40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie (2017) - full transcript

TV writer/producer Lee Aronsohn tracks down the scattered members of a beloved early 1970s band with the hope that, 40 years after they broke up, he can get them to play ONE LAST SHOW.

- [Band Member] In case you just joined us,

we're Magic Music

and we're from Boulder, Colorado.

We'd like to ask you a question.

Would you buy an album if we recorded one?

(cheering)

(light guitar music)

♪ I'm trying to break it easy to you ♪

♪ But there's some things you should know ♪

♪ About this world that we're living in ♪

♪ And the people would make you go ♪



♪ I tend to overlook

♪ People who bring me down

♪ Then I wake up and remember

♪ They're just looking to be found ♪

♪ Just looking to be found

♪ Just looking to be found

♪ There's just one more thing I want to say ♪

- Magic Music was a light in the darkness.

- Magic Music was a phenomenon.

- Anytime they played for anybody,

they literally could've said,

"Hey everybody, we're going to get in our car

and we're going to drive off a cliff

and we want you all to come with us."



And everybody would go, "Yes, we're in!"

- I thought for sure that they would get a contract.

- Every time they got close, it somehow went wrong.

- Magic Music was the biggest influence on my life.

- Magic Music was magic.

- It was a time in Boulder and this was the band in Boulder

that defined that friendliness and that love.

("Colorado Rockies")

♪ The time is coming when we'll have to decide ♪

♪ If we're gonna stay and fight or gonna take a ride ♪

♪ To the Colorado Rockies and the great divide ♪

♪ Can't you see it's here

♪ Revolution's here

♪ It's coming near to you

- Unless you were Colorado during the early 70s,

you never heard of Magic Music.

It formed in 1970 and broke up in 1976

without ever releasing an album.

I was lucky enough to hear them back then

and I really loved them.

So much so that even 40 years later

their music was still in my head.

This is their story and as it turned out,

a little bit of mine.

♪ My head is spinning to the ground ♪

♪ And I'm only waiting to be found ♪

♪ And I'm searching

Even as the 70s began in Boulder,

the 60s were still going strong.

- Boulder had the reputation of being

this great hippy paradise and it was.

- It was a happy collision of idealism, innocence

and inventiveness.

- I was a renaissance time.

The music scene was bubbling.

- Drugs were free, sex was free.

- Boulder was the place where you could go to a concert

and somebody would throw 100 joints up in the air.

- It was a politically motivated town.

We thought, we're going to change the world.

(light music)

- That's me in 1972.

A student at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

I chose that school because I'd read in a book called

The Underground Guide to the College of Your Choice

that Boulder was the ideal place to go for sex and drugs.

Which, to be honest,

was pretty much what I wanted to major in.

Boulder was an exciting new world for me.

There always seemed to be something cool

happening on campus.

One day outside the student union,

I came across a small crowd gathered around five guys

on the lawn playing acoustic instruments

and singing beautiful harmonies.

They called themselves Magic Music.

♪ Don't you try and hold on to anyone you know ♪

♪ Feel the life

Now, I'd been a high school hippy,

but these guys were the real thing.

They talked about living up in the mountains

in school buses and cabins.

And when they sang, it really did sound like magic.

(overlapped melody singing)

I was drawn to them,

they were living a life I'd only dreamed about.

Whenever they played on campus or around town,

I was there.

♪ Changes flow

(light flute music)

I can't say I really knew them.

I certainly didn't hang out with them,

although I sure wish I could have.

I was just one of many fans

and we all thought it was just a matter of time

before Magic Music made it big.

♪ Her hair it falls in tangling rings ♪

♪ Her thoughts are as light as the air ♪

When after a couple of years,

they stopped playing in Boulder.

I imagine they'd gone on to bigger and better things.

An album deal at the very least,

but no album ever appeared.

After graduation, I moved to LA and got busy with life.

I found some success and it was great.

But I'd be lying if I said I was following a passion.

I started a family.

But when I was up in the middle of the night

trying to get my kids to sleep,

I found myself singing to them a song

that was stuck in my head

even though I hadn't heard it years.

♪ And bring morning in

♪ Bring morning down

♪ Pretty mama

♪ Yea draw it all around

♪ Little woman

♪ And bring the morning in

Over the years I often wondered

what ever happened to Magic Music?

Why hadn't they made it?

I wondered what paths they'd taken

and if they could possibly be as happy and fulfilled

today as they'd seemed to be back in the 70s.

I also wondered if there was any way

I'd ever be able to hear those songs again,

they way I'd remembered them.

In the spring of 2015, I decided to stop wondering

and find out.

(joyful flute music)

- I'm Tode, this is my love, Donnie

and this is our Volkswagen bus.

- Retirement home. - Our retirement home.

I was playing music from a little boy.

In 11th grade, I meet a lot of people who were

getting into rock 'n' roll and smoking weed.

Politically I was very much down

on the Nixon administration.

I eventually did just avoid accepting my draft notices

when they came in.

Then they instituted the lottery system

and I was given a high number

and I didn't have to worry about the draft anymore.

(upbeat music)

I ended up meeting a girl at Woodstock.

My picture's in the Woodstock magazine

with this girl actually.

I got a letter from her saying,

you should come out to Boulder,

I'm living on a commune that's really cool.

And I was just,

so I hitch hiked from New York out to Boulder.

Commune was called the Pygmy Farm

and the first day I was there a guy gave me a flute.

He said, "Here, you want this flute?"

And I said, "Well yeah, I don't really play it."

but he said, "I know, maybe you'll need it."

Fortunately Lynn Poyer, Flatbush was there

and I started sitting down next to him

♪ Smile is changing from a grin to a frown ♪

♪ All the people round us trying to keep love down ♪

- Lynn J Poyer, nickname Flatbush.

(laughing)

Born and raised in Boulder.

I started actually in junior high,

I had a band called The Showman.

Boy, we were good.

- Lynn was the love of my life.

We meet at Ohio State University

during the Moratorium against the Vietnam War

on October 15, 1969.

Lynn was coming back to Boulder, Colorado

and asked me if I would go back to Colorado with him.

We landed in a farm north Boulder and it was a commune.

- I meet Tode, the future flute player for Magic Music

and the two of us started goofing around musically together

and we started writing some things.

- That's when we came up with the name Magic Music.

This is just magic the way this happened.

(scat singing)

- [Flatbush] George and I were playing in the student union

in the middle of the day and Wilber was also playing.

(light music)

- My name is Will Luckey

and this is my beautiful wife, Cub.

I grew up on Martha's Vineyard.

Didn't do well in school until I was a senior.

I got this great deal to go to Colorado College

and study only music.

I arrived there and the guy who ran the department

listened to me play a few songs and said,

"You're never going to be a musician."

I immediately ran to the draft board, checked my number,

it was 335 and I got in my 1952 pick up truck

and I went to Boulder.

All I knew was that I was going to play music.

I started walking around the campus

trying to figure out how to make some money.

And I ran into Lynn and George.

So, I carried my guitar over and sat down with them

and I started singing with them.

♪ Never in my life

♪ Did I ever

- Lynn was smitten with Will.

It was a really beautiful love affair of music.

- We were the three first original characters.

We did some club work and somewhere in there

we meet Rob Galloway, nicknamed Poonah,

who was the first bass player.

(light music)

- My name is Rob Galloway

and I acquired the moniker, Poonah,

back in the early 1970s in the band Magic Music.

I kind of stumbled into the band.

I'd just left college during the Vietnam War

and I was playing weekends up at this little club

managed by Chuck Morris.

Chuck walks up to me, he says,

"Got this band that want to audition during your break,

is that okay?"

I said, "Sure."

Well it turns out, it's Magic Music.

- They came in and said,

"We'd like to do a show in the back room"

and they played and they killed me.

I thought they were great.

- These guys looked like they crawled out

from underneath a rock.

Really long hair and patched jeans and flannel shirts.

I sat literally right in front of them,

plugged in a little amp and I just would play along.

I would find of follow,

that sound's pretty good.

They say, "Hey, we're going to got live in school buses in

Eldorado Canyon, you want to come and be part of the band?"

And it became the four of us.

♪ I take it pretty easy in Eldorado Canyon ♪

♪ Chopping wood to stay alive

- We were very much mountain type people

We knew we needed the cities

to help us make money to survive.

But we weren't terribly citified people.

♪ When the snow falls in Eldorado Canyon ♪

- We had to find somewhere to live

and the only thing we could come up with was school buses.

You could find school buses in the junkyards

and in the pound.

- We were just basically really living the life

and not making a lot of money but playing a lot.

- We would set up on CU campus on the lawn

on a decent day and play.

♪ It's love my friends that I'm talking about ♪

♪ Jesus said it when he stood on the mount ♪

- [Flatbush] Within 10 minutes

there'd be 20 people sitting there,

and within half and hour there'd be 40 people sitting there,

and within an hour there'd be 100 people sitting there.

- We'd have 300 people sitting out in front of us

while we played.

That was the greatest thing.

- Then somebody, I don't remember who,

came up with a great idea,

which was find a great looking girl and give her a hat.

- They would play music, I would pass the hat

and we would collect money.

- [Wilbur] Maybe a second one if you were really cooking.

- I'd go out on the lawn, pass the hat for the guys

and I became part of the group.

- I should not talk anymore about all the girls

we talked into leaving college and moving to the mountains.

But we were pretty good at that.

(light music)

- The first real big thing that happened was

Wilbur and I, I can remember quite clearly,

were walking across CU campus

and Wilber grabbed me really hard by the arm and he said,

"Look, Flatbush, look on that tree over there."

There's a poster there.

Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods,

at Macky Auditorium, such and such a date,

which was like three days away.

Opening act, Magic Music.

And we didn't even know about it.

We had meet the guy who was the head of the program counsel.

- I think he just couldn't find us one day

or just assumed if he printed it, we'd see it.

- We didn't have a telephone,

there was no way anybody could call us anyway.

- We thought, wow, we better get our act together.

- It was hard clean to them up though, they were raw.

With the overalls and flannel shirts and unkempt hair.

- We showed up with a school bus, five dogs

and a bunch of people.

- We had clean clothes for them and a shower.

But it was still in the overalls and the flannel shirts.

- We were very excited to do it, we were very nervous.

Very nervous.

- [Poonah] The ballroom is filled with people.

- [Tode] Twenty-five hundred people,

something like that in Macky Auditorium.

- Somebody brought an illegal substance in

that got us really, really, say disconnected from reality.

So, we kind of stumble out there onto the stage,

suddenly people are poking microphones at us.

Okay, start singing.

And we just started singing our hearts out.

♪ My head is spinning to the ground ♪

♪ And I'm only waiting to be found ♪

♪ And I'm searching that helpless sound ♪

♪ Oo oo

♪ La la la la la

♪ La la la la la

♪ La la la la la

(cheering) - Thank you.

- They stand up and give us a standing ovation.

- So, yeah, that was way cool.

Beautiful.

- That really got our name out there though quite a bit

and then we were a buzz.

♪ And I feel the sun surround me ♪

♪ Reflecting off my window pane ♪

- We believed that if we played really beautiful music

it would all get provided for us.

- Somebody would see us and be interested in trying to help.

- One fella came up, Kurt Stocker,

was I think an old friend of Lynn's.

He had been a radio personality in Nashville

and knew a bunch of people there and he was a Boulder guy.

- My friend who'd been in Boulder, he goes,

"Magic Music's really hot right now,

they just opened for Jesse Colin Young and The Youngbloods."

He goes, "They're ready."

- Curt says, "I know guys in Nashville,

let's go to Nashville.

I think we can get us a contract."

(upbeat banjo music)

So, we all pile in the VW and the pickup truck,

off we go, the four of us.

♪ Springtime back again

- We're in Tree Publishing in Nashville

and Larry Henley, who wrote Wing Beneath Your Wings,

was the guy interviewing us,

talking to us about a publishing deal.

- Larry liked them a lot.

He goes, "Yeah, it'd like to sign you guys

but there's one thing."

He goes, "You need to add a drummer."

- That was just abhorrent to us.

Wait a minute, drums in our acoustic music?

- Are you kidding?

There's just no way we're going to do that.

- [Larry] I'm telling you, you need a drummer on the radio.

- He seemed like a nice enough guy

until I looked under the desk.

He had these very pointed shoes on at the time.

They really said something to me about honesty

for some reason, I'll never forget it.

I walked out of the room into the hallway

and I told the guys I couldn't sign anything with him.

- And they threw the contracts away,

they threw them in the trash.

That was my best card.

You want to go to Nashville and sign with an actual

music company and someone who can actually produce you.

Like, okay, here you go.

Drums?

No way, they're never be a drummer in Magic Music.

That was when we kind of parted ways.

- Should've signed that one, that was a good one.

- We started flirting with the big time

and the big time was flirting with us.

♪ They're just looking to be found ♪

♪ Just looking to be found

- We needed somebody who's organized

and Cemoto was very organized.

So, we invited him to be the manager.

- I often don't refer to myself as the manager.

I refer to myself as the den mother,

because I just shepherded these guys around,

make sure we got to were we needed to go.

- The gig at Denver Auditorium with Cat Stevens

was classic one.

- We were supposed to be Cat Stevens opening act

for his tour.

James Taylor and Joni Mitchell and I think Neil Young

were all sitting backstage.

- This was like, okay, we're going to kick ass.

♪ The time is coming when we'll have to decide ♪

♪ If we're gonna stay and fight or gonna take a ride ♪

♪ Can't you see it's here

♪ Revolution's here

♪ It's coming near to you

- Thank you again. - Good night.

(cheering)

- We thought it went great.

We got standing ovations.

Of course, we jumped back on stage and took the ovation.

Which you're not supposed to do.

I believed three times.

So, when we came off, we thought we'd made it.

Very happy, we're very happy

and we were told that we're off the tour.

- Those five dates you're going to do with Cat Stevens,

we'll he's not going to let you, you're fired.

(laughing)

Please.

That was going to be our big chance.

- Lesson learned, you know.

You don't do encores.

♪ Mary go and one in the middle ♪

- Was I bummed and disappointed they didn't get bigger?

Yes.

Was I shocked and surprised?

- No.

- I don't think anybody had a business mind.

Lynn, no.

Me, absolutely no business mind whatsoever.

Mr. T could care less about it and Poonah in the beginning

probably was our closest we had to somebody that actually

think logically about business.

- Barry Fey, who was the big, it was Feyline presents,

he was the big Denver, Colorado area promoter.

He had gotten wind of us opening all these acts

and getting all these standing ovations

and we went and visited him.

He says, "I'm going to send you to New York

to play for this big agent."

(vibrant upbeat music)

- We flew out and went to this little club

which was called The Gaslight.

- [Tode] It looked like we were going

to have some real future there.

- We're staying in the Chelsea Hotel,

famous rock 'n' roll hotel.

They say, "What kind of drugs do you guys want?"

and Flatbush and Tode speak up and they go,

"We want an ounce of hash."

Half a day later, an ounce of hash shows up.

The we go down and we play.

♪ And bring the morning down

♪ Pretty mama

♪ Yea draw it all around

♪ Little woman

There are anywhere from two to four people there a night.

We got a bit spoiled in Boulder.

We were the local heroes, open for big shows,

standing ovations.

Go to New York, nobody knows us, nobody's there.

And we are just higher than a kite.

Mr. Big shows up and I go,

"Psst, guys hey, somebody important's here,

let's pick it up."

♪ Bring the morning down

♪ Pretty

You know, I don't know if it was the drugs

or being spoiled or what,

but we just didn't pick it up.

We got back and the criticism was,

they didn't put on a show.

Well duh, we didn't.

(somber music)

- We ended up going back and moving in Allenspark

which is just far enough away that nobody went there.

- We actually had roofs over our heads, real roofs.

We were a little closer to the earth,

a little closer to the mountains,

a little closer to mother nature.

- By the time we got into Allenspark,

there was a tension brewing in the band at that point.

(somber music)

- Lynn started being a bit of a prima donna.

We'd do an outdoor gig on the campus,

"Oh, it's too cold, I can't play."

That kind of thing.

Finally, we were playing at the Hummingbird Cafe

and it was a blizzard, dead of winter.

- People had driven all the way up from Boulder

to hear him play.

He played one or two songs and said,

"It's just not working."

And got up and walked away.

- I was pissed.

I walked back in the dressing room and I said,

"That is the last time you're ever going to do that

to me on a stage, I quit."

(somber music)

- Poonah left, we really didn't know what to do.

- We were then a band with no bass player

and I knew Das and I thought why not.

(upbeat music)

- I'm Das, that's an old nickname from Magic Music.

Bill Makepeace and my wife Mary Jane.

- Das is a guy who I meet on Martha's Vineyard

when we were very young, probably 16

and we started playing music together.

- I didn't make friends easily.

I was very, very quite.

I was somewhat introverted.

Music was just something that really settled me down,

made sense, I could make friends.

Will came out to Colorado, he was going to go to school

and he was just saying,

"You got to come, you got to come,

you won't believe what's going on out here."

So I did.

I found him down there with the buses

and I didn't know who's bus was who's.

The only person I knew was Will.

I banged on one of these things and the door flew open.

There was Flatbush, Lynn Poyer.

One smile from Flatbush did it.

My life changed right there, right then.

You are now free, you can be free.

♪ Wherever I go

♪ I can be whatever I want to be ♪

And I ended up in Magic Music, I found I had friends.

♪ La la la la

♪ La la

♪ La la la la

♪ I came into this world with a dream in my pocket ♪

♪ That all men were happy with their view of themselves ♪

- One of the reason I probably didn't feel really

motivated to just dedicating my life to Magic Music is

they couldn't get it together.

♪ It's not a game that we're playing ♪

♪ That you win or you lose it

- With Jack Vickers, who saw us here in Colorado

and just got to talking to us, you know.

He goes, "Would you be willing to go to LA

and try and nail down a contract?"

And we said, "Okay."

(upbeat music)

It certainly seemed like everything was going to change here

real quickly and life would be a whole different situation

for us with a real record contract.

- [Das] They took us in to Capitol Records.

Old Will wouldn't put shoes on.

- I just wouldn't do it,

so they weren't into having our meeting

because I wouldn't put the shoes on.

(laughing)

You know.

The heart of the band, I'm the idiot in the band.

- We had interest from Elektra Records,

big interest from Elektra Records.

- This was typical of the music business back then.

Offered them a contract.

Basically it was the classic Credence Clearwater contract

which says, "We own you and everything you're going to do

for the rest of your life, here, sign here."

- Flatbush would not bend.

He didn't want to be produced.

He wasn't going to let anybody tell him how to do it.

The professional people

didn't want to work with that attitude.

- So, we went back to Boulder.

Back to our life, back to the school buses.

- When we came back from LA,

Bush got a little depressed I think.

- We weren't making any headway.

- Lynn wanted to be a star.

He really saw himself as a star.

- He would feel so down and so, just miserable.

I couldn't shake it out of him.

Finally I snapped and I said I can't do it anymore.

- We were supposed to go back to LA

and nail down that contract, get that one right song

because they just didn't think we had written a hit song yet

and that's when both Tode and Will came to me and said,

"You know, we really don't want to go back to LA."

- I said, I gotta tell you that I can't play music with you.

- I sat there and said, "Flatbush, he's right."

We're fighting each other now, it's not working right.

- You're not going to go for it?

You're not going to go get this contract

we've worked so hard.

No, we're not going to do it.

I said, "Well, then there's nothing more I can do, I quit."

- We wanted him to quit, we didn't want to fire him.

Just sit down and write hit songs

is not really how it's supposed to happen.

You don't contrive the stuff.

Not Magic Music anyway.

(light music)

- I remember when Flatbush left the band.

For the fans, it felt a bit like when your parents break up.

You know there's some bad feelings going on

but nobody goes into details.

Transition was pretty smooth though,

because even before Flatbush left,

Spoons had been around playing with the band.

♪ Hey candy dancers

- My name's Chris, also Spoons Daniels

and this is Olivia, also known as Speedy or Dibby Dibs and -

- I'm Jennifer.

- Born in Minnesota.

My dad was a civilian aid to the Army

and I was the hippy radical kid,

so there was a clash there.

I was really a part of the anti-Vietnam War kind of thing.

- I met Chris before I met Flatbush and Tode

when we were like 18.

- There's a photograph of the day I met him

at this thing called Woodstock West.

It was an anti-war rally.

So, after Woodstock West, Will and I stayed in touch

and eventually he wound up in Boulder with Magic Music

and one way or another I wound up in Boulder

and had heard that he was up there,

and he said, "Come on up."

- He came up to our house in Allenspark.

He didn't have a place to crash or anything

and he kind of stayed in our living room

and he was really kind of down and out.

- I remember the first day.

Flatbush was sitting in a chair like this

and Will was sitting there and Tode.

And I said, "Jesus, this is the chance to go the distance.

This is going to go all the way."

- He went out in the kitchen and he got a couple of spoons

out of the sink and started playing spoons on his knee.

(spoons clacking)

- I spent the whole summer with him.

I was living in his school bus.

Met my first girlfriend that Tode eventually took.

Which was fine.

You know, it was like, ah, you know, whatever.

But went down the university,

rode down to the university that summer.

♪ Going down to the university

♪ Got to find me some lovely ladies ♪

There's pictures of us on the campus with Flatbush

and me playing banjo and Das playing bass.

The next thing that happened was I was just playing

in Magic Music with Will and the guys.

- We started realized we had to do something about Lynn,

Spoons was there and he wanted to play with us.

- Lynn had a darker outlook than I had.

I probably had too bright of an outlook, who knows.

But Spoons had the outlook that I wanted to be around.

♪ Come on this is Colorado, not New York ♪

♪ La la la la la la ♪ La la la la la la

- I guess what I consider the classic Magic Music sound

came together when they added Spoons and this one other guy

who was probably the coolest looking one of them all.

(light percussion music)

- We were actually adamant about not having a drummer

until we met CW and CW wasn't a drummer, he was a tabla guy.

(light percussion music)

- I remember CW with braids playing tablas

with like Indian garb on and fringe leather jackets.

- Started calling him CW because it was short for cobwebs.

We had smoked some real chemical stuff

and I told him, I said,

"If you keep smoking this,

you've going to have cobwebs in your head."

We didn't even know he could sing.

♪ I just want to be like the animals ♪

He had a voice like an angel.

♪ I just want to live close to the ground ♪

♪ I just want to be like the Indians ♪

♪ See my maker roll around me

- I have a high voice and I can do high parts

but I couldn't get where CW could get.

♪ Self on the ground

- His high parts in our music, I really miss them.

- [Male] One, two, three.

(lively music)

- I was the manager, road manager, booking agent.

I did just about everything.

When the band broke up and reformed,

Willy asked me if I'd be willing to find him some gigs.

We lived in Allenspark and then from there

we went to Southern Colorado in Pagosa Springs area.

- Sloth took the beans in the bag

and went out into the world to find us a place to live

and found us a place to live 500 miles away.

- It was 20 miles down what was the Old Dump Road

along this beautiful river, the San Juan river,

it's just gorgeous.

♪ Morning when it's cold and I've got an aching ♪

- We decided we wanted to be back to the land hippies.

To grow the food, to live that dream.

- Everybody talks about the 60s,

but we perfected it in the 70s.

We were free to be whatever we wanted to be

and do whatever we wanted to do.

- Magic Music removed itself the way modern folks

set down the cell phone and turn it off

and try and just get a way from things.

- The farm was great, we were all together

and we were doing what we were doing

and it was really a family situation.

(upbeat music)

- This was Das's house

Das has a nice bed and a wood stove in here

and a kitchen table.

This is the main cabin, the focal point for everyone

and no matter where you were on the ranch,

you could hear Wilbur just in here practicing.

It was the greatest backdrop to living up here

was hearing the music being played in the background.

♪ Now I'm just a rambling

♪ And I've got very little to do ♪

♪ And I'm turning down tomorrow ♪

- From 1973 to 1975 we had a great run.

Sloth got us into colleges and festivals

all around the Midwest.

We got in those school buses and played sold out crowds

from Flagstaff to Scottsdale

to Minneapolis to Crested Butte.

That's pretty remarkable.

(light music)

- We lived, inexpensively, let's say.

- We had no money, I mean, no money,

so Sloth booked us and he booked us in the bars.

♪ She goes winging their way home ♪

♪ They seem to be so free

♪ I wish that I could go along

♪ The feelings inside me

We used to only play where people would listen.

- We started realizing that if we were going to play clubs,

we couldn't just sit there and sing.

You had to get people up and dance.

- [Male] One, two, three, four.

♪ Way downtown, fooling around

♪ Took me to the jail

- They'd actually honed some bluegrass songs.

This is where Spoons introduced the banjo

and CW played the washboard.

- We were a damn good Bluegrass band.

(fast paced banjo music)

- We did the Telluride Bluegrass Festivals,

the second and third one.

Those were very, very great moments for us.

- It was that point, we'd really started to lean towards

the jam band stuff.

We were Colorado's first jam band.

(fast paced bluegrass music)

That's where we get the offer,

the record deal from Flying Fish.

We went in the studio and cut the 124 track, set of tunes.

(fast paced bluegrass music)

Which was straight down the Bluegrass pike.

I think for everybody in the band,

there was a feeling of do we want to go this way?

I'm not sure everybody did.

- We didn't really accept the Flying Fish offer.

Flying Fish wasn't Capital and we were lowing our bar.

I think it was, it was probably another mistake.

- The Flying Fish thing would've happened

if we'd of put more energy into it and finished,

we didn't finish recording the record

because of us breaking up in the middle of it.

(light music)

- [Male] So then, we find ourselves

having to believe in a lot lately.

It's all about those better days

that are just around the corner.

- Those last year and a half, two years were

a little more stressful

because they weren't doing what they wanted to do

and it felt like they were beating their heads

against a brick wall.

- The perception that it was all happy

and we got out of the bus and played great music

and got back in the bus and made love, smoked dope.

That wasn't really the scene.

- We were doing a lot of, I don't know,

cheesy road gigs that we're getting tired of.

(crowd chattering) ♪ But there's better days

♪ Coming your way

- There's a little bit of an exhaustion there.

We need to get to the next level and we're not.

Why aren't we doing it?

We tried six ways from Friday.

- There were kids involved, there were families involved.

- [Tode] Spoons was raising a child.

His little son Cedar was toilet trained on a bus

on the road.

- [Will] CW had a woman and a baby and he was done.

I had a woman and a baby and I was done.

- We had a two year old and another baby coming.

We wanted a family unit and a family home.

- The pressure of being an uneducated 24 year old

with no real employment skills was starting to wain on us.

- You reach about 26 and suddenly all these crazy dreams

you have when you're 20.

What was the business plan?

What a great question.

- There was no real plan.

We just really did just want to play music.

(light music)

- It finally came to a head that summer.

Think our last gig was August 16th.

- It was time for it to end.

It was a funny sort of a feeling.

- It was something that had to happen.

- I think all of us were sad to let it go,

but we were also knew that we weren't letting it go.

This is a gem, this is something precious, beautiful

and it's going to come back.

We don't know how, but it's going to come back.

♪ Feel the light and let you change it slow ♪

- [Tode] When Magic Music broke up, we scattered.

- After the whole thing with the Magic Music breakup,

I went my own way and they went their own way.

- There was a lot of sadness, there was a lot of anger.

There was jealousy.

- [Spoons] Lynn went on and formed a band called

Begger's Opera with a fella named Scott Roche.

- The times they were a changing for sure.

Things were getting louder and a little more rockist.

People weren't listening,

that used to really frustrate Flatbush,

so we sort of quietly drifted away.

- I was kind of done with him being out late, drinking.

I left in 78.

That was the last time Lynn and I were actually a couple.

- He became very disappointed and jaded by the world.

♪ Even when I'm thinking

- Did he have underlying depression or mental illness,

probably.

- Look back now, you can see very positive signs

of mantic depression in the man.

- And then he moved up to Central City,

kind of gave up on music.

And kept drinking, kept drinking, kept drinking.

- He became a real hermit.

- When I first met him, he was more of an artist.

He was constantly drawing, pen and ink, pastels.

He left music for artwork.

♪ And all the time that's gone

- When the band parted ways,

I joined forces with a fella named Tom Sayers

and we formed a band called Luckey Sayers.

We actually tried to make a disco song.

(light disco music)

I was well fitted to that.

I was like, oh please.

That of course dissolved

and I moved back to Martha's Vineyard.

♪ There comes a day in each man's own time ♪

Around 85, I became disheartened with pushing hard

at the music industry and I was broke

and I couldn't do anything,

so I started to single houses and I had an accident.

Fell about 35 feet.

Broke up my hand and arm, shoulder, ribs

and changed my vocation back to music

because I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing.

I went to school and got a degree.

I majored in Piano.

Then I got out of there and started figuring out

what was I going to do.

So, I started teaching privately in my studio.

♪ And greet it with a grin

♪ And bring the morning in

This is basically the beach I grew up on.

I wrote Bring the Morning Down right on that dune

right over there.

♪ And bring the morning down

♪ Pretty mama

♪ Yea draw it all around

I think all I did was look out across

Vineyard sound out here.

The morning comes up,

but it felt to me like the sun was coming down

and I was singing to the ocean.

♪ Bring the morning down

♪ Pretty mama

I don't regret one second on it.

It all unfolded just fine.

♪ And greet it with a grin

Life went it's way.

♪ And bring the morning in

(light flute music)

- Shit.

I ended up in Birmingham by marrying a girl from Birmingham

while I was living in Boulder.

Not having a college degree and not necessarily

having anything other than a bunch of band experience,

I'll tell you, when you go tell somebody

you're applying for a job

and you've been in a band for the last seven years,

you might was well tell them you're in prison.

For the past 13 years, I've been a courier.

I deliver computer parts out of my car.

Drive all over the south.

Through the years, especially surviving in the world

of music and variable income levels.

Yeah, we did some entrepreneurial work

in the import/export business.

I would FedEx him packages every couple of months.

And he would FedEx me money and it was a really nice

back and forth thing for a number of years.

Then one day the FedEx package didn't show up.

And these other people did.

But nothing ever came of it.

It's still not past the statute of limitations so.

- Don't use FedEx.

It's never a good idea to use FedEx.

So, I quit doing that.

(laughing)

(chattering)

My son and his three kids live in Birmingham

and my daughter and her child live there.

I'd like to stay in Birmingham and be around them.

Every time I tried to do music projects having a family,

it was just never going to work.

So, my daughter was 16, I stayed home

and took care of everything.

One night she said, "I'm going out."

I said, "Well, so am I."

I went out and got started playing again.

I've been playing in bands in Birmingham ever since then.

(light flute music)

- So, after Magic Music I kicked around Boulder for a while.

What do I do know kind of thing.

I went to play with Navarro.

It was another heartfelt, original band,

playing all original music.

Then Dan Fogelberg lived here the neighborhood

and used to come and sit in with us.

He brought Carole King by one time to see us play

and she loved us.

Make a long story short, we became her "side by side band".

Recorded a few albums with her and toured with her.

The fame part of it was really difficult.

People started treated you differently.

Everybody's suddenly your best friend.

Everybody knows your business,

but also equally tough was the reentry.

When that all ended you came back to being

a normal person again.

You're just another guy playing gigs

at the local coffee shop.

So, I got into carpentry.

My passion right now is to live simply and comfortably

at the same time.

And to enable other people to do the same thing.

I've designed a lot of octagonal shaped cabins and houses.

They're called Solargons.

They're very thermally efficient.

This is my tiny house back here.

It's 119.2 square feet.

A nice cozy little loft you can sit up in and sleep in,

which I do every night.

- Been a bass player for 50 years,

but I wasn't active for all those years, obviously.

Professionally speaking as jobs go,

I had no particular direction.

There was a small publishing company

I was involved with for a while.

I had a bicycle repair for quite a long time.

My friend, Andy Bennet, pulled me out of moth balls

and said, "You need to come

and play with us in our basement."

And I started playing again.

This was after about 12 years

of not taking instruments out of the case.

♪ Oh but I still think of you

♪ In my quiet moments

We lived in Mexico most of the time.

Mary Jane and I started sailing.

We'd cruise down, we'd anchor for a while,

we'd stay for like a month.

Finally, it just became home.

(scat singing)

There's a sweetheart of a music scene there

with great players.

We have found lots of friends there

and we're having a ball.

We're having a great time.

♪ Tell me what you want

♪ Help me out here

♪ She says, jump, jump, jump ♪ What do we do

♪ And I said, high, high, high

♪ Looking good ♪ Jump, jump, jump

♪ When I say baby

♪ High, high, high

♪ Looking good

♪ Jump on baby

♪ I wish I could fly

- I was the nut ball that just kept doing it.

When Magic Music broke up I went back to school.

I got my music degree because I didn't understand

any of what I was playing.

I came back to Colorado.

I used my name Spoons and started a band called Spoons.

We put out a record and we had some success.

From that, we got Chris Daniels and the Kings.

♪ Oh, it was Saturday night on Bill Street ♪

♪ Old man singing the blues

- Magic Music's biggest question was

did we have a hit song?

That's what makes a band.

Chris Daniels and the Kings,

When You're Cool the Sun Shines All the Time.

That put us on the map.

We signed with Provogue records in 1990.

We did 21 tours of Europe

because we had a couple of number one records.

♪ When you're cool

♪ The sun shines all the time

I didn't smoke as much pot as the rest of the guys.

It was really cocaine that was the fast trigger for me.

My family has a long history of that kind of tendency.

I activated every gene in my pool

going, oh, this stuff is good.

It was pretty clear.

I was either going to have a career or I wasn't.

I went into my first meeting,

and that was 30 some odd years ago,

so I've been clean and sober ever since.

♪ But there's better days

♪ Coming your way

I always knew the music didn't have a retirement plan.

So, in 1990, I started working to get my master's degree

so I could teach music business.

I've been a professor at the University now for 15 years.

The Kings just put out our 16th album

and I got inducted in the Colorado Music Hall of Fame.

So that was kind of cool.

♪ As I stand on the hillside

- We lost track with CW.

Apparently he got a little sideways with some folks,

I don't know much about it.

- I was not there.

- Yeah, I wasn't there.

- I have no way of knowing.

- I couldn't comment on it because I don't know.

- I think it had to do with, can't quote me on this,

but drug dealing.

- It was some bad blood I believe between CW and Sloth.

- CW and I had a falling out,

which I'd rather not really go in to.

He disappeared.

He went off to California with a sitar player named Zeke.

- There were heavily into cocaine back then.

- Falling out occurred and everybody disappeared.

- Made it so CW couldn't come back to Boulder

and to this day, as far as I know, he hasn't been back.

- One thing that's remarkable is how so many people who were

involved with Magic Music managed to stay connected.

Sloth, their third manager is really the keeper of the flame

in that sense.

Every few years he has a Magic Music family reunion

which he calls Copperstock.

- I had liver failure and it was looking pretty dire.

I decided that we should have a reunion party

so everybody could see each other

before one of us knocked off.

(light music)

So, that was the first Copperstock.

- Lynn didn't want to do it.

At first he was kind of, the resentment was there,

but the more he thought about it, he did.

♪ And I feel the sun surround me ♪

- We were extremely happy that Flatbush showed up.

It really made the reunion a true reunion.

- We had virtually almost everyone

who ever played in that band.

We had myself, Chris, Daniel, Wilber, Tode.

We had Rob Galloway, Bill Makepeace, Das.

We did not have Kevin Milburn, CW.

- We all converged and we remembered the music.

Which was pretty astonishing.

♪ And bring the morning down

♪ Pretty mama

♪ Yea draw it all around

♪ Little woman

♪ And greet it with a grin

♪ And bring the morning in

- I couldn't believe how he had aged.

I mean, none of us are spring chickens but,

it was just like, wow, he turned into an old man.

- He had lost his upper teeth.

He had a big mustache so you didn't see it.

He was not the man he was.

- He'd always abused his body one way or another

and he was drinking really, really heavily.

- I don't think anybody could've brought him back

from his course once he chose it.

God knows we all tried.

- Up until the reunion Lynn didn't really have anything

to do with those guys anymore.

- Of course we're older now

and he's still over in Central City.

Then I started going and seeing him often.

We did a lot of playing together, we did some recording.

None of it's really very good but we were doing it.

♪ When the rock turns a rising

♪ And the rising is black

♪ Keep your faith in your friends ♪

♪ Then watch your back

- It was when he started to get sick, we actually,

Spoons and I together, me and Das together, me alone,

we would go up and visit Lynn as he was deteriorating.

- He got worse and worse over a handful of years

and finally passed away, he died.

- The last couple of times I saw him,

I wasn't prepared for how bad he was.

- He was kind of done with it.

Done with music, done with artwork, done with life.

He just wanted to go.

♪ Come lay your head in my arms ♪

- Eventually we all reach the stage in life

when the people around us who are getting sick and dying

are no longer our parents and our grandparents,

they're our friends, people we grew up with.

When that starts happening,

I think you start to look at life a little differently.

What is it that we want to do,

that there's still time to do.

- 2010, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

I got a bone marrow transplant from my sister Jane.

So, I'm about four and a half years into it now.

Knock on wood, I got a little more time.

- He marched a very hard trail and came out the other side

and we were there as much as we could all be.

- Thank you, thank you. - Thank you, yeah.

- When I came home from the hospital

we did a reunion out on the vineyard

and I think the guys were sort of thinking,

well let's get Spoons for one more

just in case this thing doesn't take.

Will was there and Tode.

- We had Das and Tim Goodman who's a dear friend

from my early years on Martha's Vineyard.

- Will and I were 16 years old

and will was the first guy amongst us

who started writing his own songs.

- Tim wanted to play with us way back then

but it just didn't work out.

- Will and Chris and myself never lost touch.

If someone had a health issues

or somebody had this or that, was like, you were there.

- We got together after Spoons became ill

and Timmy jumped right in

and helped up pull it all together.

♪ Everything is closing

♪ And everyone is free

♪ Nothing I can call mine

♪ Because everything

- It sounded terrible but it didn't matter

because it was the songs and it was us doing it

and we had a blast.

- Tim just fits right in.

I mean, knows all the music

and he knows these guys so well.

- God, I forgot that part, Will.

- Tim said something like,

maybe we should put it together and make a record.

- These tunes have yet to be recorded,

what should we do about that?

- I recorded 16 basic tracks and got Rob on some

and got Das on some.

Which turned into Timmy basically saying,

"I really want to produce this."

- We were different guys that hadn't been in the studio

together so it was going to be a little bit of

putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

I knew how to do that.

- One thing that I understand about Tim

is as a record producer you make choices.

And they're not fun.

- Timmy did what everybody always did.

Took both of the bass players totally for granted

and pissed them both off.

- I was on Martha's Vineyard working on and off with Tim

for, quite frankly, 14 weeks.

About eight months later I read in a magazine article

that somebody had put on Facebook that there was another

bassist that had come in and rerecorded over everything.

That was the first I had heard of anything.

Unfortunately that's why I separate myself from the band,

musically especially at this point in time.

- I know that Das was seriously hurt and offended

when his parts were dropped.

I wrote Chris an email, I said,

"By any chance are my tracks still on the record?"

He goes, "No."

I was like whatever you guys want to do, I don't care.

I stopped caring 40 years ago.

- Tim really took control of how this was going to happen.

He brought in some brilliant people.

I mean, wow level of players.

- The studio musicians we have playing with us on the album

are great but they're still not the heart of the band

we had before.

♪ Rolling down the highways in the springtime ♪

♪ Looking at a mountain I'd like to be ♪

♪ Listen to the trees they sure do sing fine ♪

♪ I really wish they'd teach their song to me ♪

♪ Gonna find a girl I'd like to marry ♪

♪ Find a little place to settle down ♪

♪ When I'm by myself it's kind of scary ♪

♪ Anytime you can please come around ♪

♪ La la la la la

- Its sounds incredible.

We're 45 years later and you couldn't play

the same way you did when you were 20.

- It's not 1971, it's 2013.

What can we bring to this music that's honest and true

because this is who we are now.

- It's modernized but to me some of the heart's missing.

- Nobody I know thinks it sounds like Magic Music.

(lively music)

- I thought it was terrific

that they'd finally made an album.

And it was great to hear the 2013 versions of those songs.

But honestly, I was still looking for 1971

and the sound that had moved me so much back then.

So, I asked the original members of the band

to meet me in Colorado.

(light music)

I hadn't been back to Boulder in over 40 years.

Like all of us, it had changed.

- [Poonah] Boulder today is a parody of it's former self.

♪ People who bring me down

- I think in some ways it's become like every other town.

It's Wendy's and Starbucks everywhere.

There was a place here which is now a Goodwill

which used to be called The Coast.

There's another place just on the other side over here

which was The Dark Horse.

And all of these were kinds of various clubs

with Shannon's and Peggy's Hi-Lo.

♪ Just looking to be found

All the different venues that we started to play.

- The last 40 years has been a challenge

for those of us who really try to keep the ideas alive.

- Boulder's gotten incredibly more expensive.

It's gotten corporate.

There are people with real money here.

- Basically, a lot of the creative people

had to migrate out of town

because they got priced out of the place.

As a friend of mine said,

"Hey, this is not your Boulder anymore."

Sad but true.

(light music)

- I think it's been 45 years.

- [Tode] It's been since the spring of 71.

- Spring of 71.

We used to drive up this little road.

You felt like you were going into a very secure place.

- [Spoons] Where you guys down here?

- No, no up further.

- [Wilbur] Poonah, how are you?

- I'm doing well. - It's great to see you.

- [Poohan] Great to see you, how've you been?

Tode.

- [Sloth] Looks a little different, huh?

- Yeah it does, the trees are bigger.

- Flatbush dyna truck was like right

in that open area right there.

- [Tode] I think your bus was right here.

- [Wilbur] I think you're right.

- It was brutal, it was rough.

That winter was tough.

- we had wood stoves in the buses

and in the morning we'd wake up

and it's be cold because the fire went out

and the ceiling would've collected all the breath

and it would condense and snow on your face

while you're waking up.

- Very romantic.

♪ You know I take it pretty easy ♪

♪ In Eldorado Canyon

♪ Chopping wood to stay alive

♪ When the snow falls in Eldorado Canyon ♪

♪ Well I'm, I'm so glad to be alive ♪

- Visiting Eldorado Canyon, just amazing.

Places that, you know, now that I'm a little older,

looking back I really should've

appreciated a lot more at the time.

- God, we should've been fishing.

You know?

I didn't have a fishing rod.

♪ The days just come in

- I got chocked up and I was really surprised

that there was that much emotionally loading

still in my psyche over those times.

Even now.

(thunder clasping)

- Bush! - Flatbush!

- Bush!

(lively flute music)

- [Tode] Bill Bishop was a benefactor of the arts.

He had two art galleries and he had this place.

It was an art gallery and an antique shop.

He offered to let us stay here for free through the winter.

- [Spoons] This was the laboratory.

We'd sit out here and create these sounds.

(light music)

♪ Look down the meadow

♪ And there's people laughing

♪ I see I've come to a change

- He wanted the publishing rights to Colorado Rockies

and I think The Morning Song.

We said, well that's not what we're here to do.

We want our publishing rights

and we don't want to do all the stuff that you want to put,

you know, over produce it and everything

and he put his white cowboy boots

up on the desk and he said,

"Well boys, you better just go on then."

(laughing)

- Of course, if you'd handed him the publishing,

you would've gotten a huge percentage of money.

- Oh God, we would've screwed that up.

Good Lord, could you imagine us with money.

- We would've gotten in some kind of big trouble

somewhere along the line.

We didn't have a lot of respect for those record people.

- They were the enemy.

You were negotiating with the devil as far as I can see.

We showed them.

That's right, here we are.

- We did all that so that we could be here now

because if we had done that then we wouldn't be here now.

(upbeat music)

- [Spoons] Where mostly we played was just down here in

front of Helm's Hall because we could run an extension cord

out of a window for the bass guitar.

This place would be covered with absolutely gorgeous women

and crazy looking dudes.

- [Male] One, two, three.

♪ I'm going down to the university ♪

♪ Got to find me some lovely ladies ♪

♪ One to wash my back

♪ And other to patch my pants

♪ One who's hands are soft and fair ♪

♪ To pull all these snarls from my hair ♪

- What hair?

- [Wilbur] It was wonderful to sit there and do it

and feel the energy of kind of being in that exact spot.

♪ Give me an hour and a lady or two ♪

♪ And I'll come out smelling sweet as new ♪

♪ Whoa, whoa it's true

♪ Tode play one

(lively harmonica music)

- All of us ladies loved to dance to them.

Felt very free.

- In those days we had those wonderful skirts

and we'd twirl, we were twirlers, you know.

- One, two, three and four.

(clapping)

("Bring the Morning Down")

♪ Bring the morning down

♪ Pretty mama

♪ Yea draw it all around

♪ Little woman

♪ And greet it with a grin

♪ And bring the morning in

- My longest, best, closest friends are

the family that we are seeing this weekend.

- This is my family.

I'm closer to these people than I am

to most of my real family.

(light music)

- [Julie] Even though we've all gone

lots of different places in the world,

we still have this spiritual connection for each other.

♪ Bring the morning down

♪ Pretty mama

♪ Yea draw it all around

♪ Little woman

♪ And greet it with a grin

♪ And bring the morning in

♪ Bring the morning in

♪ Bring the morning in

(laughing) (cheering)

- [Lee] I loved hearing Magic Music on campus again

after all these years.

But it still wasn't quite the way I remembered it.

- [Male] Kevin Milburn on the congas.

(lively conga music)

- When we started this movie,

I wasn't thinking anything other than

I want to do this, I want to hear the music again.

And it's like pieces of the puzzle are falling in.

It became clear to me last night

that last piece of the puzzle was CW.

And I really want to get him into this.

I wanted to know how you guys felt about that.

- Well, CW left some serious wreckage.

- If he could make a mends with some of the people

that were damaged in his wreckage it would be great.

- As far as sitting and playing and music with us,

I don't see a problem with that.

- Not a problem.

- But it's more the community.

I think what I would vote for is a neutral place.

- Yes, someplace.

- That's what I was going to suggest.

- I think if we find a neutral -

- It couldn't be at Sloth's house for instance.

- No and you notice I did not bring this up

when Sloth was around.

- For some reason, I've been able to kind of dance around

that and have a communication channel open with him.

So, I'm more than glad to reach out

and put you in touch with him and make that happen.

- That's great.

I mean, it's like it's now become my mission in life

to recreate that iconic photo of Magic Music.

Actually, I wanted more than a picture.

I just didn't know if it would be possible.

- CW.

Spoons in the sink.

God, it's wonderful to hear you voice.

It's the same voice that I remember.

Well, I'll tell you a little bit about this project.

("Cedar Sigh"))

♪ As I stand on the hillside

♪ See the river glide

♪ Through the trees

♪ Well I can hear a long cry

- [Lee] Knock, knock.

CW?

- Hi, are you Lee? - I'm Lee.

- Pleasure to meet you.

- You've actually meet me before but you wouldn't remember.

- I wouldn't remember. - No.

- I lost touch with everybody.

I mean, I wasn't talking to anybody in Boulder.

I just let that completely go away and cool off.

I left owing some money.

It always scared me that, you know,

somebody might come knocking on my door

someday or something.

I was involved with some people that are,

like, dealing drugs and stuff right.

I'm involved in that.

Rumors start flying that there's going to be

a big sting coming down and I don't want to get into

a whole lot of details or anything,

but I'm pretty paranoid about this whole thing.

There was this guy named Ron, he kept bugging me,

why don't you come join my band.

I just said, "Okay."

Threw my drums in the back of his van and away we went.

(light music)

There was a rumor that Zeke and I had pulled some scam

where we had burglarized Kent Somer's house.

That ludicrous.

I was already gone.

Zeke and I were roommates in an apartment

and when I joined that country rock, southern rock band,

I left him living in that apartment,

so I don't know what he did.

I left owing thousands of dollars,

not 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars.

Felt terrible about that.

I wish I could go back and make it all good,

but it's been hand to mouth this whole time, you know.

Trying to make ends meet.

I always figured like I did with Magic Music.

I'm going to get a big break, something's going to happen.

I was on the road with a band working all these little bars

on the California side of Lake Tahoe.

That got me in the door with the big casinos.

♪ I don't believe it's true

For six years, I got full time work every week,

we're booked a year in advance.

When the technology changed,

instead of having the back up bands be the locals,

they brought tracks prerecorded in Hollywood.

We went from about 200 paying stages in this area of Nevada,

Reno, Tahoe, Carson.

Now there's about 20.

I've been moving from sales job to sales job.

Right now I'm just leaving AT&T to work in the call center.

This is my daughter Mary.

We got hit so hard here with the economic crunch

that it's just not even funny.

We've been really close to losing the house a couple times

and still are and don't have the money to pick up and leave.

I didn't plan on the downfalls, the pitfalls of alcohol

and infidelity and drugs and all that.

I often thought that I was pretty much above all that stuff

too I guess but I wasn't.

I wasn't.

I will always say that I regret that we didn't put something

on vinyl and that we didn't make that stab.

We didn't do it.

And I wish we had.

- [Lee] If you could go back to Boulder, would you want to?

- Yeah.

- Well, let me tell you what I'm trying to accomplish here.

I'd like to bring you back to Boulder at some point

and give you guys some time to rehearse

and I'd like to see you do a show, the original members.

What I want to do is have Sloth call you.

How would you feel about that?

- I don't know.

- [Lee] You want to think about it?

- I don't know what there is to think about.

But, you know, if he says he wants to talk,

that's fine with me.

(phone ringing)

Hey, it's Kevin.

Sloth?

My brother.

(light music)

- [Sloth] There's so much to tell you

and so much that has gone on

and it'll be great to see you and just sit down

and start hashing over all the old prime.

- That would be fun.

- [Sloth] Your voice is irreplaceable.

The thing that's missing most on all of those tunes is you.

♪ I can hear my father singing

♪ His song

♪ It's a special song for every day ♪

- I really appreciate you man, thank you so much.

- [Sloth] Good talking to you.

- (laughing) Thank you, very healing.

Very healing.

- I thought it was just time to let bygones be bygones.

(exhales)

- Finally all the pieces were on the table,

but how'd they'd fit together or even if they'd fit together

was anybody's guess.

(upbeat music)

- We're heading to pick up CW.

This'll be the first time that they play together

and I know everybody's looking forward to it.

- I'm so glad that they worked this out.

We're going to have him back in the fold.

- My expectation would be

that we would simply sit down and play.

And it will kind of fall together.

- I'm really excited about it,

especially to sing with CW.

- I think he'll be a real addition.

I bet he's probably enthusiastic as all can get out.

(light music)

- Hey, buddy.

- [Sloth] Long time, huh?

♪ This morning

- You're still you.

- You're still you.

♪ That is such a good thing to do ♪

♪ Any day

♪ Last night

♪ Stories you to tell

♪ And they made me dream so well ♪

♪ I woke with tears in my eyes

- Oh my God. - Oh my God.

- Oh my God! (laughing)

♪ Oh you are a friend to me

♪ It's a good day let us let it be that way ♪

♪ Oh you are a friend to me

♪ It's a good day let us let it be that way ♪

- God, I'm glad you're here.

- Oh, me too.

- [Spoons] Alright, you want to try Cedar Sigh?

We haven't mapped that one yet.

- Sure. - Yeah.

("Cedar Sigh")

♪ As I stand on the hillside

♪ I can see the river glide

♪ Down through the trees

- Blown away in the first five measures.

You know, he sounds so good.

- Personality's still all wrapped up there.

It's perfect in every way.

- It's absolutely wonderful and the vocal harmonies,

it's the old goosebumps there.

♪ I just want to be like the animals ♪

♪ I want to live close to the ground ♪

♪ I just want to be like the Indians ♪

- To see what going on with everybody

and how much they appreciate me being here and stuff,

really means a lot to me.

After all these years I kind of thought,

nobody really cares about CW.

♪ Myself all around

- The real Magic Music is back together.

(scat singing)

- KGNU, it's 10:15, I'm Meredith Carson and I am in the

Cabaret Studio with the members of Magic Music.

They are in concert on Sunday

at the Boulder Theater at seven.

Tode, get us started off.

- Well, we came to Boulder here to do a reunion concert.

I came from Alabama,

Will Luckey came from Martha's Vineyard,

Spoons of course lives in Denver,

Kevin Milburn came all the way from Carson City, Nevada,

Rob Galloway's here in Boulder.

- So, how's it going to go on Sunday night?

Have you all made up any new songs for this concert?

- I think the task for us was to see if we could get the

brain cells to fire on the ones we knew.

- So, get in the way back machine and join these guys

for the first concert they've done in 40 years.

(light music)

[Fleur] Hey guys.

- Hey, what, what? - Whoa!

- Front page, baby.

- Magic Music is back. - We hit the big time.

- Seriously. - Magic is back.

- [Sloth] Let's see what's in here, man.

Man, look at that, right in the middle of the magazine.

- Look at us.

- First time we ever been in the newspapers.

At least for a good reason.

- [Sloth] And as usual,

Das looking at us like we're all crazy.

- I talked to Das and interviewed Das

and he was extremely gracious and cooperative.

But he was also extremely ambivalent about

whether he wanted to participate in the concert.

- Where I left it with him was,

hey I will work up all the tunes

if you get a wild hair

and you want to show up on the last day, the door's open.

Who knows, he might surprise us, he might show up.

- [Das] Hello?

- Das, it's Lee Aronsohn.

You can guess why I'm calling.

I mean, I'm going to take one final shot at you.

CW came in.

I got to tell you, man, it was lovely to hear him again.

- [Das] Oh, very good.

- You know, we're having a great time here

and everybody feels like it's a crime

that you're not part of it.

- [Das] Well, thank you for the sentiment

and I wish it was just as easy as that.

The band and I, we've been through a lot together.

Every time I end up on the short end of the stick

and I just, I'm just done.

Enough's enough.

Tell those guys, break a leg.

- [Lee] Alright, I will pass it on.

- [Das] Best of luck and stay safe.

- Thank you man, you too.

- [Das] Okay, bye bye.

(exhales)

- It's a shame, you know, it's a shame.

He should be there.

(light music)

(lively music)

- [Poonah] Our expectations as you know,

we were thinking, what, 200 people if we were lucky.

And the place sold out.

- Sold out? - Sold out.

- Sold out.

- No pressure, most people haven't seen us in 40 years

and really want to see us.

No pressure.

- How much time we got? - Five minutes.

- Alright, thanks Grady.

So, let's send this show to all that ain't here.

- Yes, sir.

- All that is here. - Yes, sir.

- And all that got us here in one way or to alive.

Just amazing.

(cheering)

- [Lee] Ladies and gentlemen,

please welcome back to Boulder,

playing together for the first time in 40 years,

the original Magic Music.

("Bright Sun Bright Rain")

(cheering)

(scat singing)

♪ And I feel the sun surround me ♪

♪ Reflecting off my window pane ♪

♪ Now at last my love has found me ♪

♪ Bright sun

♪ Bright rain

- This band has been my dream since I was 20 years old.

It just blows my mind.

I'm 65 years old and I'm up here playing to same people

I was playing to in 1970.

(upbeat flute music)

(cheering)

- There was so much energy in that room.

You think, do you like it and then they explode.

It's like, okay, they like it.

♪ The days are bright and clear ♪

♪ I do believe it's so

♪ My time is near and I can hear a way for me to go ♪

♪ And bring the morning down

♪ Pretty mama

♪ Yea draw it all around

♪ Little woman

♪ And greet it with a grin

♪ And bring the morning in

♪ Bring the morning in

♪ Bring the morning in

♪ I know it could start with the words to a song ♪

♪ People in the country just got to get along ♪

♪ People in the country just got to get it on ♪

(lively music)

We always thought, we'll be something different,

we won't have drums.

Well, drums are really cool.

(cheering)

♪ As I stand on the hillside

♪ I can see the river glide

♪ Down through the trees

- CW singing his song, Cedar Sigh.

I haven't heard that since those days.

And so that was a nostalgic rush.

It was just beautiful, what a song.

♪ I know it's calling me

♪ He says answer me

♪ Be my friend

♪ So I lift my heart and I raise my voice ♪

♪ And I sing a song back to him ♪

♪ I just want to be like the animals ♪

♪ I want to live close to the ground ♪

♪ And I just want to be like the Indians ♪

♪ See my maker all around me

♪ See my family all around

(light music)

♪ I just want to be like the Indians ♪

♪ See my maker all around me

♪ See his family all around

♪ Even

♪ See myself all around

♪ Oh yeah

- Kevin Milburn. - Thanks, y'all.

It felt fantastic.

I didn't expect to be appreciated as much as I am.

How can I go back to my former life.

It's like.

♪ Now there's better days coming my way ♪

♪ I can hear them as clear

- This gift that you get that is music,

close your eyes and you're 18 years old.

It's a freaking time machine.

♪ Winter time will take me

♪ It might shape and remake me ♪

♪ It's going to be a whole lot better ♪

♪ When the spring arrives

(cheering)

- So, my old friend Flatbush and I

started this little venture in 1970.

Flatbush isn't with us anymore,

he's tuning guitars up in heaven, we're pretty sure.

But he wrote this song and it was really kind of

our hallmark.

This was one of his best song ever I thought.

("Colorado Rockies")

♪ I'll try to break it easy to you ♪

♪ But there's some things you should know ♪

♪ About this world that we're living in ♪

♪ And the people who'd make you go ♪

♪ I tend to get upset

♪ At people who try to bring me down ♪

♪ But then I wake up and remember ♪

♪ They're just looking to be found ♪

♪ Just looking to be found

- Something on my bucket list

was to do a reunion concert at the Boulder Theater

with Magic Music in front of an audience

of all our oldest friends.

♪ I got to say before I walk on back home ♪

My relationship with the band had changed

and I'm very sad for that.

However, I think that I still made the right decision

to not come.

♪ If they don't leave this planet alone ♪

Knowing that it occurred, that it got accomplished,

I get some satisfaction from that, I really do.

The band deserved it.

The music deserved it.

It's the music in our lives and it's so important.

- [Spoons] Here we go.

♪ Our smile is changing from a grin to a frown ♪

♪ All the people round us trying to keep love down ♪

♪ All I want to do is try and make this sound ♪

♪ Let you know it's real

♪ Help you try and feel inside you ♪

♪ It's love my friends that I'm talking about ♪

♪ Jesus said when he stood on the mount ♪

♪ All day long brothers there's no one that's left out ♪

♪ Why can't you see

♪ What you're doing to me

♪ Yeah

♪ You know I listen to you preach on Sunday ♪

♪ Love and brotherhood oh man

♪ Then you go back out on Monday ♪

♪ To get the most out of who you can ♪

♪ The time is coming when we'll have to decide ♪

♪ If we're going to stay and fight or gonna take a ride ♪

♪ To the Colorado Rockies and the great divide ♪

♪ Can't you see it's here

♪ Revolution's here

♪ It's coming here to you

(cheering)

Thank you all so much for being here tonight.

(light music) (chattering)

- [Lee] Did they take the right paths in life?

Did I?

Who knows, but I'll always be grateful

that all our paths brought up back to Boulder.

♪ Everything is closing and everyone is free ♪

♪ There's nothing I can call mine cause everything is fee ♪

- CW and I, we went right back to being close buddies again.

Old friendships can be revived pretty quickly

if you just forget about the crap.

♪ There's nothing I can call my ♪

- I can't perform with the band,

but there's still a friendly thing going on somewhere.

When you get to our age, there's nothing like old friends.

You can't get the again, they're already there.

- [Spoons] Sing it with us everybody.

♪ Everything is closing and everyone is free ♪

♪ There's nothing I call mine cause everything is fee ♪

♪ Don't you try to hold on to anyone you know ♪

♪ Feel the light within you

♪ And let's you change this flow ♪

(lively music)

♪ Springtime back again

♪ Going to find me a lady friend ♪

♪ Springtime time lady friend

♪ Going to carry me home

♪ Sunshine feels so

♪ Sunshine feels so bright

♪ Rainy day won't you go away

♪ And let me play today

♪ Hey hey

♪ La la la la la la la

(cheering)

♪ Where are we now

♪ Where is the best

♪ The band came and went

♪ But old friendships last

♪ With heart of the matter

♪ The question somehow

♪ Is calling old soldiers

♪ Where are we now

♪ One's on the mountain

♪ One's on the shore

♪ One's chasing down a dream

♪ Just like before

♪ One gone a sailing out on the sea ♪

♪ So listen

♪ Dreams

♪ Dreams belong to you and me