I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to talk with my dear friend Jan Garrett about the magical musical experience of Aspen in the early to mid '70s. You can find it on YouTube. I sure enjoyed reminiscing about those wonderful days…

During the latter half of 1976 and into the following year, I gradually came to realize that my participation in Liberty was becoming increasingly stressful. The quality of my experience of being in the band had shifted from that of a joyful ride in an amusement park to something more like a job for which I was feeling less and less qualified.

After our three weeks in the wintry Midwest, we were blessed with a much-needed trip to Southern California. Steve Martin had a short stint at the Troubadour in Hollywood, and he wanted us to open for him. But for me, something was clearly out of whack, though I didn’t yet have the tools to figure out what.

Song of Wyoming, written by Kent Lewis, remains one of my favorite songs, one that I consider myself privileged to have recorded with Liberty.

Liberty had been designed around a hometown crowd that knew us and our music. Our music was drawn from a bunch of different genres, and there were lots of instrument changes that allowed us to plan our set lists around the music’s flow. Each of us played at least two instruments, and though Jan Garrett and Dan Wheetman did most of the lead vocals, Vic and Kent contributed songs as well.

Six weeks of wake up, dress for the show, board the bus to the arena, do a sound check, relax, do the show(s), board the bus to the airport, climb aboard the Starship, eat dinner from the buffet, bus to the hotel, go to bed, wake up and do it again, with one day off a week. I was, and remain, truly grateful for the experience of “big time road.”

When we arrived at the hotel in Cleveland, the entryway contained a huge table with a large Bible on a stand at one end. It was open to the twenty-third Psalm, which John intoned while the rest of us stood in absolute silence. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…” Then we were shown to our rooms. One had a large, perfectly round bed, another had mirrors on the walls and ceiling, and all were completely different. Mine had a bed that was at least fifteen feet wide. The contrast between the mood of the Bible reading and the bedrooms was… striking.

As the Celebrate ‘75 tour progressed, I got to know members of his band, which consisted of my old friend John Sommers on fiddle, banjo, guitar, and mandolin, Steve Weisberg on pedal steel and guitar, Dick Kniss (the Peter, Paul, and Mary veteran) on string bass, Hal Blaine (the drummer on countless recording sessions) on percussion, and the late Herb Lovelle on drums.

After returning from that first trip to San Francisco with Steve, Liberty had a previous commitment to the Ramada Inn in Minneapolis to fulfill. On January 25, 1976, we boarded a flight for Minnesota. Vic and our friend Al Garber, who by that time was traveling with us regularly, drove a truck with all the gear, and Al met the rest of us at the airport.

I returned to Aspen, with very little concern about what might be next for the band and for myself. However, I wasn’t surprised that a couple of weeks later Steve Martin came to hear us at a club in Aspen, along with his manager, Bill McEuen. They decided that we would be a good opening act for Steve.

For the six weeks beginning April 1, 1975, Liberty opened for John Denver, playing more than forty concerts in thirty cities, from the South up the eastern seaboard to New England, to Toronto and the Midwest, and finally to Phoenix, San Diego, and San Francisco, concluding at the Forum in Los Angeles. 

It became evident that our relationship with John Denver had not yet played itself out.  Near the end of the year, he once again invited Liberty to make a record.

After that episode, John Denver invited John Sommers to leave our band and join his. Returning to Aspen to fulfill some club dates that were already set up, Liberty was ready for a transformation.

Liberty, in one form or another, worked with John Denver for the next three years.

After our return from New York in November, 1970, Jack Hardy and I ended our gig early one night and went to the Hotel Jerome, where we listened to Jan and Vic Garrett, a country-folk duo from Loveland, Colorado.  They had been drawn to Aspen just as I had.  I enjoyed their music, and we began a friendship and musical collaboration that has lasted and grown to this day. 

Moving full-time to Aspen, Colorado, in the fall of 1970, I discovered there a musical community in which I felt at home in a way I never had before.  The feelings I had then were summarized for me a few years later, when John wrote the lyric, “He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year, coming home to a place he’d never been before.”  My mind, and my mother, thought I should be preparing for a serious career.  My heart wanted to play music with my friends.