Firefall

Boulder, 1974, and a line-up drawn from other people's bands

Firefall was assembled in Boulder, Colorado, in 1974, and almost nothing about the founding line-up was new. Rick Roberts had come out of the Flying Burrito Brothers. Jock Bartley had replaced Tommy Bolin in Zephyr and had played guitar behind Gram Parsons in the Fallen Angels, which is where he and Roberts met. The drummer, Michael Clarke, had sat behind the Byrds and then the Burritos. Mark Andes took the bass, Larry Burnett came in on guitar and vocals, and the band borrowed its name from the Yosemite Firefall, the old bonfire display at the Californian national park.

What that collection of credits produced was not another Burritos record. Roberts and Burnett wrote in two different registers, Roberts towards warm, wide-open melody and Burnett towards something darker and more awkward, while Bartley's guitar sat at the clean, economical end of mid-seventies rock rather than anywhere near honky-tonk. The combination landed precisely where American radio was heading in 1976, and Atlantic Records signed them accordingly.

Three albums, three years, platinum

The self-titled debut appeared in April 1976 and reached No. 26 in the United States. Bartley has said it went gold inside two and a half months at half a million copies, which he recalls as the fastest gold certification Atlantic had handed out to that point. The single that did it was 'You Are the Woman', a Roberts song that got to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and which the band, by Bartley's own account, met with a collective eye-roll for being too obvious, too syrupy and a poor fit for the record. His later explanation for its pull was that every woman between roughly 18 and 24 wanted to be the woman in the song, and that their partners flooded radio request lines with dedications.

Luna Sea followed in July 1977, reached No. 11 and also went gold, with 'Just Remember I Love You' matching that chart position and Timothy B. Schmit on backing vocals. Élan arrived in October 1978 and went platinum, 'Strange Way' giving the band a third No. 11 single. Across that run they shared stages with Fleetwood Mac, then at the start of their own commercial peak, as well as the Doobie Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

How it came apart

Clarke's drinking became unmanageable on the band's 1979 Japanese tour, and both he and Andes were gone after Undertow in March 1980. Clouds Across the Sun, out that December, used George Hawkins on bass and Tris Imboden on drums, both out of Kenny Loggins' band. 'Staying with It' reached No. 37 in 1981 and that was effectively the end of the chart career. Burnett left in April 1981 to go into rehabilitation, Roberts followed in August to attempt a solo career, and Atlantic dropped the band before the year was out.

Bartley rebuilt it in the spring of 1982 around two Miami musicians, Johnne Sambataro and Chuck Kirkpatrick, and kept it working: Break of Dawn in September 1982, Mirror of the World in November 1983, then a long gap and the independently released Messenger in 1994. The attrition since has been heavy. Clarke died in December 1993 of complications from alcoholism. Hawkins died on 26 October 2018. David Muse, the flute, saxophone and keyboard player through the Atlantic years, died on 6 August 2022. Roberts and Burnett have both been sidelined by ill health and no longer perform, which leaves Bartley as the only person present from 1974 onwards.

Comet, the covers records and an old radio tape

The late catalogue is busier than the middle one. Comet landed in December 2020, the first album of new Firefall material in roughly two decades. Then came a two-part project built on other people's songs: Friends & Family in September 2023, and Friends & Family 2 on 23 May 2025 through Sunset Blvd Records — twelve tracks, 40 minutes and 10 seconds, produced by Bartley and recorded across studios in Colorado and Oregon.

The second volume reads as a set of debts being paid. Wynonna Judd and drummer Cactus Moser guest on Stephen Stills' 'Love the One You're With'. Richie Furay of Buffalo Springfield and Poco appears, as does Kenny Passarelli, who has played bass for Elton John and Hall & Oates, and the guitarist John Jorgenson. Bartley had treated Fleetwood Mac's 'Go Your Own Way' as off limits until the band's current lead singer and bassist, John Bisaha, talked him round. Eddie Money's 'Shakin'' went out as the second single, which Bartley framed bluntly: he has spent decades fighting the idea that Firefall is only a soft-rock band. Americana Highways, reviewing the record, wrote that the band 'don't sound like a cover band emulating these classics at all' and that they 'manage to construct these familiar tunes in their distinctive way'.

Running alongside it is Across the Airwaves, an archival live album on Audio Files Records drawn from a Denver concert on 9 November 1979 that was later broadcast on European radio networks. Its fourteen tracks are the Atlantic-era set as it actually ran, 'Cinderella' through 'Mexico', 'Sweet and Sour', 'Lips!', 'Anymore' and 'Colorado', and it is the clearest surviving document of what the original five-piece sounded like on a stage.

2026: a support slot on somebody else's anniversary

Firefall's standing now is that of a dependable second or third name on a package bill, and the band has leaned into it rather than fought it. Jefferson Starship announced its 50th-anniversary Runaway Again Tour on 11 December 2025, with tickets on sale from 12 December and Firefall billed as a special guest alongside Atlanta Rhythm Section and Orleans. The run opened on 31 January 2026 and has carried the band through most of the year: Hard Rock Live in Wheatland, California on 15 March, a full headline show at the Paramount Theatre in Denver on 3 April, French Lick Exhibition Hall on 16 May, Eisenhower Park's Lakeside Theatre on Long Island on 25 July, the Mayo Performing Arts Center bill with Orleans, Pure Prairie League and Atlanta Rhythm Section on 19 August, Indian Ranch in Webster, Massachusetts on 23 August, the Peoria Civic Center on 10 September, the Family Arena in St Charles, Missouri on 26 September, Jefferson City the following night, the Florida Theatre in Jacksonville on 9 October and the Genesee Theatre in Waukegan, Illinois on 24 October.

Five dates sit on sale ahead of that: the Cannon Center in Memphis on 30 October 2026, the Lyric Theatre in Stuart, Florida on 6 November, the Center for the Arts of Bonita Springs on 8 November, Hard Rock Live at the Etess Arena in Atlantic City on 20 November, and The Show at Agua Caliente in Rancho Mirage on 29 January 2027. Behind them are the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts on 30 January 2027, the St George Theatre on Staten Island on 12 March 2027 and an On The Blue cruise sailing from Miami in April.

Bartley, now in his seventies, told a Long Island paper before the July show that he would never have expected to be out on the road at this age, 'being amped up and charged by great crowds'. The induction into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame on 9 January 2015 fixed the band's standing at home. The 2026 itinerary, five nights a month on other people's bills, is what keeps it a working concern.