By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Phil Vassar’s concert at BGSU Saturday will not be a homecoming — he graduated from James Madison University, not BGSU — but he’ll still feel at home.
He has long ties to the family of BGSU athletic director Derek Van der Merwe whose wife Stephanie Paris is the daughter of Vassar’s college track coach. “I’ve known since she was little,” Vassar said in a recent telephone interview.
The country music star will perform from 2:30-4 p.m. in “tailgate park” outside Doyt Perry Stadium before the Falcons take on the Old Dominion Monarchs from Vassar’s home state of Virginia.
After college Vassar headed off to Nashville to pursue a career in music. Now he has a concert’s worth of hits to perform with his long-standing bandmates including guitar player and tour manager Jeff Smith, who grew up with him in. They’ve played music together since they were teens.
Vassar will also be joined by the 425-strong Falcon Marching Band.
The Falcon Marching Band director Jon Waters said Van der Merwe hooked him up with Vassar so they could arrange the collaboration. “It should be a lot of fun,” Waters said. “The students are excited about that. … For our students to get to play with a musician like that is pretty awesome.”
For Vassar, 62, just being on stage and performing is great. Back in February, 2023, he suffered a heart attack and a stroke. He died, was resuscitated and died again, before being resuscitated again.
“It was quite the lightning strike when it all happened,” Vassar. “I just dropped dead.”
The irony is that the former track athlete had always taken care of his health, only to find out he couldn’t beat genetics. “You think you’re doing everything you can to feel better,” Vassar said. “I kept working out. … I didn’t realize I had genetic heart blockage.”
With limited blood supply, he just didn’t feel well. Still he was performing 100 shows a year and had just completed a Christmas tour with Deana Carter.
This summer after rehabilitation, “I’m working my way back into the real world. I feel really blessed to be alive. … I feel like a new person.”
On Saturday he’ll return to Bowling Green — he headlined the Wood County Fair in 2006 with Miranda Lambert opening for him — to play.
“I love performing more than ever,” he said. “You try to play your hits. If I don’t do those songs, they start throwing things at me.”
He has written enough hits for himself and others that what people expect him to play to fill out the set. There’s “Carlene,” “American Child,” “I’m Alright,” “Just Another Day in Paradise,” “Little Red Rodeo,” “My Next 30 Years” and more. That includes the prescient “My Last Day,” released 17 years before what was almost his last day.
Vassar started playing piano in the early teens on an old upright piano like the one he sings about in “American Child.”
Vassar had studied some music at James Madison, but the teachers realized he could already play the kind of music he had is heart set on. He wanted to be a country music singer-songwriter.
Vassar arrived in Nashville when his heroes such as Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Mel Tillis, and Waylon Jennings were on the scene. Garth Brooks was recording his first album. “It was an amazing time.”
Vassar recalls when he got to Nashville, there were some in the publishing industry who didn’t like his songs. But he knew better. He was test driving his tunes in a club he owned.
Country singers such as Jo Dee Messina would stop by the club and ask about the songs he was performing that the audience was singing along to. They encouraged him when publishers didn’t and he hooked up with mentors Charlie Black, Rory Bourke, and Linda Hargrove.
Vassar scored number 1 hits with “Bye, Bye,” and “I’m Alright:” performed by Messina and “Right on the Money” performed by Alan Jackson before he released his debut album in 2000. That self-titled recording included his first No. 1 hit as a performer “Just Another Day in Paradise.” The first single off the album “Carlene,” rose to No. 5 on the country charts.
A quarter century later there’s more to come. He said he’s getting back to writing now that his health issues are resolved.
So many of his songs celebrate the joys and trials of every day life. Vassar said it’s a lot of fun to travel abroad, meet new people, hear different music. Still, he said, “I always love to come home.”
