Remember Richie Furay?

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Richie Furay plays at the Beachland this coming Sat 11/5. If you’re sitting there saying, “Hall of Fame inductee? What? Who?” just shut up and listen to me.

Some important figures in rock music history are household names. Some who are approximately equally significant are not. Most rock fans know about Neil Young and Stephen Stills. Many don’t know the name Richie Furay, even though he and Stills founded one of the most influential bands ever, the relatively short-lived Buffalo Springfield, which also included Young.

 

Furay and Stills had been members of the Au Go Go Singers, a folk group that played in Greenwich Village clubs and released one album. The two left New York for LA, where they met up with Young. All three contributed equally to Buffalo Springfield, which influenced most of the era’s rock musicians, but, it appeared, not quite enough rock fans, despite the group’s early hit single “For What It’s Worth” (okay, I’ll give you a hint: You call it “There’s Something Happening Here”).

 

In 1967, after two years and three groundbreaking albums, they all went their separate ways – Stills launching Crosby, Stills and Nash (with the Byrds’ David Crosby and the Hollies’ Graham Nash), Young beginning a solo career and sometimes turning Stills’ group into Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; and Furay starting Poco, along with fellow-ex-Buffalo Springfield member Jim Messina (whose biggest success came shortly thereafter, as part of the duo Loggins and Messina, with Kenny Loggins).

 

Furay’s group Poco, arguably, started the genre of country-rock, though Buffalo Springfield had dabbled in that toward the end of its existence. Country-rock became “the next big thing” in the early ‘70s, with, besides Poco, groups like the Flying Burrito Brothers, the last incarnation of the Byrds, Pure Prairie League and others, including the genre’s most successful band, the Eagles. In fact, two future Eagles – Randy Meisner and Timothy B. Schmidt – started out as members of Poco.

 

Poco scored one big hit single, Furay’s song “Pickin’ Up the Pieces,” but sales of their three albums proved to be disappointing. So that group split up and Furay picked up the pieces, launching the Souther Hillman Furay Band, with former Byrd and Flying Burrito Brother Chris Hillman, and successful singer-songwriter J.D. Souther. That group recorded two albums before disbanding. And that was, for a while, the end of Furay’s professional music career.

 

So, one thing you can take away from this brief history, so far, is that the world of ‘70s big-time rock music, with everyone jumping from one band to another, seemed pretty incestuous. But that’s probably not a word that Furay would approve of – and not only because he has had one of the most successful marriages in rock music, married to the same woman since 1967 – but also because he’s now serving as a Christian minister in a church in Colorado.

 

And that’s why his music career stopped… almost. But a musician is a musician, no matter what else he or she is or does. And that leads to the second half of Furay’s career. Which reminds me, he was also a pioneer in the genre of Christian rock, which may have sounded like an incongruity in the ‘70s, but which has many radio stations devoted to it now. He has recorded several albums of religion-inspired songs.

 

I’ve read that Furay “became a Christian,” but does that mean, I recently asked him, that he wasn’t before? “I mean,” I said, “Were you born again, or ‘born’ for the first time?”

 

“I don’t think one is born a Christian,” he said. “I think that’s a step one has to take with a crisis in their life. So I had that crisis when Al Perkins joined the Souther Hillman Furay Band – which I was very adamant against, simply because he was a Christian. But Chris Hillman wanted him in the band; he’d worked with him before and said he was the perfect guy. He’s a great musician and a very strong believer and wound up leading me to the Lord at that time.”

 

I wondered if there were any of his old songs that he won’t do now, considering this major change in his life. “You know,” he said, “I have been very, very fortunate – very blessed, if you want to use that word – that there isn’t a song from my musical past that I would be hesitant to sing or perform. My set now contains 40 years of my musical history, which includes Buffalo Springfield; Poco; Souther, Hillman, Furay; and my solo music; and that’s what we’re going to share.”

 

His band will be with him at the Beachland. “This is the same band that was with us when Chris Hillman and I played at the Beachland a few years ago,” he said. “I like to think of it as my family band or a multi-generational band. My daughter’s in it, and my musical partner Scott Sellen’s son is in the band.

 

“Scott and I used to go out as a duo when our kids were growing up. He was like my band; he plays every instrument under the sun. Then his son Aaron became a really fine bass player. We knew a good drummer, so we started as a four-piece. My daughter Jesse was in New York at the time [studying and performing in musical theater], but when she came back I got her in the band, too.

 

“And that’s probably the only reason I can go out on the road now, because our kids are with us. It makes the band younger, and it’s really a family affair now. It makes it worthwhile and it makes it fun to go out and play. I think it would be very difficult, at this age, to go out on the road now if it weren’t for that.”

 

He’s also producing an album for Jesse [Furay Lynch], who has performed and recorded with many famous artists, including Linda Ronstadt, Emmy Lou Harris, Kenny Loggins. The album is pretty far along, but he can’t predict, quite yet, the target release date.

 

“Then you can back her up,” I suggested. “Well,” he said, “I love to do that. She actually sings three or four songs in our set now – one that I wrote, one that Aaron wrote and one that our drummer, Alan Lemke, wrote.”

 

Producing the album isn’t the only musical project he’s involved himself in lately. Last year Neil Young put together a Buffalo Springfield reunion as a fundraiser for a school for handicapped kids. Then they decided to do a brief, six-city tour. Was that tour fun for him? “It was really terrific, getting back together for the first time after 42 years with Steve and Neil. It was a blast; we had a great time.”

 

I complained that the tour didn’t come to Cleveland and hinted strongly that they do it again – you know, for me. “Well, if it happens again that will be great,” he said, “but if it doesn’t, the people who saw us, I’m sure, were glad that they did get a chance to see us, and had some great memories.”

 

I told him that a friend of mine considers Furay the “George Harrison of Buffalo Springfield,” because he didn’t have a lot of songwriting credits on their albums, but on Poco’s first album he wrote almost all of the songs. Furay laughed, but kind of agreed. And he added, “Well, if we ever go out again [with Buffalo Springfield], I’m getting a shirt made that says, ‘I’m the guy in the middle.’ When we did that tour last year, for some reason Steve and Neil put me in the middle.”

 

I think I know the reason: Even he doesn’t realize how important he was to that groundbreaking group and, as a result, to the history of rock music.

 

Legendary local band Hillbilly Idol opens the show on Sat 11/5. Tickets are $26 in advance, $28 day of show. Get tickets at http://www.BeachlandBallroom.com or 216-383-1124. http://www.RichieFuray.com.

 

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