This 1976 FM radio broadcast courtesy of Long Island station WLIR captures Furay – veteran of Buffalo Springfield, Poco and the brief Souther-Hillman- Furay supergroup – leading a solo band for the first time. He had a rich back catalogue to draw from, but chose not to. Three tracks are SHF and one, Kind Woman, Poco; the other eight emanate from the just-released I’ve Got A Reason. This was his first overtly Christian album – he’s since become a full-time minister – and, as he explains from the stage, this music is keyboard rather than guitar-based.
The musicians backing him, recruited from the devotional world, tend to overplay and smother Furay’s vocal; heavy-handed drummer John Mehler in particular becomes tiring. The main man sounds hesitant between songs, though the audience clearly love him.
This performance has been available elsewhere as an unofficial double disc from the same venue in April 1978. By that time he had sensibly restored some greatest hits to the set, so that’s the one to track down if devotional music isn’t your thing. In truth this wasn’t Furay’s finest period, let alone finest hour.
