Paul Richard Furay (; born May 9, 1944) is an American musician, songwriter, and retired pastor. He co-founded Buffalo Springfield, Poco, and the Souther–Hillman–Furay Band, where in all three groups he helped pioneer the country rock genre. His best known song (originally written during his tenure in Buffalo Springfield, but eventually performed by Poco as well) was "Kind Woman," which he wrote for his wife, Nancy.Furay, P. Richard, mentioned live after performing the song, October 24, 2010, Bridge School Benefit Concert, Mountain View, California.
During his time in the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, he converted to Christianity. After releasing several Christian albums as a solo artist, Furay became full-time pastor of the Calvary Chapel in Broomfield, Colorado, serving from 1983 to his eventual retirement in 2017.
In 1997, Furay was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Buffalo Springfield. In 2015, he was inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame as a member of Poco.
Biography Early life and family Richie Furay was born in Dayton, Ohio, and grew up in the nearby village of Yellow Springs. Furay's parents, Paul and Naomi "Snookie" (), managed Furay's Drug Store in downtown Yellow Springs, where Paul would often work long hours and have little time to spend with the young Richie. In 1955, Paul sold the drugstore and established Furay's Gift Shop, where he became highly-respected by the town's children, which included future Ohio governor Mike DeWine. However, in August 1957, shortly before Furay entered the eighth grade, his father died at the age of 45 from a ruptured aortic aneurysm. Naomi managed the store until her eventual retirement and lived in the Yellow Springs area until her death in 2007 at the age of 94.
Furay was inclined towards music from a young age. When he was eight, Furay received his first guitar, a Gibson ES-295, and would attend weekly lessons in the nearby city of Springfield. As a condition for paying for his lessons, Furay's father required him to learn trumpet in high school. In addition, as Furay's elder sister Judy would later recall: "We had an old jukebox in the drugstore, a great big fancy thing. [...] When those records got old [Dad] brought them home. I had no interest in them, but Richard did...[and] he had every single record memorized by their labels." While in middle school, Furay joined his first band, the Barons, a doo-wop group with three older high schoolers; Furay served as lead vocalist. Furay's first musical hero was Ricky Nelson and in high school he became a fan of the Kingston Trio after hearing their 1958 hit cover of "Tom Dooley".
Early career After graduating from high school, Furay moved to Westerville to attend Otterbein College, where he would complete three semesters before dropping out and moving to New York City to form a folk trio called the Monks with a two fraternity friends, Bob Harmelink and Nels Gustafson, in the summer of 1964. Furay sang lead and was the driving force behind the group. According to Harmelink, "Richie saw this as his life's work. I saw it as a summer fling. And maybe, just maybe, I might get lucky and hit the big time. It was not all 'I'm going to make it or die here.'" Despite their efforts, the Monks made little money, had to survive off of junk food, and lived in cockroach-infested tenements.
Shortly after arriving, Furay befriended Stephen Stills, another young musician playing in Greenwich Village's various folk clubs and coffeehouses. Before joining Buffalo Springfield, Furay and his Otterbein friends performed with Stills in the nine-member group, the Au Go Go Singers, the house band of the Cafe Au Go Go. However, this group struggled financially and commercially, so after six months Harmelink and Gustafson returned to complete their college education, leaving Furay alone in New York City.
To make ends meet, Furay worked at Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford, Connecticut, for a few months, taking up residence at the home of his girlfriend's family in Wilbraham, Massachusetts. In the summer of 1965, Gram Parsons, a musician friend from New York City, came to visit Furay and introduced him to the folk rock sound of the Byrds's debut album, which inspired him to contact Stills and discuss forming what would later become Buffalo Springfield. However, Stills had since moved to the West Coast and his whereabouts were difficult to pinpoint. In the meantime, Furay became acquainted with Neil Young—who had heard of Furay from Stills—and was impressed by Young's song "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing".
Buffalo Springfield
In early February 1966, Furay successfully contacted Stills and flew out to Los Angeles to join the band that he was supposedly assembling. However, much to Furay's disappointment, the "band" at that point only consisted of Stills and himself. Though he considered going back to the East Coast, Furay ultimately decided to move into Stills' one-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood. For weeks, Furay rehearsed the parts and harmonies of Stills' new songs, many of which later appeared on Buffalo Springfield's debut album. On April 6, Furay and Stills accidentally encountered Neil Young and Bruce Palmer while the former was driving his 1953 Pontiac hearse on Sunset Boulevard. Shortly thereafter, Dewey Martin was added and the band settled on the name Buffalo Springfield, taken from a steamroller company merger based in Buffalo, New York and Springfield, Ohio.
Less than a month after the band's formation, Buffalo Springfield secured a six-week residency at the Whisky a Go Go. As Furay described the experience: "The Whisky was as good as we ever were, as dynamic as we ever were, as close as we ever were...because we were working every day. [...] We were tight, we were good, and we felt we were good." During performances, Furay would typically be positioned center stage, playing rhythm guitar and singing whilst being flanked by Stills and Young on each side. In partial imitation of Roger McGuinn, Furay often played a 12-string Gibson ES-335.
On the band's debut single, "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing", Furay contributed lead vocals; on the B-side, "Go and Say Goodbye", Furay sang lead in unison with Stills. Furay later sang lead vocals on "Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It", the B-side to the band's signature song, "For What It's Worth". Of the 35 songs released by the band during its brief existence, Furay sang lead or co-lead vocals on 15 tracks, second only to Stephen Stills (16) and much higher than Neil Young (6), Dewey Martin (1), and Jim Messina (1).
While Furay did not write any of the songs on the band's debut album, he individually penned three tracks on the follow-up album Buffalo Springfield Again and two on the final album, Last Time Around, where he also received co-writing credit on the songs "It's So Hard to Wait" (with Neil Young) and "The Hour of Not Quite Rain" (with Micki Callen). Furay wrote "A Child's Claim to Fame" about his frustrations with bandmate Neil Young. As Furay once stated: "He was in, he was out, he was in, and he was out. He wasn't at Monterey. We were gonna do the Johnny Carson Show and he didn't show up to get on the plane that day." According to biographer Thomas M. Kitts, Young's song "I Am a Child", which imitated the country ballad sound of "A Child's Claim to Fame", may have been a direct and sarcastic response to Furay (and Stills, with whom he also shared interpersonal difficulties).
On March 20, 1968, Buffalo Springfield and Eric Clapton were arrested in a drug bust while jamming at the home of Stills' girlfriend. Furay and his wife Nancy were among the arrested and placed in a jail cell. Eventually, the band and others were simply charged with "disturbing the peace," and Furay's testimony helped spare Clapton from deportation. By the summer of 1968, the band had effectively fallen apart, leaving Furay and Jim Messina (who had replaced Palmer earlier that year) to cull through old recordings and compile what would become Buffalo Springfield's final album, Last Time Around.
Poco
After the dissolution of Buffalo Springfield, Furay and Messina decided to form a new group that would blend the sounds of country with rock. Furay helped recruit steel guitarist Rusty Young and drummer George Grantham, commenting that with the latter "there was no danger that his ego would run amuck." He also invited Gregg Allman and Gram Parsons, but neither ultimately joined the group. With Randy Meisner joining on bass, the band had, by the end of 1968, become a highly-popular live act at the Troubadour and began recording their debut album, Pickin' Up the Pieces. Clive Davis, the president of Columbia Records, wanted to sign the band, but Furay was still under contract to ATCO (a subsidiary of Atlantic Records); at the same time, Atlantic wanted to sign Crosby, Stills & Nash but Graham Nash (an ex-member of the Hollies) was still under contract with Columbia, so the two record labels traded the musicians.
Furay wrote or co-wrote all tracks on Pickin' Up the Pieces, save for Rusty Young's "Grand Junction". As Furay would later comment: "If you look into the songs I wrote on the first Poco album...I was still trying to figure out what happened and express my feelings on those two years in the Springfield." However, before the album's release, Meisner abruptly quit the band after Furay refused to let him participate in the mixing process. Furay then decided to bring in Timothy B. Schmit and frequently defended him against Messina and Young, who both took issue with Schmit's musicianship and personality.
In mid-1970, after the middling success of Poco's self-titled sophomore album (peaking at #58 on the Billboard 200), the rift between Furay and Messina began to widen. Furay has claimed that "[Messina] made the group more country than I had ever envisaged it. I wanted it more rock 'n' roll right at the beginning." Messina felt that Furay's control over the band was growing too overbearing, and so he quit in the summer of that year. Furay then chose Paul Cotton as Messina's successor.
Furay remained with Poco for three more studio albums (From the Inside, A Good Feelin' to Know, and Crazy Eyes) but he was growing impatient with the band's lack of mainstream success—something which had since come to ex-bandmates Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Jim Messina, and Randy Meisner (who had become the bassist for the Eagles). In 1973, he decided to contact his friend David Geffen, the then-head of Asylum Records, who proposed creating a supergroup with JD Souther and Chris Hillman, the latter of whom was looking to leave the Stephen Stills-led supergroup Manassas. Furay took up Geffen on his offer and played his final gig with Poco at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute on September 4, 1973.
SHF band, conversion to Christianity, resolving marriage troubles Furay left Poco in late 1973 to form the Souther–Hillman–Furay Band. The lineup was further rounded out with drummer Jim Gordon and three ex-Manassas members: Paul Harris (keyboards), Joe Lala (percussion), and Al Perkins (pedal steel guitar). The optimistic Furay, who sought to create a family atmosphere within the group, struggled to work with the cynical JD Souther, who once described himself as "elusive and hard to find." Although the supergroup's self-titled debut album was certified gold and yielded the top-30 hit "Fallin' in Love" in 1974, the group could not follow up on that success, and poor record sales of the follow-up album, Trouble in Paradise, eventually led to its breakup.