Richie Furay was born in Yellow Springs, Ohio and loved music from the start. His father listened to country music on the radio, and it caught Furay’s ear immediately. There was something about the openness of the songs, and the emotional power of those that delivered them, both the singers and players. It wasn’t long until rock & roll sprang out of country and blues in the early 1950s, and once the young Ohioan found that sound he knew he was home. Early doo-wop records rose to the front for a while, and when Richie Furay began guitar lessons and got his first guitar when he was eight years old, he knew that’s what he wanted to do. By the time the young man was attending college in 1963, he was a drama major and had won the freshman talent show. After a trip to New York with his college acapella choir, Richie returned the following summer to sing in folk clubs where he met Stephen Stills. Eddie Miller then formed the AuGoGo Singers with Richie and Stephen and his future was set.
“Rock & roll and country, that’s really what I’m all about,” Furay explains. “It’s the sound that first really touched me as a child, and it’s stayed a constant in my life all these years, both personally and professionally. Even at the start of my career. I may have felt somewhat insecure, but I always believed in myself. And I knew enough to know to do what I wanted to do, because if I didn’t I wouldn’t be enjoying what I was doing. That was always a basic operating procedure for me. No matter what group I was in, I needed to really like what we were trying to play. And that’s what is at the heart of this new album. I have always loved country music, and the idea of putting it together with rock & roll with a steel guitar seemed like a natural back at my start right up to now.”
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