ONE OF THE LANDMARK country-rock albums, Poco’s DeLIVErin’ enjoys its 50th birthday in 2021. Recorded live at the Boston Music Hall and the Felt Forum, New York in September 1970 and released in January 1971, the group’s third album mixed urgent rock’n’roll, plangent hillbilly sounds and harmony vocals, the missing link between the Byrds and the Eagles.
One of its creators, former Buffalo Springfield/Poco mainstay Richie Furay, has celebrated the anniversary with a live re-recording of the whole record at LA’s storied Troubadour Club, his Richie Furay Band also starring his daughter, Jesse Furay Lynch, and augmented by fellow Poco alumnus, Timothy B. Schmit. As he noted to MOJO writer Sylvie Simmons recently, “There aren’t that many groups that have done a live album of a live album!”
Taped in November 2018 and released earlier this spring, the group’s 50th Anniversary Return To The Troubadour is a two-CD+DVD package comprising takes on the DeLIVErin’ songs plus a second disc of newer songs, and classics including a stirring version of Buffalo Springfield’s On The Way Home (see below).
“With the whole Covid thing and things that have happened along the way we’ve had to wait to have it released,” Furay told MOJO, “but it’s coming out and I’m very happy that we’ve done it.”
You’d be hard pressed to rival the vibe on Poco’s original, but the psych-soul overtones of I Guess You Made It and the emotional swells of Furay’s Buffalo Springfield swansong, Kind Woman (see bottom), haven’t tarnished, even if the audience is a tad greyer. “The people at the Troubadour were amazing that night – the fans, the audience, the place was jam-packed, you couldn’t move,” says Furay. “Wait till you see them in the footage on the DVD.”
But that’s not the end of the 78-year-old Furay’s activity in 2021, with a covers album pending that he recorded with Kim Carnes/Joan Armatrading producer Val Garay.
“The very first song he mentioned was one of the songs that I’ve wanted to record for ever – Your Love Amazes Me,” says Furay, referring to the Amanda Hunt-Taylor and Chuck Jones song, a Country chart Number 1 for John Berry in 1994. “We did 14 songs in 4 days – and I’m telling you, it is amazing. We didn’t want to do karaoke, we wanted to make them our own and we did.”
In the meantime, the Richie Furay Band’s Return To The Troubadour can be enjoyed on streaming platforms. Physical copies are also available now (DSDK Productions, via MRI Entertainment).