Roger McGuinn at The North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie: Six deacades worth of stories and music

What do you get when you have a folk music artist who is influenced by The Beatles and Bob Dylan? That’s Roger McGuinn; the man who founded the legendary band, The Byrds.

For most of us, the first time we heard The Byrds was in the spring of 1965. The catchy sound of “Mr. Tambourine Man” came through our transistor radios. It was an amazing cover of a Bob Dylan song, which featured that ‘jingle jangly’ guitar sound of McGuinn’s Rickenbacker guitar. For the next decade, you heard hit songs from the band in many different genres of music. Folk, pop, hard rock and country music—The Byrds did it all—and did it well.

While the band members constantly changed, the one constant was Roger McGuinn. Almost sixty years later, McGuinn and his 12-string Rickenbacker guitar is still recording music and performing live concerts.

Last week he brought his one-man show to Skokie, Illinois. He walked out to another Dylan classic, “My Back Pages.” The intimate helped him sing along—“I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

He then sat down and for the next ninety minutes, McGuinn told us stories of his amazing career. He followed each story with a tune from that era. You heard all the great Byrds’ songs—“Turn, Turn, Turn”, “Mr. Spaceman”, “So You Want to Be a Rock n’ Roll Star” and of course “Mr. Tambourine Man.” He even threw in a little Elvis, Gene Vincent and Joan Baez, with some snippets of songs by Joni Mitchell and The Beatles—all of whom influenced McGuinn and his music. His twenty-seven-song set finished with “Eight Miles High.” That left you rocking out as you left the arena

For the last few years, McGuinn has been recording new music that he releases on his website. It’s one song each month and you can download it for free. He’s going to put those tunes and some other new and older songs out that you can purchase in whatever way you now get your music. At eighty-two years old, while his voice isn’t what was in his heyday, Roger McGuinn is still going strong, with no signs of calling it quits any time soon. For one evening in Skokie, he gave you more than your money’s worth.