Regrouped Poco Finds Success on Its Second Try : Country rock: The band, which recently scored its first hit album since 1979, performs in Anaheim Saturday night.

In Spanish, poco means “little” or “small.”

In the history of country rock, though, the band that accidentally named itself Poco holds a place that is anything but small. Formed in 1968 as an outgrowth of the influential Buffalo Springfield, Poco was one of the first bands to devote itself entirely to a merger of country music with rock. Originally named Pogo, after the comic strip, the Los Angeles band chose the closest-sounding alternative when it was sued for copyright infringement by Walt Kelly, Pogo’s creator.

Unfortunately for Poco, the band’s record sales during its early days were an apt reflection of its name. It was left to the Eagles, a band that was partly an offshoot from the original Poco, to turn country rock into something muy grande .

By the time Poco had its one moment of commercial glory with the album “Legend” in 1979, all but one of its original members were gone, half the lineup was British, and the sound was a good deal less country-tinged than it had been at the start.

Poco petered out in 1984 after 19 albums and many personnel changes. When the five members of Poco’s first lineup decided early in 1989 to reunite for the first time in 20 years, record companies weren’t exactly jumping over the corral fence at the prospect of lassoing a bunch of 40-something country rockers with no recent hits among them.

“People were saying ‘Can these guys still sing?’ and ‘These five guys can’t get along for 10 minutes,’ ” recalled Rusty Young, the steel guitarist who was the only original member to hold on from the beginning of Poco to the end.

In a recent phone interview from a tour stop in Colorado, Young said a hot new pop name, Richard Marx, helped Poco secure a record deal. Marx agreed to write and produce a song for the Poco project, a selling point that Young said was vital to the band landing its deal with RCA Records.

The resulting album, “Legacy,” showed that Poco’s members--guitarists Young, Jim Messina and Richie Furay, bassist Randy Meisner and drummer George Grantham--could still sing and that the band could also sell records far more readily than it had the first time around. Released last August, the album has gone gold, selling more than 500,000 copies.

Young said he wanted the reunion to underscore the legacy that Poco’s members had left in rock both individually and collectively. The re-formed band, minus Furay, now a pastor in Boulder, Colo., will play Saturday at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim. (Jack Sundred is filling in for Furay for the remainder of the tour.)

Furay was part of Buffalo Springfield’s storied triumvirate of singer-songwriters, along with Stephen Stills and Neil Young. His high tenor, overflowing with vibrant good spirits, was Poco’s signature until he left the band in 1973. Meisner left Poco in 1969, before its first album was finished--not a bad move, because by 1971 he had landed in the Eagles. Messina, also a Buffalo Springfield alumnus, found fame in partnership with Kenny Loggins after leaving Poco in 1970.

Young and Messina said that when they first discussed regrouping, they didn’t know Poco would be part of a parade of California bands, including Little Feat, the Doobie Brothers and Jefferson Airplane, that chose 1988-89 to come out of mothballs and back into action.

“All that (reunion) stuff was going on after Rusty and I had talked about putting together Poco,” Messina said. “There was something in the air about all these earlier acts getting together.”

Messina said that his own prime motivation in reforming the old Poco was to sort out some unfinished personal business among the members.

“This whole thing has been about healing our relationships as individuals,” he said. For 20 years, Messina said, he had assumed that he was to blame for Meisner’s quitting Poco. “I’d never spoken to him or seen him,” Messina said. “I always thought Randy and I had a problem. But when we sat down and talked about it, he said, ‘No, you’re not the reason I left the band.’ ”

Messina said tight finances and the rising unhappiness of his old Buffalo Springfield partner, Furay, led him to bail out in 1970 to pursue a record production career that soon led to his profitable teaming with Loggins. “I’d just gotten married, and the most I’d made in Poco was $125 a week,” he said. “Richie was frustrated that Stephen and Neil were having a lot of success and we weren’t. He felt he was as good a singer and songwriter as they were, and they were being widely recognized and he wasn’t. I just felt I wasn’t needed, that he didn’t want my input anymore.”

When Poco formed, Messina said, the idea was “to take a step closer in the direction I felt (rock) music was going in--that was to make it more country- and blues-oriented than folk rock.” Buffalo Springfield already had woven country music into its sound, notably on “Kind Woman,” a Furay ballad that featured session player Rusty Young on pedal steel guitar. Young recruited Meisner and Grantham, whom he had known back in his days playing the Colorado bar band circuit. Before that lineup was set, Gregg Allman and Gram Parsons were among the musicians who had auditioned for or hung out with the coalescing Poco.

The original Poco suffered from “built-in obsolescence,” Young said, because it had three singer-songwriters in Furay, Meisner and Messina and “everyone wanted to take their shot at doing it their way.”

Not wanting any disputes about whose songs would be recorded for “Legacy,” the reformed Poco left it up to its management and record company to choose.

“We wanted to exclude any possibility of conflict that could come between us,” Messina said.

As Poco began to tour early this year, the source of conflict turned out to be Furay’s religious convictions. The singer, who became a born-again Christian in the mid-1970s and eventually joined the ministry, decided after the first three-week swing that he would not be able to stay on the road with Poco.

“We found you cannot mix the ministry and rock ‘n’ roll,” Young said. “Richie felt that ‘Your Mama Don’t Dance’ (a Loggins & Messina hit that, like other songs from the members’ individual careers, is worked into Poco’s sets) was too suggestive. We had battles over song lyrics that I thought were frankly absurd. But he believes the way he believes. He’s a good guy, but the tension was so high. You never knew when someone was going to say an offensive word. There’s no hostile feeling. It’s just the reality of it.”

It’s uncertain what will follow for Poco.

“We made a commitment to do a record and a tour, and after that, if we were well-received and having fun, we’d take another look at it,” Young said. “I think there’ll be another Poco album.”

Poco plays Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Celebrity Theatre, 201 E. Broadway, Anaheim. Tickets: $20.50. Information: (714) 999-9536.