By By JOHN EBY / Niles Daily Star
DOWAGIAC – Two Rock and Roll Hall of Famers shared a stage Saturday night.
In Dowagiac.
Having Roger McGuinn of the Byrds and John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful together at the middle school Performing Arts Center to cap the 2009 Dogwood Fine Arts Festival meant one thing.
Twice as many standing ovations.
Do You Believe in Magic?
You would if you heard the packed PAC whistling "Daydream."
Sebastian, 65, whose 11-song solo set led off, called himself and McGuinn "old bulls" who were "competitors. Like a lot of great jazz guys who went before us, we had to make our peace."
"We've filled rooms before," teased Sebastian, who is coming up on the 40th anniversary of performing at Woodstock.
"Roger and I knew each other before the excitement started and it happened for both of us," said Sebastian, inducted in 2000 and playing a 1993 Heritage Eagle made in Kalamazoo.
According to a quote on his Web site, he is one of a select group of songwriters that includes John Lennon, Ray Davies of the Kinks and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys "for which the term 'genius' doesn't seem just a publicist's wild notion."
He grew up in Greenwich Village, where Burl Ives and Woody Guthrie frequented his house.
The Lovin' Spoonful charted their first seven singles in the Top 10.
McGuinn, who is referenced in songs from "American Pie" to "Creeque Alley" by the Mamas and the Papas, opened with Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages" from 1967 (But I was so much older then/I'm younger than that now) for an encyclopedic narration of an uncanny career which carried him to the pinnacle of the pop music pantheon.