Fogerty 1969 concert tonight

Photo: Contributed

John Fogerty

By Thursday morning, there was only a handful of tickets left for the John Fogerty concert in Penticton.

He will be at the South Okanagan Events Centre tonight performing songs from Creedence Clearwater Revival -1969.

His current tour celebrates that year, in which Fogerty wrote and produced three seminal albums with Creedence: Bayou Country, Green River and Willy and the Poor Boys.

Beginning with "Proud Mary", which quickly established him as an elite singer/songwriter, he wrote and produced an enormous volume of treasured recordings in a small amount of time that propelled the band to the number one group in the world.

The legacy of 1969 lives on with, "Born on the Bayou," "Green River," "Bad Moon Rising,"  and "Down on the Corner."

All of this musical output occurred while the world's cultural and political landscape was in upheaval.

Many of the Penticton fans going to the concert tonight have memories of that year, and the impact Creedence had on them.

"Creedence Clearwater Revival was just a big deal. It was just good music for people who were my age," said Brian Horejsi. "It was nice rock and roll, the kind of rock and roll we don't get nowadays. You could dance to it and we still do."

Horesji, who lives in Penticton, added his greatest hope is that Fogerty performs without an obliteration of his sound.

"Today they load up on the electric noise," he said. "So I hope he plays clean."

Rod Donaldson is going to the concert because he grew up listening to CCR in Scotland and still considers the music awesome.

"It was my favourite American band of the era, as I was growing up in Scotland," he said. "I remember hearing the music on jukeboxes in 1969. The first song I heard when I was 15, that year, was 'Bad Moon Rising'."

Jeanette Beaven was pretty young in 1969, but she still liked listening to music on her transistor radio and has enjoyed CCR for years.

"It's my favourite road trip music," she said. "You stay awake all night singing CCR on a long trip. And it's just part of the make up of that period of time, as well as now, because the songs are so well crafted."

Sylvia Thompson of Summerland loves the band, because that is the era she grew up in.

"I have lots of fond memories of Creedence, and I associate the songs with different things I was doing at the time," she said. "I remember my first boyfriend got their very first album, and we used to listen to it all the time."

Thompson anticipates having such a good time tonight that she has already asked for the day off work tomorrow.

"I already took it off, in case I'm so pumped up tonight after the concert that I can't sleep," she said.

Penticton Mayor Garry Litke knows the words to all the songs, and will probably sing along tonight at the concert.

"The music itself has a strong beat and rhythm, but more importantly, it's the stories the songs tell," he said. "When I hear the songs, it reminds me of places I've been."

After touching down in Penticton tonight, Fogerty will then go on to perform in Abbotsford and Victoria.