John Fogerty Gets Covered by Lainey Wilson, Jesse Welles and Other Stars at a Rocking BMI Troubadour Award Ceremony
It was a full moon outside, but assuredly not a bad one, as John Fogerty was presented the BMI Troubadour award in Nashville Monday night, with a slew of acolytes and contemporaries showing up to honor and perform for the venerated Creedence Clearwater Revival founder.
Among them was someone who was at least as much a shining star of the day in Music City as Fogerty was, Lainey Wilson, who that morning had been revealed as having received six CMA Awards nominations, tying her for the lead in this year’s race. Also performing Creedence songs in salute to the honoree were Jesse Welles, the War & Treaty, the duo of Billy F. Gibbons and La Marisoul, and Jay Buchanan (of Rival Son).
Said Wilson, right before performing, “I first moved to Nashville in 2011 in my little camper trailer. My daddy sent me with a box of CDs, and he putt your CD on top. He said, ‘This one right here, this is the one that you need to listen to when you get there to write your music.’ And I’ll never forget that. I’m one of your biggest fans and I just appreciate you. You have inspired me and influenced me so much and everybody in this room. So let’s crank it up.”
Although these cover songs were nearly across-the-board electrifying, none were so much so as the handful of selections performed at the climax of the invite-only event by Fogerty himself and his now family-filled band, with the 80-year-old legend weirdly sounding not a day over the 22 he was when he recorded Creedence’s debut album in 1969.
With newfound reasons for pride under her belt buckle, Wilson belted (what else) “Proud Mary,” while Welles and the house band offered a solid folk-rock take on “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” and Buchanan knocked “Fortunate Son” out of the ballroom and out of the park. In a couple of cases it took two to live up to the power of Fogerty’s catalog, and the War & Treaty were doubly up to any such task with a scorching medley of “I Put a Spell on You” and “Born on the Bayou,” while ZZ Top’s Gibbons and La Marisoul winsomely reprised a Spanglish version of “Green River” they’d previously recorded for a tribute album.
Fogerty’s climactic set with his own band consisted of “Up Around the Bend,” “The Old Man Down the Road” and “Bad Moon Rising,” although it seemed several songs longer than that, since “Old Man” ran out the clock and then some with a lengthy guitar duel between the star and his co-lead-guitarist son Shane Fogerty that proved the apple falls exactly at the base of the tree.
Three past BMI Troubadour recipients were on hand to offer their congratulations: Gibbons (of ZZ Top fame), John Oates (who picked up the award last year) and Robert Earl Keen. Other guests on hand for the dinner for about 200 guests — which took place in the lobby of BMI’s headquarters on Music Row — included Chris Isaak, Molly Tuttle & Keith Secor, Sam Bush, Liz Rose, members of the the Del McCoury Band, Carter Faith, the Band Loula and Leah Blevins.
“First of all, I’m pretty overwhelmed,” Fogerty said in beginning his acceptance speech, “that so many of you came here tonight, so many people I’m fans of, and that you’ve touched me with the things you’ve said and the way you’ve sung your songs. I kind of can’t actually believe this is really happening. Maybe I just went through a side door and into a strange new universe or something.”
Fogerty’s battles in and out of court over the years to try to regain control of his music were a frequent topic of the speeches during the event, not least of all his own.
“You’re looking at a guy that actually got sued for sounding like himself,” said Fogerty, referring to his famous legal tiff with Saul Zaentz. “And you know, it’s a funny thing — this record that I made called ‘Legacy,’ it’s actually the whole point: John Fogerty sounds like John Fogerty on this record.” (The new album he was referring to (held up at the beginning of the evening by BMI Nashville’s VP of creative, Clay Bradley) is basically a “John’s Version” re-recording of his classic CCR hits, even though he has resolved those earlier legal battles.)
“Being sued for sounding like yourself, which I believe I was the first one, it was actually a very serious thing and it took up several years of my life and a lot of money, and I had to go all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States,” he said. “The point being, whether you actually realize it right now or if you’re a youngster and it may not have happened yet, there will be those who try to borrow your self, your younger self, and that’s wrong. You should be free to sound like yourself for the rest of your life. We all start out trying to find an individual voice with our picking or our songwriting or our singing and our way of being. And once you find something that’s really good, man, you sure don’t want some old guy telling you that you can’t do that anymore. So you have the Supreme Court to thank, and I guess I had some part of that. Even in the age of AI I think we’re gonna be protected against people using us.”
Veteran rock journalist and TV awards show writer David Wild introduced Fogerty at the event, and, in talking about the time limit on his speech, spoke to the honoree’s brevity in his classic singles.
“With ‘Fortunate Son,’ John summed up the inequities of our class system, the harsh truth of our American politics, plus maybe war in peace, in just two minutes and 18 seconds. Very economical. ‘Bad Moon Rising,’ you took three more seconds, 2:21, I believe, to capture a sense of the apocalypse and frighten generations like me in the spookiest and most soulful way imaginable. … Finally, how about ‘Proud Mary’? Somehow, John wrote perhaps the most timelessly, beloved and acclaimed song of our times, but this time he took all of three minutes and seven seconds to do it. … Truly, what an extraordinary legacy this troubadour has created, nurtured, and fought so valiantly for and ultimately won back.”
Among them was someone who was at least as much a shining star of the day in Music City as Fogerty was, Lainey Wilson, who that morning had been revealed as having received six CMA Awards nominations, tying her for the lead in this year’s race. Also performing Creedence songs in salute to the honoree were Jesse Welles, the War & Treaty, the duo of Billy F. Gibbons and La Marisoul, and Jay Buchanan (of Rival Son).
Said Wilson, right before performing, “I first moved to Nashville in 2011 in my little camper trailer. My daddy sent me with a box of CDs, and he putt your CD on top. He said, ‘This one right here, this is the one that you need to listen to when you get there to write your music.’ And I’ll never forget that. I’m one of your biggest fans and I just appreciate you. You have inspired me and influenced me so much and everybody in this room. So let’s crank it up.”
Although these cover songs were nearly across-the-board electrifying, none were so much so as the handful of selections performed at the climax of the invite-only event by Fogerty himself and his now family-filled band, with the 80-year-old legend weirdly sounding not a day over the 22 he was when he recorded Creedence’s debut album in 1969.
With newfound reasons for pride under her belt buckle, Wilson belted (what else) “Proud Mary,” while Welles and the house band offered a solid folk-rock take on “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” and Buchanan knocked “Fortunate Son” out of the ballroom and out of the park. In a couple of cases it took two to live up to the power of Fogerty’s catalog, and the War & Treaty were doubly up to any such task with a scorching medley of “I Put a Spell on You” and “Born on the Bayou,” while ZZ Top’s Gibbons and La Marisoul winsomely reprised a Spanglish version of “Green River” they’d previously recorded for a tribute album.
Fogerty’s climactic set with his own band consisted of “Up Around the Bend,” “The Old Man Down the Road” and “Bad Moon Rising,” although it seemed several songs longer than that, since “Old Man” ran out the clock and then some with a lengthy guitar duel between the star and his co-lead-guitarist son Shane Fogerty that proved the apple falls exactly at the base of the tree.
Three past BMI Troubadour recipients were on hand to offer their congratulations: Gibbons (of ZZ Top fame), John Oates (who picked up the award last year) and Robert Earl Keen. Other guests on hand for the dinner for about 200 guests — which took place in the lobby of BMI’s headquarters on Music Row — included Chris Isaak, Molly Tuttle & Keith Secor, Sam Bush, Liz Rose, members of the the Del McCoury Band, Carter Faith, the Band Loula and Leah Blevins.
“First of all, I’m pretty overwhelmed,” Fogerty said in beginning his acceptance speech, “that so many of you came here tonight, so many people I’m fans of, and that you’ve touched me with the things you’ve said and the way you’ve sung your songs. I kind of can’t actually believe this is really happening. Maybe I just went through a side door and into a strange new universe or something.”
Fogerty’s battles in and out of court over the years to try to regain control of his music were a frequent topic of the speeches during the event, not least of all his own.
“You’re looking at a guy that actually got sued for sounding like himself,” said Fogerty, referring to his famous legal tiff with Saul Zaentz. “And you know, it’s a funny thing — this record that I made called ‘Legacy,’ it’s actually the whole point: John Fogerty sounds like John Fogerty on this record.” (The new album he was referring to (held up at the beginning of the evening by BMI Nashville’s VP of creative, Clay Bradley) is basically a “John’s Version” re-recording of his classic CCR hits, even though he has resolved those earlier legal battles.)
“Being sued for sounding like yourself, which I believe I was the first one, it was actually a very serious thing and it took up several years of my life and a lot of money, and I had to go all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States,” he said. “The point being, whether you actually realize it right now or if you’re a youngster and it may not have happened yet, there will be those who try to borrow your self, your younger self, and that’s wrong. You should be free to sound like yourself for the rest of your life. We all start out trying to find an individual voice with our picking or our songwriting or our singing and our way of being. And once you find something that’s really good, man, you sure don’t want some old guy telling you that you can’t do that anymore. So you have the Supreme Court to thank, and I guess I had some part of that. Even in the age of AI I think we’re gonna be protected against people using us.”
Veteran rock journalist and TV awards show writer David Wild introduced Fogerty at the event, and, in talking about the time limit on his speech, spoke to the honoree’s brevity in his classic singles.
“With ‘Fortunate Son,’ John summed up the inequities of our class system, the harsh truth of our American politics, plus maybe war in peace, in just two minutes and 18 seconds. Very economical. ‘Bad Moon Rising,’ you took three more seconds, 2:21, I believe, to capture a sense of the apocalypse and frighten generations like me in the spookiest and most soulful way imaginable. … Finally, how about ‘Proud Mary’? Somehow, John wrote perhaps the most timelessly, beloved and acclaimed song of our times, but this time he took all of three minutes and seven seconds to do it. … Truly, what an extraordinary legacy this troubadour has created, nurtured, and fought so valiantly for and ultimately won back.”