut hit "Part of the Plan" to the nine consecutive Top 30 hits he released from 1980 to 1984 - "Longer," "Heart Hotels," "Same Old Lang Syne," "Hard to Say," "Leader of the Band," "Run for the Roses," "Missing You," "Make Love Stay" and "The Language of Love."

Is a rehash necessary? Yep - the material was digitally remastered.

"They got into the original master mixes, which I didn't have access to for "Portrait.' I had worked hard to get the music to sound good for CD, but this is fantastic."

Fogelberg spent last winter in his home studio crafting his first album of original pop tunes since 1993's worldbeat-influenced "River of Souls," and he hopes to finish it for release next spring. It will sell well to a core of fans, but he knows his commercial appeal has evaporated.

"It's got to be tough for younger musicians now, because the scope of what's commercial is so narrow - radically different than in my day, when diversity was celebrated. It's so conforming, stamped out of a press - the bands all look and sound the same, you can't tell one rap artist from the next, and the little teen divas are hard to distinguish. But these are the biggest-selling things by far.

"But I and Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt have cultivated careers where we don't rely on radio. We had our hits, but now it's an educated audience - they chose music, music wasn't chosen for them."

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