PEAK POWER

LIKE EVERY OTHER working musician on the planet, John Fogerty was forced to scrap most of his 2020 tour dates once the coronavirus pandemic hit. For his first few days of self-quarantine at home, the 75-year-old singersongwriter and guitarist was content to bide his time—happy to indulge in a little unplanned vacation, in fact—but his wife, Julie, had other ideas. “She said, ‘You should record something and put it online,’” Fogerty relates. “So I sort of grudgingly went along with it.” After filming a solo acoustic video of his classic Creedence Clearwater Revival hit “Have You Ever Seen the Rain,” Fogerty figured he could go back to hibernation.

That’s when Julie said, “Why don’t you get the kids involved?” This was an idea Fogerty immediately sparked to. His two sons, Shane and Tyler, both guitarists, perform together in their band, Hearty Har (Shane is also part of his father’s touring band), and his daughter, Kelsy, plays guitar as well. Dubbed the Fogerty Family, the foursome pounced into activity, playing CCR gems on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, taping a segment for The Colbert Report, debuting a SiriusXM show called The Fogerty Family Rockin’ Family Hour and releasing a string of pleasing videos on their own Fogerty’s Factory YouTube channel.

“STARTING WITH ‘PROUD MARY,’ I HAD MADE UP MY MIND THAT I WASN’T GOING TO HAVE AN ORDINARY BAND”

“It’s beyond an earthly delight,” Fogerty enthuses. “Just the fun of setting a song in motion, and then we get the rhythms going, and I get to perform these songs with my kids. It’s almost indescribable how wonderful the whole thing is. And to think it was sitting there under my nose all this time and I didn’t even know it.”

is also the name of the band’s recently released EP (among its seven tracks are versions of the CCR hits “Fortunate Son” and “Bad Moon Rising”), for which they re-created the iconic album cover of , Creedence Clearwater Revival’s celebrated 1970 album. “That was Julie’s idea. I can go along with this.’”