Richie Furay: I Am Sure

Happy Anniversary!

It was a rainy afternoon one year ago today; and in my boredom, I decided to do what I had contemplated for several months and that is to create a music blog. For about six weeks, I had been sharing music on Facebook and giving bits and snippets of facts about the songs and the musicians.

Except for twelve days that I was on vacation or just too busy to write a daily post, I’ve kept up with the blog nearly every day. That’s an average of only one missed day per month; a record that I think is pretty good at this juncture.

It was three weeks before I started counting stats on the site, but at that time I am certain there were few visits in those early days of September and October 2009. Since then, I’ve picked up a number of visitors.

While I won’t bore you with all of the stats (I’ll do that in about a month and half when I hit 400 posts), I will give the highlights. I started with no followers, but picked up 14 in the past 12 months. There have been 7,847 unique visitors that contributed towards a total of 16,060 page views.

As far as page views, the highest charting daily post (which I never thought would be equaled) had been the 200th post segment on “The Prescription is More Cowbell.” That writ garnered 143 page views on April 14. The nearest competitors, however, hovered just over the 100 mark. It was the clear leader until yesterday's Saturday Album feature of “Buffalo Springfield Again” peaked at 162 page views and usurped the top position.

In fact, yesterday was the clear winner in all categories. It picked up 70 visits and tied with Livingston Taylor's "Tell Jesus to Come to My House" from last Sunday with 67 unique visitors. The previous leader in both categories was the Marshall Tucker Band's debut album on July 31 with 69 visits and 64 unique visitors.

Traffic to this site is largely coming via search engines that constitute 54% of the visitors. Referring sites like Facebook provide 35% of the visits and 11% come to the site directly via typing in the address.

Folks from 94 countries have been to “Reading Between the Grooves.” Africa is the least represented continent. North America (including Central America and the Caribbean) provides the greatest number of daily visitors. Europe has the largest percentage of represented countries. All but four European countries produced visitors.

Now on to the Show this is it . . .

To wrap up my week of Buffalo Springfield related music, I thought I might provide something from one of Richie Furay’s Christian albums. Guitarist Al Perkins led Richie to Christ back during the Souther, Hillman, Furay Band days in the mid 1970s. In addition to his varied musical pursuits, Richie has been the pastor of Calvary Chapel in Broomfield, Colorado since 1982 when he and his wife Nancy started the congregation that originally met in Boulder.

Coincidentally, the first concert I ever attended featured Richie Furay as a member of Poco. It was at the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh and occurred a few weeks before I went away to Kentucky for my freshman year of college in 1973. It was a great show.

In 2006, I reintroduced myself to Richie's music when I downloaded his "I am Sure" CD after reading an article about him. I was searching for Christian rock music and stumbled on his story after reading one about Roger McGuinn. I had no idea that Richie was a Christian let alone that he was involved in localized ministry. I found the CD very refreshing, but I kept being drawn to the title cut.

I attempted to learn the song, but have yet to perform it as I need to have several more musicians involved to do it justice. Finding time and a place to practice makes it difficult – but, we are moving to a new house in a month and there I will have a dedicated music room and be will be able to set up my keyboards, sequencer, and drum machine and this may allow me to do this song alone in the future. Additionally, I've had to drop it a fourth from G to D, as I cannot hit those Richie Furay high notes.

Enough about me, I love this cut and Rusty Young’s lap steel makes it shine. Since it was not available on YouTube, I uploaded it – I hope Richie doesn’t mind. It may get him a few more sales after it is heard. I hope you’ve enjoyed this week of Buffalo Springfield related music and I am anxious to hear about their performance in a month. Thanks to my old buddy Stuart Shepard from “Focus on the Family” who inspired this week’s worth of music.