A folksy holiday tribute to music's "country boy"

People tend to have strong feelings about John Denver. Many considered him a quintessential American troubadour, prized for his soaring voice, easy manner and open-hearted Earth-friendly songs. Others found his music treacly, or too easy-listening lite.

But nobody can deny that Denver was successful. He wrote numerous folk standards — from "Rocky Mountain High" and "Take Me Home, Country Roads" to "Thank God I'm a Country Boy." And he made a whopping 14 gold albums and eight discs that went platinum.

"Back Home Again: A John Denver Holiday Concert" mingles the singer-songwriter's own odes with traditional Christmas tunes he recorded for holiday albums. All are performed by a countrified band led by someone who knew the man and his music well: Seattle's Dan Wheetman, a champion fiddler and picker who spent seven years in Denver's band.

During his rise to superstardom in the 1970s, Denver also acted in films ("Oh, God!" with George Burns) and was honored by his adopted state of Colorado (he was born in New Mexico, with the given name Henry John Deutschendorf Jr.).

And he lent his support to many environmental and other causes, including gun control and wilderness conservation.

Denver's toothy smile and wholesome, blond looks made him seem the eternal innocent. After musical fashion passed him by, though, the man showed a darker side in public. He had a pair of acrimonious divorce battles and two drunken-driving arrests. Though an avid, experienced pilot, due to the DUIs he held no valid pilot's license when he died in 1997 in the crash of a small plane he was piloting.

But the Denver evoked in "Back Home Again" is the folksy strummer. The show, which premiered in Ventura, Calif., in 2006, is directed by Randal Myler, who co-authored it with Wheetman. (The pair also concocted the hit Rep revues "It Ain't Nothin' But the Blues" and "Fire on the Mountain.") Among those playing alongside Wheetman here are Nashville vocalist Gail Bliss and Seattle twang-masters Nova Devonie and David Miles Kiernan.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com