Jesse Colin Young has been a fan of motorcycles since he was young. In addition to his famous song “Get Together,” his 1974 “Motorcycle Blues” is also a fan favorite. He will perform with his son Tristan at the Bethesda Blues and Jazz Supper Club on June 7 and 8 and at the Ram’s Head On Stage on June 9. Photo courtesy of Jesse Colin Young

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It was one of the anthems of the late 1960s, the Youngblood’s “Get Together,” playing from top 40s stations, at outdoor concerts, and repeatedly on TV ads as the official song of the National Council of Christians and Jews.

“Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together. Try to love one another right now,” was a folk-rock rallying cry that was both Vietnam War protest song and a plea to heal the rifts that divided a turbulent America.

Over the decades, the song has popped up in the Forest Gump soundtrack and twice on “The Simpsons.” Last fall, it played throughout a Walmart ad, in which people from all walks of life silently bring a variety of chairs to an outdoor table to share a meal.

And says Jesse Colin Young, the lead singer of the Youngbloods, the song has more relevance today in an America fractured by political fault lines than it has since it debuted half a century ago.

Young and his band will play at the Bethesda Blues and Jazz Supper Club on June 7 and 8, followed by a show at the Ram’s Head On Stage in Annapolis on June 9.

All in the family

Now 77, Young says one of the most exciting facets of his music today is playing in a band with his son Tristan, 27. The band members, including Tristan, are recent graduates of the Berklee College Music in Boston.

“His senior recital in 2016 just blew me away. I thought, ‘My God, before I leave the planet I want young people like him to play music with me,’” Young said in an interview with the Beacon.

“This generation is all in their 20s, and they love my music. There’s something so powerful about them playing it and believing in it. No matter how tired I am [when we start playing], it’s so uplifting that I find myself grinning from ear to ear.”

A start in the ‘60s

Young was barely in his 20s himself when he released his first album, Soul of a City Boy, at age 21. Born and raised in Queens, Young’s mother was a violinist with a beautiful singing voice and perfect pitch. His father was passionate about classical music, and the family spent evenings gathered around the piano singing.

Young bounced around from school to school. He got kicked out of the elite Philips Andover Academy because he spent all his study time playing guitar.

“I was swept up in the music,” he remembers.

He then went to public high school and Ohio State and New York Universities, but school never had the same appeal as the allure of music. In Ohio, he was allowed to take records home from stores to play and then return them. They served as his introduction to the blues, from BB King to Ray Charles, as well as country music.

“I’ve always felt what you call rock and roll is the collision from these two streams, a Celtic stream and an African stream. It was very gritty and very attractive to a boy raised in the suburbs where life was very calm and cloistered,” he said.

Along the way, he worked in hotels, a factory, even at the Rockefeller Foundation. “I hated all of it, and I thought, ‘Well, maybe I could make a living with my guitar,’” he recalled.

So he used his connection with his sister’s husband, who worked at CBS, to wrangle a meeting with a jazz musician who worked with singer Bobby Darren. They liked Young, and “Soul of a City Boy” was recorded in just four hours in 1962.

During those early days he played at well-known coffee houses like Gertie’s Folk City. One night he recognized a fellow singer as someone he had gone to elementary school with, but couldn’t quite place him. He just remembered his first name.

“He looked at me after I told him about what I was doing, and said, ‘I make records, too.’ I thought to myself, ‘Artie, Artie, oh, Art Garfunkel!’”

Young released another album in 1964 and formed the Youngbloods in 1965. “Get Together,” written by folk-rock singer Chet Powers, rose to Top 5 charts around the world in 1969. The Youngblood’s album Elephant Mountain contained two of their other chart-climbing hits, “Darkness, Darkness” and “Sunlight.”

Young’s first album after the group broke up was Song for Juli, considered by many to be his best work, the title song was a tribute to his daughter, born in 1966.

Young continued to tour through the 1970s and played to his largest audience — 200,000 — at the 1979 No Nukes concert at Battery Park in New York, singing “Get Together” with such luminaries as Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills.

In 1993, Young and his wife Connie launched their own independent label, Ridgetop Music, from their mountain home in Marin County, outside San Francisco. Just two years later, a forest fire engulfed their property, destroying everything and leaving Young and his family literally with just the clothes on their backs.

They moved to Hawaii, building a private school and growing organic Kona coffee, called Jesse Colin Young’s Morning Sun Coffee, still sold today. In 2006, he moved to South Carolina to be near family. There he continued to record.

A new album

His newest album, tentatively titled Dreamers, will be released in September, and features songs that resonate with today’s issues including the #MeToo movement and the young adult immigrant “Dreamers.”

But he had to give up touring for a while as he battled Lyme disease, which he got a decade ago but which went undiagnosed for several years. He is still undergoing treatment for it.

Young is now back to touring, with dozens of shows a year, many of them selling out.

“Having an adoring audience is still a thrill. I’m going to ride this wave as long as I can physically tolerate it. It’s a dream for someone like myself at my age to find this rejuvenation.

“It’s like the gift of “Get Together.” If there is a thing called karma, it’s like the finishing of a circle. We need to play it and music like it….It’s time to not just try to love one another, because we know the difference between trying and doing. It’s time to do.”

Young will be playing at the Bethesda Blues and Jazz Supper Club, 7719 Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda, on June 7 and 8 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $35 in advance and $40 at the door. To buy tickets, go to http://bbjlive.com or call (240) 330-4500.

On June 9, he will be at the Ram’s Head On Stage, 33 West St., Annapolis . Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $55. See http://www.ramsheadonstage.com or call (410) 268-4545.