Hope things are going well for all of you. Happy New Year! Progress on the Richie Furay documentary continues as the production team has entered the editing phase of the project. The current version is over six hours long! So naturally, we have to start cutting and shaping it into a viewable form. There are going to be a lot of things that many fans have never seen or heard. Richie has written two new songs and has also composed the incidental music for the soundtrack. Our goal is to have the final cut completed in the spring and post-production and finalization to follow.
What I will tell you is that if you are expecting a typical rockumentary, you’re going to be surprised. We are crafting a documentary that will reveal Richie’s life story in a way that will surprise and hopefully inspire you. I’m aware this has been a long time comin’ but it will be worth it!
In January 1975, Poco made a memorable appearance on the NBC-TV late-night rock show, The Midnight Special to promote their recent CANTAMOS album. Poco performed six songs on a set modeled after the cover of CANTAMOS. They sounded great. And it was never seen again. Until now. Burt Sugarman Productions released an hour-long condensed version of the show to YouTube last week. This appearance has been long sought-after by many a Poco fan including me. But only an audio bootleg taken from the TV feed has ever turned up. Head over to YouTube now and enjoy it in excellent video quality.
Hello there! Well, life has been rather busy, so the site hasn’t been updated in quite a while. I did want to pass along that for the past four years I’ve been working for DSDK Productions as their copy editor for the upcoming Richie Furay documentary. We are currently assembling our film and music assets into our first rough cut. Our hope is to have the documentary completed by this summer. Since we are pushing hard to finish this documentary, it will be a few more months before I can update the site. But hang with me. There are a lot of great things coming!
Today is the 76th birthday of Poco’s original drummer, George Grantham. When I was doing the research for my book on Poco back in the late 1990s, George was the first member of Poco to agree to an interview. He was an easy interview – very friendly, and eager to talk. I did two over-the-phone interviews with him and went away pleasantly surprised at how humble he was. I was struck with how dismissive George was of his lead vocals. I had envisioned that he felt stifled with only a few of them. Nope. He told me that he was more than happy with drumming and doing backing vocals.
I also got two very nice tidbits from George’s pre-Poco career – His high school rock band, The Police, used an actual light off a police car as part of their stage gear! I also learned that one of the other members of The Police was Randy Naylor, who would later become band mates with Randy Meisner in The Poor. The other was that after Boenzee Cryque broke up and before Poco called, George did some recording with Boenzee Cryque’s final guitar player Malcolm Mitchell. He played drums on ‘Sightseer,’ ‘Feather’ and ‘Candy Coated Lady.’ The first two songs were released on Dot Records under the name Malcolm Mitchell. The third song was later released on a CD compilation as a Boenzee Cryque track. Here’s ‘Feather’ from YouTube.
Richie Furay has always called George “the backbone” of Poco. His steady, dependable drumming and soaring vocals were foundational to Poco. Once Richie departed the group, George became a cornerstone of the Fab Four lineup. When we spoke, George’s only regret was that things didn’t work out so that he could have remained with Poco when they recorded LEGEND and experienced that success. Neither of us knew when we had those conversations that George would get another chance to play with Poco. Thankfully, that happened in 2000.
Poco 2001 – Rusty Young, Paul Cotton, George Grantham, Jack Sundrud
He remained Poco’s drummer for four years in the new millennium, before he suffered a stroke onstage. Thankfully, George survived and remains an important part of Poco’s legacy. To Poco’s backbone…Happy birthday, George!
With the re-launch of DELIVERIN’ – The Poco Concert Archive/Database, I think it’s worth taking a few moments to talk about the philosophy behind the hundreds of listings of concerts on the site.
I started researching Poco concerts long before there was such a thing as the Internet. It involved hours going through microfilm reels in local libraries to find concert ads. It was making friends via snail mail for shows that fans recalled attending. There was a lot of effort with very little certainty of whether a concert actually took place. During that pre-Internet time, I developed an accuracy scale that I used when assembling my lists of shows.
Listing – This is usually a newspaper line item announcing a show. Usually in a entertainment section and taken from a press release. Depending on the proximity of the show date, I tend to rank this as moderately dependable. Here’s an example of what I mean.
Ad – A newspaper or magazine advertisement with venue, promoter and ticket information. Often has a promo photo of at least one of the bands. This rate a bit higher in dependability for me since these are paid for by the promoter. If he’s spending money, there’s a good chance the show happened. Like this one:
Poster – Posters used to be a pretty dependable source for concerts but with the growth of eBay and the market for counterfeit posters, this now needs some investigation of their own validity. I now rank these as low in terms of dependability. Like this fake poster from 1964.
Handbill – Handbills are a bit like posters in that they are more of a starting point, rather than a confirmation. However, there isn’t quite the counterfeit market for them so you don’t see as many bogus ones to lead you down the wrong path. Here’s one from 1965 Asbury Park Convention Hall.
Ticket stub – A bit above moderate in reliability but tickets were often printed for shows that where cancelled at the last minute. But they are great for identifying dates in the first place. Here’s one from 1967 Hollies’ show in Hawaii that was subsequently cancelled along with their entire U.S. spring tour.
Review – A show review in a newspaper or magazine is generally the confirmation I look for to ensure that a show actually took place. But they too can be misleading. Especially in the ’60s and ’70s, newspapers who did review rock concerts (and there weren’t many) had a relatively early deadline for their morning editions. So many times, the headliner got little notice since the reviewer often left before they went on to file their story. Occasionally there was outright deception. Poco was to play the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto on New Years Eve, 1970 and the review contained a brief description of their set amongst six other bands. Problem was…Poco never made it through customs into Canada and missed the show. I might never have figured that out except that the reviewer was fired when fans called him on it. Turns out the entire review was fiction!
Tour Itinerary – Official tour itineraries are gold for what was originally booked for shows but often do not reflect shows that were cancelled or postponed. Wish there were more of these around but most band members just tossed them once the dates were completed. Thankfully Poco’s Road Manager Denny Jones kept copies from all the tours he did with them and noted changes on them too!
Fan recollection – Much like law enforcement, I take eyewitness testimony with a grain of salt. It’s great additional confirmation when they give you enough details to make sure they were actually there. But more often, dates are several years off, bands are mixed up, and other details don’t mesh. Here’s a new example. Homecoming 1971 at Colgate University. I listed Poco’s show at taking place on September 23rd based on a newspaper listing.. But several years later, I had a fan tell me the show had been postponed for a week. So, I changed the date to September 30th. I just received a review from the Colgate University student newspaper that confirmed the show actually took place on September 23rd. Showing that fan recollections can be helpful, but…Hey, if you can remember the ’60s, you weren’t really there, right?
But I wanted DELIVERIN’ to be a co-operative site. Sure, I’d do the heavy lifting of research to confirm shows, but I wanted you to share your Poco experiences even if you didn’t have all the specifics. So, I have routinely listed shows on the site BEFORE confirming that they happened on that date. Why? Because I have found that you fans can be great sources of information and can sometimes confirm or lead me towards shows I had no idea took place. Where shows are listed, I will generally mention if the source is a fan recollection or a less-than-reputable source. But my intent is to ultimately confirm the details of all the shows that I list.
Deliverin’ – The Poco Concert Database has been online since 2007 at the same hosting site. My knowledge of web site construction was (and is) pretty limited, but as my knowledge grew, the site improved. But things move fast in the digital world and a few years ago the software I used to create the site became obsolete. Three years ago, my host site no longer supported any updates. So the old site hasn’t been updated since 2019, as I’m sure many of you have noticed.
I decided to move the site shortly after learning I was using obsolete software. When I decided to go the WordPress route, I was disappointed to learn that I wasn’t going to be able to export my old site over. I had to re-create it from scratch and learn a whole new software. That has taken the subsequent years (minus the pandemic and one round of COVID-19) to bring the database, photos, posters, ticket scans, etc. over to this new home. And it’s felt just like boxing up a house, garage, and storage unit and moving to a new town. Except I couldn’t throw a bunch of stuff away. It all had to make the move.
I’m hoping to improve the site as I learn WordPress beyond the basics, so don’t be disappointed by the simple design. It will get better over time. And thanks for visiting!
