The legendary band Firefall, a group that’s been churning out chart-topping hits for over four decades, is coming to South Mississippi for the first time in over 25 years.
Firefall will play the Grand Magnolia Ballroom in Pascagoula on Friday, Oct., 20th as part of Grand Magnolia Music’s “Fall Festival Live Music Series”.
Tickets for the show are already on sale at www.grandmagmusic.com. And will also be sold at Scranton’s Restaurant in Pascagoula. The show is set for 8 p.m, with an opening act still to be announced.
Firefall will be bringing their long list of hits to Pascagoula for the first time ever, a set list that includes HUGE hits such as “You are the Woman”, “Strange Way” and “Just Remember I Love You” as well as “Mexico”, “Cinderella”, and “Goodbye, I Love You” and many, many more.
Firefall’s biggest hit, “You Are the Woman” has been played on commercial radio more than 7 MILLION times and the song has also appeared in movies and television shows.
For band founding member Jock Bartley, who still fronts Firefall, it’s a privilege being able to do this thing they love and helped to birth.
“I think it’s great that in this day and age of trends that change overnight, a kind of music we helped create 40-plus years ago is still around and growing in popularity,” he said.
For Bartley, Firefall is a 40-year labor of love. Firefall went on to earn two platinum and three gold albums over the decades. The genealogy and musical roots of Firefall run deep into the fertile soil of American rock and folk rock music. It began with Woodie Guthrie and later, Bob Dylan, evolving into the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield.
The genre established by these luminaries continued with Crosby, Stills and Nash, Manassas, The Band, Neil Young, The Eagles, Poco, Loggins and Messina, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Gram Parsons and Emmy Lou Harris, Dan Fogelberg, America and Firefall. Many of these participants mingled in the studio and on tour. Individually and collectively they created a sound that changed the world’s musical landscape. Firefall is one of the few surviving bands of this genre, remaining true to its founding vision and roots despite personnel changes over its 40+ year history. The band transcends and embraces many industrial labels – rock, soft rock, country rock, contemporary country, easy listening and Americana.
Bartley said recently they’ll play all the songs fans would expect and his fans are lucky because there are a lot of them. The band has recently began working on their newest album “Friends & Family.”
In the 1980s, when the band dissolved, Bartley found himself as the sole owner of the band name.
“I’ve had a number of incarnations of Firefall and of course, the strength of the band has always been our songs,” he said. “There’s tens of thousands of great lead guitar players that can play leads on songs, but if you don’t have the song and the singer to sell it, you ain’t going to get famous that’s for sure.”
The journey also represents a personal, heartfelt commitment to maintaining the tradition of the contemporary musical genre he and his peers helped create. Firefall has nurtured its faithful and growing audiences through live performances, which attract new generations of fans.
Firefall was formed in Bartley’s hometown of Boulder, Colorado, in the mid-1970s. Rick Roberts and Bartley met when Bartley was on tour with Gram Parsons, as a member of his backing band, the Fallen Angels.
Roberts got the name from the Yosemite Firefall at Yosemite National Park in California. The owners of a hotel threw burning logs off a mountain in a cascade as an annual event to entertain the guests.
The Grand Mag Music “Fall Festival Live Music Series” is sponsored by Roy’s Bar, Liquors Unlimited, and Dairy Queen all of Pascagoula, as well as Burnham Drugs and Riverside Dental of Moss Point plus The Grand Magnolia Ballroom and Suites, Scranton’s Restaurant and Catering, Cathead Vodka, The Beau Rivage Resort and Casino and Lagniappe Weekly of Mobile.
A portion of the proceeds of every Grand Mag Music show go to help Dixie Adoptables Animal Rescue in Lucedale and their ongoing Adoption Transport Project. Dixie Adoptables will always be Grand Mag Music’s Charity of Choice.
