Jim Messina was so entranced the first time he visited Maui in the early 1970s that he suggested shooting the cover photo for the Loggins & Messina “Full Sail” album off Lahaina.

“I was on holiday and in Lahaina and I thought it was the perfect place,” he recalls. “I was aboard the Flying Cloud (schooner) and I was so taken by the craftsmanship. As I was involved in creating the artwork for all the albums, we did a photo session on the Flying Cloud.”

Messina also celebrated our island on the duo’s album with the catchy, tropical song “Lahaina.” This humorous centipede tale was later featured on the soundtrack of “Lilo & Stitch 2.”

“In Lahaina, the sugarcane grow,” he sang. “In Lahaina, the living is slow; in Lahaina, the mangoes are sweet; but the centipede he crawls all over your feet.”

“I was sitting in Lahaina at a cafe around the corner from Longhi’s,” he explains. “I had never seen a centipede before, but a long one went buzzing across the floor. I went, ‘What the hell is that?’ A waiter said they’re pretty harmless unless they bite you, so I decided to deal with my fear by writing something humorous.”

As one half of Loggins & Messina, a co-founder of the influential country-rock band Poco, and a member of the seminal late ’60s group Buffalo Springfield, Messina has composed many memorable songs from “Your Mama Don’t Dance,” “Angry Eyes” and “Nobody But You,” to “Listen to a Country Song,” “Watching the River Run,” “Be Free” and “Move On.”

A few years back, he recorded new versions of some of these songs on the album “Watching the River Run Revisited.”

“I had been performing and hearing ads on the radio, and they always used versions that I had been in either in Poco or Buffalo Springfield, but they were never really me singing them,” he notes. “I felt I need to record my own versions if I was performing them.”

Early this year, he will likely release a new live album recorded at a concert with his terrific current band and his former partner in Poco, steel guitarist Rusty Young, sitting in. A sneak preview of the recording indicates it’s a must for his fans.

“To have him involved made it such a great evening,” Messina reports. “It was so exciting and spontaneous, I recorded the whole two hours, so I will release it as a double CD.”

Picking up guitar in 1952 at the age of 5, Messina was influenced by his father’s appreciation for Chet Atkins and Merle Travis, and later by his mother’s love for the early rock of Elvis and Gene Vincent. By his senior high school year, he was producing bands in Los Angeles.

While he was working in a Hollywood studio, he met David Crosby, who suggested Messina connect with Neil Young and Stephen Stills in Buffalo Springfield.

“He came in and had a young lady working with him doing some demos. I thought she was phenomenal. It was Joni Mitchell,” he recalls. “A couple of weeks after that, David ran into Neil or Steven and told them there was a young guy they might want to connect with, and we started working together.”

Messina’s engineering skills led him to work with the legendary band on “Buffalo Springfield Again,” and in 1967, he ended up joining the band for its third album, “Last Time Around.”

While extremely influential, the band wasn’t a commercial success.

“Sometimes it’s all about timing,” he says. “It was hard to get records played in those days. ‘For What It’s Worth’ was a hit and ‘Bluebird’ was a big hit, it’s still one of my favorite songs of all time.”

Messina next played a pivotal role in Poco, recording and touring with the country-rock band for two years. Then came an opportunity to produce the debut album of a talented young musician, Kenny Loggins.

One of the most successful duos of the 1970s, Loggins & Messina sold more than 16 million albums and created a string of memorable hits. Known for their tight harmonizing, buoyant sound and creative production, the duo crafted both pop gems and more ambitious, mini-symphonies, such as “Be Free” and “Angry Eyes,” with elaborate instrumentation.

“As a musician, that’s been my main focus, while Kenny is a great singer,” Messina explains. “When I wrote ‘Be Free,’ it gave me the opportunity to bring in a mandolin and have strings and oboe. I like to look at my songs as little movies and score them like I would a film. Even on my ‘Oasis’ album, ‘The Magic of Love’ has orchestration. I like using small groups to create large-sounding orchestrations.”

When Loggins left to create a successful solo career, Messina subsequently pursued a somewhat quieter life, releasing a handful of well-received recordings including “Oasis” and “One More Mile,” which included Henry Kapono on backing vocals.

For his Maui show, he has assembled a stellar band.

“I’m bringing (bassist) George Hawkins, who worked with us in Loggins & Messina,” he says. “Craig Thomas, on sax and flutes, was with me with ‘Oasis’ when we first came to Hawaii. Gary Oleyar (violin/guitar) has been with me since the beginning of the ’90s. And we have a young guy playing drums, Jesse Siebenberg; his father played drums with Supertramp. The five-piece does all that I’ve done in Springfield and Poco and Loggins & Messina. With the violin, we can do a lot of country stuff and it gives a great versatility to perform the songs I’ve written and arranged over the years.”

*****

The Rough Riders were simply amazing at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center on Friday, with Henry Kapono, Brother Noland and John Cruz proving the adage: The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Reveling in their combined artistry, they transformed their signature hits like “Highway in the Sun,” “Coconut Girl” and “Shine On,” giving them new life. New songs from their EP, “We Ride,” sounded even more dramatic live, and there were Hawaiian classics like “Hi’ilawe” and a closing, stunning version of Queen Kapiolani’s haunting “Ka Ipo Lei Manu,” which left you with a profound feeling of reverence for Hawaii.

*****

Jazz guitar virtuosos Frank Vignola will make his Maui debut tonight in the MACC’s McCoy Studio Theater, playing with fellow guitarist Vinny Raniolo.

A versatile musician, Vignola has played with many artists across a spectrum of genres including Donald Fagen, Wynton Marsalis, Ringo Starr, Queen Latifah and Les Paul.

The New York Times has hailed Vignola, adept at many styles, from fusion and pop to hard-bop and swing, as “one of the brightest stars of the guitar.” And an Intermission Magazine review noted: “There is little in this world so awe-inspiring as witnessing total mastery of a musical instrument.”

Beginning his career in the 1980s working extensively as a sideman with artists such as Madonna and Starr, he began releasing albums under his own name.

In acclaimed recordings like “Blues for a Gypsy,” he covered standards like “Misty” and “Angel Eyes,” and vibrant interpretations of compositions by Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker and Paul, which AllAboutJazz hailed as “an exquisite set of solo acoustic guitar music.”

His latest album, “Swing Zing,” a collection of duets with Raniolo, prompted Jazz Times to declare: “The chemistry they’ve developed over the years is evident on every track from the opening nod to Beethoven’s Fifth to the rhythmically insinuating closer, Sting’s ‘Walking on the Moon.'”

“At our shows, we try to pick famous melodies that people will know and come up with new arrangements of them,” Vignola told Examiner.com “It’s fun to play songs that people know – Beethoven’s Fifth (Symphony), Simon & Garfunkel, classics like Hoagy Charmichael’s ‘Stardust.’ Those songs never get old.”

* The performance will be at 7:30 tonight at the MACC’s McCoy Studio Theater. Tickets are $38 and $48 (plus applicable fees) and are available at the box office, by calling 242-7469 or online at www.mauiarts.org.

*****

There will be a big show at Charley’s Restaurant & Saloon in Paia at 9 p.m. Friday with Oahu rockers Kings of Spade performing with Jennifer Hall from Chicago, plus Maui favorites the Freeradicals Projekt.

Fronted by Kasi Nunes, Kings of Spade’s latest self-titled album was nominated for a Na Hoku Hanohano Award for Best Rock Album, and the band was voted Best Local Rock Band in 2014 and 2015 by Honolulu Pulse readers.

Named an “artist to watch” by Chicagoist, Hall’s influences range from Patsy Cline and Jeff Buckley to Ella Fitzgerald. After releasing a critically praised EP, she embarked on a North American tour while sharing stages with both Eddie Vedder and Tom Morello.

* Tickets are $15 in advance, at www.kosfrp.eventbrite.com, and $20 at the door.