The Kingston Trio - Together Again?

By Blake Green
San Francisco Chronicle, Tuesday, May 25, 1976

"Has he ever returned? No he's never returned and his fate is still unknown . . ." A little paraphrasing of the words to that Kingston Trio classic "MTA" and instead of a hapless subway rider in Boston, the singer is bringing you "the guy who's trying to return to show business."

It is Dave Guard singing about Dave Guard. But insights aside, it is obvious as Guard has already proclaimed, that, "the chops are still good."

And some other things are the same, too. It has been almost 20 years since Dave Guard and two class of '56 college friends named themselves The Kingston Trio, and having captured the decades ideal image - clean-cut and cool, turned their "Ivy League with a calypso beat," as Guard describes it, into one of the success stories of entertainment history.

Guard is sitting in the living room of his Portola Valley home just up the street from Rossotti's one of the Peninsula beer joints that offered the three free beer and a stage during their college days at Stanford and Menlo College. His look is one that is still short on hair. "When it's long" Guard explains his almost unfashionable short cut, "it doesn't kink right."

Even without the button-down collar and black-buckled khakis, Dave Guard, middle-age and father of three teenagers, looks incredibly collegiate - as in the days when the word had a precise meaning.

"The glasses," he advances as evidence of times erosion, "were a lot weaker then."

Some people might say that Dave Guard, circa 1976, is living in the past, but in the past, everyone knows, The Kingston Trio never took itself seriously - a secret of it's success. And Dave Guard is very serious. He would like The Kingston Trio, which retired from show business in 1967, to get back together again.

Dave in the back porch hammock, mugs with his wife, Gretchen

"Dave," says Nick Reynolds, another former member of the Trio, "has been champing at the bit for eight years for us to do something." For a long time, nothing seemed possible, but recently there have been rumors of a comeback or a reunion or regrouping for a one-shot affair or along-term association. The latest and most official flash is that Guard, Reynolds and John Stewart, who replace Guard in the Trio in 1961, will make a record this Summer. It's title will probably be the three names, for Bob Shane, the other member of the original Trio and Guard's old friend from high school days in Hawaii, has not agreed to join in - and he holds exclusive rights to the use of The Kingston Trio name. Since it was Guard who left the group - and not on the friendliest of terms ("gentlemanly but not amicably," is the term used by Frank Werber, the group's manager / mentor / partner) - it is perhaps ironic that he has been the most avid promoter of the Trio's return.

Guard, Time Magazine said, "Probably has a genius IQ but is also the most difficult" of the three. The "conflict of interest" given for the split had several facets, but most of them involved personality clashes. "Ego," Werber puts it. "It came down to a power standoff between Dave and the rest of us."

"I want the trio to learn to read." Guard had rather cavalierly announced at the time. The others wanted to stick with the proven formula - that seemingly effortless style that made it seem as if anyone could have been up there strumming on guitars and having fun. The Trio's secret, critics were fond of pointing out, lay more in their infectious enthusiasm than in their musical ability.

"It was a communication breakdown," Guard now says. "A determination not to communicate" brought on by the pressures of show business. "In 1959," he gives an example, "we were on the road 340 days."

When Guard left the Trio, he moved his family to Australia and virtually severed contact with the group. "I hear he's writing a book on guitar playing," one of his old partners abstractly noted as The Kingston Trio kept right on making money without him.

Guard did write a book - about his guitar-playing-by-color method that has brought him respect as a theoretician, to say nothing of a collection of rainbow-necked stringed instruments.

By the time the book was completed, Guard's wife, Gretchen, whom he met at Stanford, had announced that "I don't want to be stuck out here, even if it is paradise." So the family and a part-Australian Sheep Dog euphemistically named Beauty, came back to California. "By then, Dave was ready to go again," Gretchen Guard says, "but the (the Trio) had scattered.

Occasionally Guard would get together "with some of the old folkies," but, he says, "there was really no one for me to play with. I could have joined with a lot of rock and rollers, but that wasn't any fun." So Guard sat down and wrote to his erstwhile friends asking "where had it all gone, that boyhood thing?" He suggested that "we should cultivate this friendship instead of retreating from it." Ideally, the gesture would have worked into what guard says would be the best arrangements: all four of the members of the Trio working together again. He says he is still hopeful. It's not that Guard has been at loose ends all these years. He has his guitar pupils (which he has phased out) and he and his wife have become interested in Irish legends. He does the writing, she, does the illustrating, and both , the research, which has brought them a feeling of modern, as well as ancient Ireland. While poking around the Irish countryside, they were detained and searched as possible IRA-collaborators.

Dave Guard Strums and Struts in the backyard of his Portola Valley home.

"But Dave," Mrs. Guard says, "Loves being on stage. He is saner and happier during those times than all the time he's been laid back and not doing anything. Dave's not a virtuoso - he's a real group person. He can't stand the idea of performing on his own."

"Besides," she laughed, "he's embarrassed that the children keep asking, "Dad, why don't you get a job!"

But will he ever return? Guard is properly nonchalant. "If fate has it we only do one album, well, it'll be a sweetie we're happy with. Only two of the oldies will be included," he says. "Neither will be "MTA" - either version."

* * * * *

(Note: A reunion of the Kingston Trio which included retired members Dave Guard, Nick Reynolds, and John Stewart, as well as active members of the Trio (Bob Shane, George Grove and Roger Gambill) was produced by PBS in November, 1981 at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, CA. Dave Guard passed away on March 22, 1991, of cancer)

Last revised: February 23, 2006.