Richie Furay, Retiring, Says Farewell in Rousing Concert: Review
by Thomas K. Arnold
Richie Furay, The Coach House Concert Hall, San Juan Capistrano, California April 2024 (Photo by Thomas K. Arnold, used with permission)
Richie Furay, who was part of the core Buffalo Springfield trio, alongside Stephen Stills and Neil Young, and later a mainstay of Poco, is giving up touring as he turns 80. His final show, billed as the “Final Farewell & 80th Birthday Celebration Concert,” will be held Aug. 23 at the South Orange Performing Arts Center in New Jersey. Here’s a review of Furay and his backup band performing earlier in the tour.
If Richie Furay’s April 19 show at the Coach House in Orange County, Calif., is any indication of what the iconic country-rock pioneer can still do, let’s hope his “final farewell” is about as final as the Kiss farewell tour of 2000.
Richie Furay and band, The Coach House Concert Hall, San Juan Capistrano, California April 2024 (Photo by Thomas K. Arnold, used with permission)
The nearly two-hour show featured songs from every stage in Furay’s career, from his beginnings with the Buffalo Springfield to later roles in Poco and the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band. In the mid-1970s Furay began a short-lived solo career, found Jesus and then gave up music for more than a decade to become a pastor at a Colorado church. He cut a few Christian-rock albums and most recently, in 2022, released an LP of classic country songs, In the Country, produced by Val Garay.
Furay’s show at the Coach House, in which he was backed by the superb San Diego band Back to the Garden as well as his daughter and son-in-law, opened with a rousing version of “Stand Your Guard,” off his 1979 solo debut, Dance a Little Light. Next came the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band’s infectious (and only) hit, “Fallin’ in Love,” followed by “I Still Have Dreams,” from his second solo LP.
Watch him perform “Fallin’ in Love” at the same venue two years earlier
Related: Our Album Rewind of the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band’s debut album
Next came the first of five Buffalo Springfield tunes Furay and his band would perform that night: the mellifluous “Sit Down, I Think I Love You,” written by Stephen Stills and originally sung as a duet between Stills and Furay. Furay’s solo take was as cheery as the original, and the band played with equal parts passion and aplomb, particularly guitarist Marc Intravia, one of the San Diego music scene’s brightest stars.
Furay’s role in the Buffalo Springfield has consistently been overshadowed by those of his famous bandmates, Stills and Neil Young. Stills and Furay had both been in the Café Au Go Go’s house band in Greenwich Village at the height of the folk revival era. Furay later came to Los Angeles at Stills’ urging, giving up his day job at the Pratt and Whitney aircraft engine plant, where the two met up with Young and drummer Dewey Martin. Under the tutelage of the Byrds’ Chris Hillman, the Buffalo Springfield—named after a steamroller—became the house band at the Whisky and were signed to Atco Records. Young was so unsure of his own singing that he relegated lead vocal duties on one of his finest compositions, “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing,” to Furay. The song became the band’s first single.
Richie Furay and band, The Coach House Concert Hall, San Juan Capistrano, California April 2024 (Photo by Thomas K. Arnold, used with permission)
Other Buffalo Springfield songs Furay performed at the Coach House that night were “On the Way Home,” another Young song on which Furay sang lead, from the band’s third and final studio album, Last Time Around; two Furay compositions off album No. 2, Buffalo Springfield Again, “A Child’s Claim to Fame,” which Furay wrote in reaction to Young’s increasingly erratic behavior after the band’s performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, and “Good Time Boy”; and another Last Time Around track, “Kind Woman,” which Furay wrote for his wife, Nancy.
After the Springfield fell apart in 1968, Furay teamed with Rusty Young and Jim Messina to form another influential early country-rock band, Poco. His show at the Coach House featured five Poco songs, including his own “Pickin’ Up the Pieces” and “A Good Feelin’ to Know,” as well as Paul Cotton’s “Bad Weather” and two surprise picks: “Crazy Love,” Poco’s single biggest hit that was recorded several years after Furay’s 1974 departure from the band, and “Hard Country,” a song off Poco’s final studio album (from 2013) on which Furay’s daughter, Jesse Furay Lynch, a talented singer in her own right, took over on lead vocals.
While many older legacy artists have aged well, Furay takes the proverbial cake. It’s hard to fathom that the limber, well-coiffed, handsome singer-guitarist is well beyond his late 50s and early 60s—that he is, in fact, pushing 80. [Furay reached that landmark age on May 9, 2024.] Good living? Perhaps. Clean living? Without a doubt. Furay gave up drugs after Poco and, as he said in a 2015 interview with Goldmine, “I like being straight as an arrow. I have nothing to prove and nothing to lose.”
Watch Furay perform Poco’s “Bad Weather” at an earlier concert
Furay closed the show with two recent quasi-political songs, “Don’t Tread on Men,” from his 2015 solo album, Hand in Hand, and the 2020 single, “America, America,” in which he bemoans the country’s political polarization and promotes his Christian faith: “My heart’s breakin’, watching the world turn upside down/Seein’ our nation hurtin’ in the grasp, while burning to the ground/Though history sure has warned us, when you take your eyes off God, there ain’t nothing to fall back on…”
Furay’s rich body of work, which goes back nearly 60 years, is an integral component in the canon of country-rock. And while his desire to retire is certainly understood, here’s hoping he pulls a Kiss and reconsiders.
Watch Richie Furay and band perform Buffalo Springfield’s “Sit Down, I Think I Love You” at the San Juan Capistrano show
Furay’s recordings are available here.
1 Comment so far
Jump into a conversation“where the two met up with Young and drummer Dewey Martin” is incorrect. Young and bass player Bruce Palmer had come down from Canada to hook up with Stills. They couldn’t track him down and were ready to go up to San Francisco, when they ran into Stills and Furay in a traffic jam on the Sunset. Dewy Martin was hired later.
Glad Mr. Furay is going out on his own terms with a voice that still sounds good. I’ll drink to clean living!