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Initially, the two eldest Furey brothers, Eddie and Finbar, were only to travel to Scotland for 12 days. They were covering gigs for famed sean nós singer Joe Heaney, who couldn’t fulfil his touring commitments due to a family member falling ill.
At the time, Eddie was actually playing in another band, but having been approached by Joe, Finbar convinced his older brother to accompany him across the water. “We had never been to Scotland in our lives. So Eddie said: ‘Yeah, I suppose I can leave the band for a couple of weeks’,” remembers Finbar.
“He swapped his electric guitar for an acoustic 12-string and took the fiddle. We teamed up together, took the tour plan and we got the boat to Glasgow. We went for 12 days and we didn’t come back for three years.”
The extended trip was due to the fact that they both adored the music scene in Scotland and Finbar found the love of his life, Sheila, whom he recently celebrated 50 years of marriage with.
In 1976 Eddie and Finbar returned to Ireland. With their two younger siblings Paul and George all grown up, and Davey Arthur living in their house learning to play the banjo from their father, they formed The Fureys and Davey Arthur.
Undoubtedly, the band broke barriers and paved the way for a future generation of folk singers, but for Finbar, who sends the nation into a frenzy anytime he sings on The Late Late Show, it is still about the love of music, which started at home in Ballyfermot.
In the blood
From a young age, Finbar was successful as a musician. He is the only piper to have won the All-Ireland, the Oireachtas medal and the four provincial titles in the same year. Both his parents were musicians and well-known artists would often visit the Furey family home in Ballyfermot.
“It was a real Irish house, it was just full of music. The teapot was always on and there was always a drop of sauce if needed,” smiles Finbar. “Me father, he would teach Eddie and Eddie would teach me. I was a bit older than Paul, so I would teach Paul and Paul would teach George. We would share instruments.”
But, Irish Country Living wants to know, did Finbar ever consider a career outside music?
“We hadn’t a hope when we were kids of being anything else, me mother Kilfenora on one side, me auld fella Galway on the other side. The both of them were musicians and both their parents were musicians. We hadn’t a hope, we were hooked, line and sinker,” laughs Finbar.
Throughout the interview Finbar laughs in a familiar hearty, husky way. He is a great storyteller and speaking about his formative years is clearly one of his favourite subjects; a time when being a talented uilleann piper and banjo player wasn’t exactly cool currency.
“I was going to the hop on a Saturday night dancing to Elvis Presley and jumping around to The Beatles. All me mates used to call me a square,” he says, not seeming overly bothered by this instance.
“One fella said to me: ‘Jaysus, I will always remember running by your house when you were playing those pipes. It was like you were strangling a bag of cats. And here I am paying a fortune to hear them being played tonight.’ I thought it was very funny, a real sort of Dublin whit, you know.”
To this day, Finbar returns to his old haunt for a dose of realism. “Anytime I need to get a grip of myself, I actually go over to the pub and I give the boys a ring, see are any of them around and we’d sit and have a chat. It brings you back down to Earth, you look around Ballyer and say: ‘Yeah, we had great fun growing up there.’ It was tough place, but great people.”
Two worlds
Finbar says that he lives in two different worlds, the ordinary one and another entirely when he plays music. With a life of gigging and touring behind him, the musician has no intention of stopping just yet. Now working as a solo artist, as he has since 1996, he is currently writing for his next album and new tour.
His aptly named Don’t Stop the Music tour kicks off at the end of February 2019 in Dublin’s Vicar Street and will travel to Galway, Killarney, Waterford, Cork, Limerick, Donegal and Castlebar throughout March and April.
Writing music is not something Finbar has to try overly hard at, in fact, he can’t stop. “It’s like being haunted,” explains Finbar. “Honest to God, I have often been up in the bed, it would be one or two o’clock in the morning and I would just open my eyes. I would be thinking of this sentence and a melody would come into my head.
“I would put the dressing gown on, sneak downstairs – the dog always follows me – anyway, I would have to write down these words. I would have to get the little tape recorder out and sing it. Even if I had to whistle it or hum it really quietly into it.
“Then I would go back to bed, because I know it’s safe. But I can’t sleep if I’ve got something really important in my head. I have to write it down, because I won’t remember it in the morning.”
With iconic songs like Sweet Sixteen and The Green Fields of France in Finbar’s repertoire, the bar has been set high for Irish musicians, but always humble and highly complimentary of others, he feels the torch is more than safe.
“The dreams of these new kids are just amazing and Irish music is in great hands with these gorgeous young people, that’s the truth you know.”
For more information on Finbar’s upcoming album and tour dates, see www.finbarfurey.com
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