Ex-Byrd McGuinn to perform in Camden

CAMDEN – Not all rock stars burn out or fade away. Some return to their roots.

Roger McGuinn, founder of the seminal folk-rock – remember that term? – group the Byrds is still out on the road, but no longer as a rock star. Instead, McGuinn is playing some of the same timeless folk tunes that earned him his first blisters when he learned to play guitar in the 1950s.

McGuinn performs in a solo show at 8 p.m. Friday, May 9, at the Camden Opera House.

“I’ve always considered myself a folk artist,” and not a rock star, 60-year-old McGuinn said in a telephone interview from his Orlando, Fla., home.

He started his career in the 1950s as a sideman playing guitar and banjo for groups such as the Limelighters, the Chad Mitchell Trio and Bobby Darin.

McGuinn in recent years has made it his mission to preserve the old songs by performing and recording them. Legendary for his fascination with the latest in electronic gadgetry – see “Car Phone” from his 1991 album “Back From Rio” -he naturally took to the Internet, and has used his Web site to launch the “Folk Den,” where he uploads a new recording each month of himself performing a golden nugget.

McGuinn says both fans and folklorists have embraced the free recordings.

“It’s a labor of love,” he said.

In 2001, McGuinn released “Treasures From the Folk Den,” a set of traditional tunes featuring Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Odetta and other artists.

McGuinn is probably best-known for his days with the Byrds, a band which found its niche by giving a Beatlesesque treatment to folk songs, and earned induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” was the group’s first hit, featuring harmony singing by fellow members David Crosby, Chris Hillman and Gene Clark, with McGuinn’s lead vocal and chiming electric guitar mixed upfront.

The sound became a template for Dylan’s own forays into electric rock – McGuinn said Dylan visited the Byrds at rehearsals – as well influencing a host of bands over the years, such as R.E.M. and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Other hits followed: The psychedelic “Eight Miles High,” “Mr. Spaceman,” “So You Want To Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star,” and Seeger’s “Turn, Turn, Turn.”

Crosby, Hillman and Clark drifted away from the group in the late 1960s, and McGuinn reinvented its sound with the watershed “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” an album that launched the country-rock genre of the early 1970s, and which remains a touchstone for the alt-country movement.

McGuinn continued recording, solo and sometimes with former members of the Byrds, through the last 30 years. He took part in the legendary Rolling Thunder Revue tour with Dylan in 1975 – a live album from the tour was released earlier this year – and he performed at Dylan’s 30th anniversary concert in 1992.

“It was one of the best tours of my life,” McGuinn said of Rolling Thunder. The musicians traveled on a Greyhound-style bus that had been transformed into a living room, he said.

“Who was on the bus was incredible,” he said, referring to various folk and rock icons of the period.

“We had this rolling party,” McGuinn recalled. He spent many miles sitting next to Joni Mitchell, listening as she composed songs.

With his children grown, he still enjoys hitting the road.

“I’ve been touring pretty steadily since 1960,” he said. “It’s just fun.”

McGuinn’s wife Camilla accompanies him as they drive in their customized van, which includes a DVD player with 20-inch LCD display, and stay in nice hotels.

“We’re kind of like Charles Kurault, traveling the back roads of America,” he said.

Several years ago, McGuinn told his agent, “I want to play high-quality venues. I don’t want to do clubs anymore.” The Camden Opera House fits that description.

Despite the emphasis on his folk roots, McGuinn still cranks up his signature Rickenbacker electric guitar and performs some Byrds classics, but the folk music is his focus.

“I’ve been blessed to have a following,” even in this age of teen pop stars, he said. The attraction, McGuinn believes, is that people “really miss the melodies and the songs.”

Tickets cost $22.50. Call the Opera House at 236-8448 for reservations. Tickets are also available at Wild Rufus in Camden, and at ClickTix at www.VillageSoup.com.