Being John Fogerty

Before John Fogerty’s life became mine, there was cold. In November 2012, I was 22 and had left the family farm in Manitoba to find work in the oil fields of Alberta. I arrived during a bust and, because work was not immediate, spent the days driving my Ford F-150 around the country surrounding Calgary, listening to AM radio and my small collection of CDs—a few Rolling Stones albums, some outlaw-country records, and the complete discography of Creedence Clearwater Revival.

The Ford was what they call a SuperCab, with a rear backward-opening half door and a narrow bench for a back seat. At night, lacking the money for a hotel, I would find a quiet place to park, crawl into the back seat, and stretch out on the bench, my clothes wrapped around my boots for a pillow. I kept my guitars—an acoustic Martin and an electric Epiphone Les Paul—beside me to warm them, lest they crack in the cold. The nights weren’t kind to me either, and I often woke up shivering, the world outside covered with frost or snow. To allay myself, I’d run the engine for a while and put on Creedence. My hands over the heating vents, I listened hundreds of times to every recording the band ever made. Fogerty, Creedence’s lead singer, guitarist, and creative force, quickly became my musical hero, and I set to work puzzling out the songs until I knew them backwards and forwards.

For a short time beginning in the late 1960s, Creedence Clearwater Revival was one of the most popular rock bands in the world, and one of the most prolific. Between its 1968 debut album and its 1972 dissolution, the band released seven records and had nine consecutive top-10 singles. Many of those hits, including “Bad Moon Rising,” “Fortunate Son,” and “Have You Ever Seen the Rain,” were not just prime examples of American rock and roll; they were evocative pieces that set the Vietnam era’s anti-war conscience to a riffy groove. Fogerty wrote lyrics that were potent and intelligent while remaining understated and accessible. His guitar playing was straightforward and primal, his musical arrangements layered but clear. There was no cock-out bluster, no pretension; the music had universal appeal in both good and troubled times. I have heard Creedence emanating from speakers around the world, from western Kazakhstan to the Bolivian altiplano. Once, in a small town in Portugal, I heard “Down on the Corner” playing on the radio. “Ah,” said a man sitting outside a café. “When music was good!”

As the deeper Alberta winter came on, I’d spend my evenings in bars to minimize the time I spent shivering in the truck. Calgary at that time was filled with open stages: acoustic open mics and electric jams where anyone could play a few songs in exchange for a free beer. With my two guitars, I took full advantage of the opportunity to perform the Creedence songs I had internalized on those bitter nights.

I was cutting my teeth, learning how to work a stage, how to perform with others. I was also learning that, whether through osmosis or the power of suggestion, my singing voice bore a strong likeness to Fogerty’s. It was close enough that on any given night, I was assured that someone would inform me of the similarity. That I would sound so similar to my musical ideal was providential, but I didn’t question it. If anything, I attributed it in part to the 13 years of childhood I’d spent studying classical violin, an environment where imitation was praised and improvisation admonished.

And though I hadn’t set out to sound like Fogerty, I decided to cultivate the performance. I put his songs under a jeweler’s eye, and studied his vocal inflection and phrasing—the length of time he held a note, where he pushed his voice and where he softened it, and his peculiar Creole-style delivery, the way certain rounded to soitan in “Feelin’ Blue,” or barking became bawkin in “Born on the Bayou.” I studied the mathematics of his solos and scrutinized his reserved stage demeanor in old videos (in comparison with Fogerty’s later-day, energetic performances, Creedence concerts were a rather subdued affair). I wasn’t interested in “covering” the songs so much as mastering their original version.

The oil-field work eventually came and eventually went, and when I returned to the farm two years later, I continued to play Creedence. I established my reputation as a Fogerty “impressionist” over many, many four-hour round trips to Winnipeg, where I’d play sometimes to happy crowds and sometimes to empty bars, each trip adding more pathos to my performance of “Lodi.”

In late 2015, I was approached by the Travellin’ Band, a Winnipeg-based Creedence tribute act. Its lead singer had just quit, and the band wanted to know if I’d be interested in stepping into the plaid-and-denim lead role. It was the opportunity I’d dreamt of: no more sleeping in my truck after gigs, real money in my hand, regular shows with a trio of professional musicians backing me. Persistence had paid off, but perfection was more complicated.  

A musical performance is always a kind of act, but imitation is generally considered less homage and more artistic debasement. Praise is given to the performer who appears as their most authentic self—even if, like Bob Dylan, David Bowie, or Lady Gaga, that self is dispersed among “fictional” characters. (Or, for that matter, like Fogerty, whose Southern singing voice was a put-on; he grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of El Cerrito.) For one musician to adopt the guise of another, whether living or dead, is seen not as art but as desperate caricature.

Yet thousands of tribute acts exist around the world, belting out other musicians’ tunes, aping their appearance, and generally making money by inhabiting a famous persona. One can attend festivals such as the U.K.’s Tribfest and Oregon’s Harefest to see cobbled-together lineups of ersatz megastars: Van Halen, the Who, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Rage Against the Machine.

It’s easy to see tribute bands as a homemade response to lost intimacy and rising costs—a solution to the complaint “I saw them before they were famous. And a dot in a stadium. And bloody expensive.” A ticket to see Red—A Taylor Swift Tribute at the Dallas Arboretum is $31. A ticket to see Taylor Swift, if you can get one, could be thousands of dollars.

Tribute performers do face some legal risk. Venues are protected from litigation by paying performance-rights organizations—SOCAN in Canada and ASCAP or BMI in the United States—but performers have to be tactful with their act; they may be sued if they use licenced trademarks or seem to tarnish an original artist’s reputation.

Of course, beyond the luck of sounding or looking like a famous musician, a certain level of talent is inherent to the work: If you don’t have the chops, you won’t fool anyone. Musical replication is relatively easy when it comes to a band such as Creedence, which had a consistent sound over its short four-year window. Other acts, such as Elton John and the Beatles, are more elaborate, and thus offer more creative avenues by design.

However, capturing the texture of a musical act requires more than just understanding the subject material. “Audiences hear with their eyes,” Robert Bielma, who plays George Harrison in the California-based Beatles’ tribute band Britain’s Finest, told me. “If you look amazing up there, you have the moves down … [people] will walk away going, ‘Oh my God, this is the greatest thing ever.’” But he told me that the band also rehearses harmonies ad infinitum, mimics movements and comments made by the Beatles in live recordings, and, in the case of the member who stands in for Paul McCartney, learns to play instruments left-handed.

To some listeners, these may seem like the small quibbles of pedantics; others won’t even notice. But for the ones who do, such details can create that immersive feeling that all bands, original or not, strive for. “For most people, it’s like, ‘It’s Beatles music, who cares?’” Bielma said. “Well, there are a lot of people out there who care.” Beyond novelty, he told me, it’s about new ears as much as old: “It’s nostalgia for the Baby Boomers, but it’s like opening a whole Pandora’s box of music for the young generation.”

I sought to take my Fogerty role just as seriously. My classical training came in handy again, and I approached Creedence the way a conductor might approach the works of Beethoven, reaching for the emotion behind the piece and trying to parse the composer’s intentions. To give listeners the truest sense of “seeing” Creedence, I insisted that we strictly adhere to the music as it was first released. To that end, we played the songs in their original keys, and I followed Fogerty’s vocal lines exactly. I used a three-quarter-size Rickenbacker guitar, a second guitar tuned down a whole step, and a late-1960s Kustom amplifier (with that warm, flexing tremolo built in) to mirror the gear Fogerty had used. Fogerty had been meticulous in his composition and production; I felt a responsibility to channel his vision.

[Read: Why the best singers can’t always sing their own songs]

My commitment felt justified when we gave our tight, practiced performances that looked the part and could easily fool Shazam as well as the people overhearing our shows. The Travellin’ Band toured across western Canada, playing bars and casinos, music festivals and theaters. We had regular fans who came to hear us (though a minuscule social-media footprint, because our manager feared litigation from the Fogerty camp). Most people expressed delight at our sound, which had thrown open memories—of seeing Creedence or Fogerty perform, and of their own life, the music evoking their past. Sometimes, concertgoers would even say that I looked like Fogerty—an easily dismissible thing (I wasn’t about to adopt Fogerty’s Creedence-era shaggy mop top and leather pants) that suggested that some audio hypnosis had taken place.

But I understood, because I had so internalized the music that when I performed, the whole idea of my acting as John Fogerty went out the window. Up onstage, I felt that it was me, not him, whom people had come to hear; that it was my songs and my music that touched them so dearly. It was my partner I couldn’t reach in “Wrote a Song for Everyone,” my childhood summers in “Green River,” my sibling I was pleading with in “(Wish I Could) Hideaway.” I had moved from wanting to be Fogerty to being myself; it was no longer an imitation but an inhabitation. When the crowd cheered for an encore—Cree-dence boom boom boom, Cree-dence boom boom boom—it was me they wanted.

It was self-delusion, of course, but one that brought me closer not only to the music but also to the audience. Just as I was singing about myself, the crowd was hearing about themselves, their problems and hopes, because although Creedence satisfies the nostalgia itch, it isn’t just about memory. More than half a century on from the release of Creedence’s first album, Fogerty’s brainy, boppy rage also speaks directly to today’s society: “Ramble Tamble,” “Effigy,” and “Don’t Look Now” are snarls of disaffection and bitterness directed at institutions, and “Proud Mary,” “Up Around the Bend,” and “Long as I Can See the Light” are timeless visions of endurance and humanity. And beyond all of that, it’s still 45 revolutions per minute of pure, good-time music. By proving that socially conscious music could be danceable (you never hear Dylan or Joan Baez on the dance floor), Creedence’s down-home eloquence cleared the way for the aspirational working-class musicians who came after it, moving rock and roll away from cars and sex and toward pride, pain, and hope.

After each show, I would meet people for whom Creedence offered solace, joy, and laconic voicing to their own conflicted feelings. I was happy to provide, in a small way, a living version of music so loved.

My tenure in the Travellin’ Band lasted four years, about the same amount of time that Creedence spent in the limelight; mired by infighting, it broke up in 1972. The Travellin’ Band suffered from similar troubles: My own desires conflicted with how other members felt. Arguments over arrangements, set lists, and venues often left us in a gloomy atmosphere. We dissolved in 2020 and went our separate ways. Two former members went on to form a Grateful Dead tribute band; another completed a Ph.D. in linguistics. Even in that, we bore similarities to Creedence, which never formally reunited.  

In 1995, Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, the rhythm section of Creedence, formed Creedence Clearwater Revisited, becoming another kind of tribute act—one in which the band continues, minus the most culturally, musically, or creatively salient member (see also today’s iteration of the Guess Who or Queen). Fogerty continues to perform his group and solo hits for audiences around the world. He is not quite like his Creedence-era self; his voice has softened with age, his entourage has ballooned, and his stage presence has become more generous, even saccharine. It’s the act of someone grateful to be playing but who also knows what he has accomplished.

I was once lucky enough to see him live. On one strange October weekend in 2016, Fogerty and I both played Fort McMurray, Alberta—in a way. The Travellin’ Band had wrapped a three-night run at what was then the Boomtown Casino, and on Sunday, our regular night off, I went to Fogerty’s show at the city’s stadium. I compared his tremolo with mine, his melodic lines with mine, and all of it with his old self, the Fogerty I had internalized. Halfway through his set, he played “The Midnight Special.” For a brief moment of self-indulgence, I let myself wonder just what the hell he thought he was doing, singing my songs. Then I joined in with the crowd and sang: “Let the midnight special shine an ever-lovin’ light on me.” For one brief moment, it had.