The Richie Furay Band
I've Got A Reason

Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in exceptionally clean shape. Most of the will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG

This vintage Asylum pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to "see" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of I've Got A Reason Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1976
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

Shootout Criteria

What are sonic qualities by which a record -- any record -- should be judged? Pretty much the ones we discuss in most of our Hot Stamper listings: energy, vocal presence, frequency extension (on both ends), transparency, spaciousness, harmonic textures (freedom from smear is key), rhythmic drive, tonal correctness, fullness, richness, three-dimensionality, and on and on down the list.

When we can get a number of these qualities to come together on the side we’re playing, we provisionally give it a ballpark Hot Stamper grade, a grade that is often revised during the shootout as we hear what the other copies are doing, both good and bad.

Once we’ve been through all the side ones, we play the best of the best against each other and arrive at a winner for that side. Other copies from earlier in the shootout will frequently have their grades raised or lowered based on how they sounded compared to the eventual shootout winner. If we’re not sure about any pressing, perhaps because we played it early on in the shootout before we had learned what to listen for, we take the time to play it again.

Repeat the process for side two and the shootout is officially over. All that’s left is to see how the sides of each pressing match up.

It may not be rocket science, but it’s a science of a kind, one with strict protocols that we’ve developed over the course of many years to insure that the results we arrive at are as accurate as we can make them.

The result of all our work speaks for itself, on this very record in fact. We guarantee you have never heard this music sound better than it does on our Hot Stamper pressing -- or your money back.

What We're Listening For On I've Got A Reason

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren't "back there" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

Side One

• Look At The Sun
• We'll See
• Starlight
• Gettin' Through
• I've Got A Reason

Side Two

• Mighty Maker
• You're The One I Love
• Still Rolling Stones
• Over And Over Again

AMG 4 1/2 Star Review

Frustrated with watching former bandmates Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Jim Messina, and Randy Meisner shoot up the charts while Poco spent the better part of five years lingering in the second division of the Top 100, Richie Furay decided to leave the group in 1973 following its sixth album, Crazy Eyes. His departure subsequently led to the formation of the country-rock "supergroup," the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, for David Geffen's Asylum Records.

The band came with a great deal of hype, only to end up disbanding after only two records. During his stint with S-H-F, Furay, through his connection with the band's steel guitarist Al Perkins, became a devout Christian. His pair of songs from their final release hinted at his conversion, but it was his 1976 solo debut, recorded with members of the Christian rock band Love Song, that made it apparent that his references to God were more than just casual ones. Produced by Christian artist, session musician, and soon-to-be Grammy winning producer Michael Omartian, I've Got a Reason expands on Furay's newfound faith, although without the usual ham-fisted rhetoric of a recent convert.

The songs here are more about looking inward than they are about proselytizing. Musically, Furay continues his gradual move away from the country-rock leanings of his past, moving closer to a somewhat slicker, more pop-oriented rock sound. And while many of the tracks -- including the AOR of "We'll See," the banjo-kick-started rocker "Gettin' Through," and the opener "Look at the Sun" -- work despite Omartian's sometimes intrusive production, some otherwise decent songs such as "Mighty Maker" and "Over and Over" suffer, sounding rather silly beneath his heavy-handed strings and bloated synths.

Still, it's Furay's clear, emotive tenor, along with his sense of melody and passion for the material, that carries the album. Failing to even break the Top 100, I've Got a Reason didn't change his standing in the pop marketplace, but it remains a strong personal statement for Richie Furay. It was reissued in 1981 by the Christian label Myrhh and in 2003 by Wounded Bird.