Like many parents, John Fogerty didn’t necessarily aspire for his children to join him in the family business — even if his career got him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“When I held them on my knee when they were little bitty babies, I did not envision them playing my band someday,” Fogerty, 79, says by phone, adding with a laugh that, “I envisioned them being doctors, or being president, like any parent.” But Shane and Tyler Fogerty, two of his four children with second wife (and manager) Julie, did follow in their father’s guitar-playing footsteps.
They’ve been part of his band for a few years now, playing Fogerty senior’s formidable collection of Creedence Clearwater Revival hits, and have a group of their own, Hearty Har, that’s opening dates on their father’s Celebration Tour.
“The fact they grew up and became musicians and it evolved to the point where they want to play with me and make music together — and of course with Julie being with us, too, means it’s an entire family endeavor here,” Fogerty, who also has three children from his first marriage, says. “It’s just the best. And being on stage every night is the actual presentation of that feeling that we get to carry around with us all the time.”
The younger Fogertys’ musical DNA is “kind of a fact of life,” according to Tyler, 31. “We’d spent our whole upbringing on the road, but you start noticing just tinges of really good music, and then you start paying attention more to what my dad’s songs were about.
“And seeing him play then, you just get a deeper understanding of it as time goes on. But it’s hard not to see him as dad, too.”
The brothers “never felt pressure to do music” themselves, and Shane, 31 acknowledges they even “pushed away the music side,” interested in pursuits such as skateboarding, art and photography. Shane studied music at the University of Southern California, while Tyler attended the California Institute of the Arts. “Once I kind of found out that not everybody’s dad was a rocker and to tour around the world, I kind of shied away from music and explored other stuff,” Shane says. “Eventually we both kind of made our way back into it.”
The two formed Hearty Har — the name popped into Tyler’s head while watching a Bruce Springsteen concert in London’s Hyde Park — around 2019. His acoustic, folk kind of songs gradually expanded, especially after Shane became part of the band, tapping influences from the Beatles, the Kinks, Electric Light Orchestra, Ennio Morricone and more. They built a studio at home in Thousand Oaks, California, working their way to the band’s first album, “Radio Astro,” in 2021.
You’ll hear dad, meanwhile, on Hearty Har’s 2020 single “Scream and Shout.” And during the pandemic lockdown, he also gathered the brothers and their sister, Kelsy, together as Fogerty’s Factory, recording versions of his material for streaming and remote performances that were eventually released on album.
And while Shane and Tyler wear their lineage proudly, they’re also hoping Hearty Har will be recognized for its own musical merits as time goes on.
“I just hope people love it and appreciate it,” Shane says. “I feel like the music speaks for itself, and when people hear it, they’ll understand.” Tyler adds that: “I think the (band) name is kind of a shield. (The family name) will bring in the people who are expecting something, and some people will be let down, obviously, and that’s inevitable.
“It’s hard to say. It’s kind of funny how many times people will call you the ‘fortunate son,’ (stuff) like that.”
John Fogerty, meanwhile, has plenty to celebrate on the Celebration Tour.
It’s the 55th anniversary of Creedence’s 1969, which included three albums, four Top 5 singles — including the classics “Proud Mary,” “Down on the Corner” and “Fortunate Son” — and an appearance at the first Woodstock festival. But more importantly, in January 2023, he attained global rights to the Creedence catalog after decades of acrimony and legalities, much to his delight.
“There’s that … I’m not sure you’d say renewed energy, but it’s just something that gets added to the mixture, the gumbo that is John Fogerty and his songs and his family,” explains Fogerty, who was inducted into the Rock Hall with Creedence in 1993 and into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005. He began a solo career after the band broke up in 1972 and has released 11 albums of his own.
“It’s the quest of a lifetime for any writer to finally get ownership of his creations, and the fact that these songs are revered and special in the world, I get to kinda go out and say, ‘Well, yeah, a long time ago I wrote this song, and I get to sing it to you now. “I daresay I’m humbled about it, but there is a special sense of pride about it, too. It’s just a sense of joy, I guess you’d say, and fulfillment.”
The question now is when will there be more? Fogerty released the topical “Weeping in the Promised Land,” back in 2021 — ironically on Jan. 6 — but hasn’t released an album of all-original material since 2007’s “Revival,” with some covers and collaborative sets during the interim. He certainly has a robust enough catalog to rest on, but that’s not exactly his inclination.
“Look, I would love to have a spurt like (1969) right now,” he says. “The commitment that it takes and finding the time to do that in an efficient way seems to be harder for a grownup than it is for a 20-year-old. I saw a quote from John Lennon once … and he said, ‘Well, you can never be 24 and that hungry again.’
“But I’m still willing to do that when I can see the path is fairly clear. That’s my desire. I’m stating a potential, perhaps, rather than some clear vision.”
John Fogerty, George Thorogood & the Destroyers and Hearty Har, perform at 6:50 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 4 at Pine Knob Music Theatre, 33 Bob Seger Drive, Independence Township. 313-471-7000 or 313Presents.com.
