Musician Mike Finnigan died in 2021, leaving behind an impressive musical legacy that included work with Bonnie Raitt, Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young), Etta James, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and many others.
Having grown up in Ohio, Finnigan earned a basketball scholarship to the University of Kansas in the 1960s. Before long, his budding interest in music had overtaken his passion for sports and he soon found himself pursuing that career. He eventually moved to Wichita, where he performed with The Serfs, then moving to California where he became a member of The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood.
That outfit recorded one album, a self-titled affair, for the Columbia label in 1970. Seen as a forerunner of jazz fusion, the record earned critical praise. The band soon fell apart, but artists such as Manfred Mann and John Mellencamp would later cover material heard on the LP, including the Lane Tietgan-penned “Captain Bobby Stout,” the story of a notorious Wichita lawman who was less than enamored with the city’s counterculture.
Finnigan also recorded a smattering of solo releases in his lifetime and had begun work on a new album before 2020 with longtime friend, producer J.J. Blair at the helm.
That album, simply titled “Mike Finnigan,” demonstrates Finnigan’s prowess as a vocalist and keyboardist across a broad range of songs that includes a rendition of Little Feat’s “All That You Dream” (with Chris and Stephen Stills) as well as guitarist Joe Bonamassa (on “20 Years of B.B. King”) and Smoky Robinson on “The Way You Do The Things You Do.” Finnigan’s son, the prodigiously talented Kelly Finnigan appears on the penultimate track, “Let That Liar Alone.”
The album’s final tune, a cover of Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home” is a stark sendoff to the LP, a soulful take on a country music standard. Blair says that the tune was long a contender to close the album although he had to persuade Finnigan to record it.
Blair recently discussed Finnigan’s approach to “Sing Me Back Home.”
You can hear more of our conversation via a bonus episode of the “Into Music” podcast out now.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I have to admit, when I saw the track listing and saw that “Sing Me Back Home” was the last song on the album, I got kind of emotional. Did you always know that that would be the last song on the album?
I think that when we tracked it was obvious that that was the last track and then especially after Mike passed it was obvious. A couple people thought that should be the title of the album and I said, “That would be appropriate, however I don’t want people to think that this is a country record or even a sentimental record.”
In the ‘80s I used to follow the [Grateful] Dead around the country and Mike didn’t think very highly of them. Mike was very funny. He was such a snob. He just thought Led Zeppelin was a load of crap. It had to be really great blues or country-based stuff or he just thought it was awful.
In the early ‘70s the Dead did a version of “Sing Me Back Home” that was just slow and dirge-y. I always thought, “Oh yeah. That’s what the song is about.”
I understand why Merle [Haggard] cut it in that sort of peppy Bakersfield vibe. But it doesn’t really quite capture the emotion of the story as well as when I heard the slow version that the Dead did that was just so gut-wrenching. Even with their crappy singing and everything.
Mike kind of turned his nose up at me mentioning the Dead. But he thought about it because it is a Merle song and then I sent him a little sketch of a verse and chorus [of me] doing it at a slow tempo and then he came back, because he’s always thinking Ray Charles, and I think he was thinking [about] what Ray would have done on [“Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music”].
[Mike] turned it into that waltz [that you hear on the record].
That is a performance for the ages. I teamed him up with amazing musicians and he inspired them to be at the top of their game. I sort of fed him the idea and then once again it was Mike’s arrangement. He just always made everybody better on every session because [they’d think], “This dude’s bad. I better bring it!”
