The word “finally” shows up early in the press release, and not by accident. “Seven years. Or seven months. Or seven years and seven and a half hours, not that we’re counting,” Jean Fogelberg deadpans about the making of A Tribute to Dan Fogelberg, a labor of love that only took a decade to get off the ground.
What started in 2008 as Jean’s dream of a Concert for George-style live event morphed into something more manageable—and, as it turns out, more permanent. “I was having a terrible time pulling it together,” she says, until bassist/producer Norbert Putnam stepped in with a pitch: start with the record, then go live later.
Not that it was smooth sailing. “The Eagles were on a world tour. Getting them into the studio took longer than we thought,” Jean says. Norbert grossly underestimated the timeline. “I told her it would take a year and a half. She’ll never ask me to estimate again.”
But while scheduling was a nightmare, getting artists to sign on was, surprisingly, not. “They all wanted to be a part of it,” Jean says. “It was just a matter of time.”
That included Vince Gill and Amy Grant, who ended up duetting on “Longer,” which Jean calls “one of the purest love songs Dan ever wrote.” It wasn’t planned. “Norbert would just bug Vince every time he saw him,” she laughs. “Eventually someone said, ‘What about a duet with Amy?’ And once Amy was on board, everything clicked.”
Putnam may have produced a few tracks early on, but he didn’t hover. “Train asked if I wanted to come out to San Francisco and oversee their recording,” he recalls. “And I said no. I want a Train version. I didn’t want carbon copies. I wanted these artists to put their stamp on it.”
Some stamps came with unexpected postage. “Michael McDonald wanted to record ‘Better Change,’” Jean says. “We had to go look it up. It’s a deep cut.” Turns out Michael had heard Dan demo it through Irving Azoff’s office door back in the late ’70s and never forgot it. “It’s one of my favorite tracks on the record now.”
Train turned “Same Old Lang Syne” into something you could dance to. “That was the biggest surprise,” Putnam says. “We loved it.” Not exactly a track you associate with club bangers or wedding receptions, but as Jean puts it, “they stayed true to it, even with the beat.”
Then there’s Zac Brown Band’s “Leader of the Band,” which comes with a video filmed at Red Rocks, naturally. And Dobie Gray transformed “Don’t Lose Heart” into the gospel version Dan apparently always wanted. “Dan told me he wanted to go back and do that song with a gospel feel someday,” Jean says. “Dobie just… did it.”
Even Run for the Roses gets its moment. “I’m in Louisville,” I mention, “so we hear that one every May.” Jean beams through the audio. “It had to be on there. It wouldn’t be complete without it.”
There’s even a musical, Part of the Plan, which isn’t about Dan’s life but uses his songs to tell a completely different story. “It premiered in Nashville and now they’re trying to get it to Broadway,” Jean says. “It’s beautiful.”
Not everything made the cut, including “Sometimes a Song,” which Dan wrote for Jean one Valentine’s Day and FedExed to her with the kind of flair only someone who’d name a ballad “Longer” could pull off. “Most of the artists probably weren’t familiar with that one,” she shrugs. “But no, nothing was off-limits.”
What was off-limits was trying to control the outcome too much. It’s the fingerprints—whether it’s Vince and Amy harmonizing on a mega-hit, or Train making Dan Fogelberg vaguely club-ready—that made this thing more than just a tribute. It made it feel alive.
“Everything happened in its own time,” Norbert says, sounding like someone who’s finally done making estimates.
Listen to the interview above and then check out The Nitty gritty Dirt Bad's cover of "Run For the Roses" below!
