For the final episode of Season 1, Gerry Browne and Mick O’Brien sit down with Fin Furey and Connor Furey, two cousins carrying one of the best-known names in Irish folk music while building careers very much their own.
Fin is the son of Finbar Furey. Connor is the son of Eddie Furey. Music was part of daily life from the start. Instruments filled the house. Touring stories came home from the road. Songs were learned, heard and absorbed long before either of them began thinking seriously about a life in music.
That family history runs through the conversation, but this episode is equally about the paths Fin and Connor chose for themselves.
Fin spent years immersed in sport before serious injuries pushed him towards physiotherapy and strength and conditioning. He worked in that field for around a decade. Songwriting arrived from a different place. After the death of a friend, a guitar, a few chords and a melody gave him an emotional release he had never experienced before. Music began to take up more space. A move to Canada, open mic nights and regular gigs helped turn songwriting into something more serious.
Connor’s path leads straight to the banjo. What began as curiosity became an obsession. He talks about watching family members play, picking apart tunes, learning from the musicians around him and developing the fast, driving style that now defines much of his playing.
That playing comes into full focus during the live music in this episode.
Fin performs his original song Japanese Death Poems, inspired by ideas around unfinished potential, mortality and the tradition of writing final poems at the end of life. Connor’s banjo gives the song another layer. Later, the pair tear into The Foggy Dew, with Connor bringing Tam Lin into the arrangement, before closing their performances with Fin’s Old Crumlin Road, written after visiting Crumlin Road Gaol and hearing stories connected to its history.
The conversation moves through the Dublin folk scene, late-night gigs, traditional music, songwriting, family influence and the way old songs carry history from one generation to the next.
Mick describes folk songs as historical artefacts capable of carrying emotion from another time. Fin builds on that idea by talking about oral tradition, storytelling and the role musicians once played in carrying both stories and news from place to place.
There is plenty of laughter too. Fin and Connor are quick, sharp and comfortable taking the slagging as Gerry and Mick dig into family stories, old tunes and the differences between generations of players.
By the end, Gerry makes his feelings about Connor’s playing clear, calling his performance of Tam Lin better than anything he had heard before, while Mick singles out Fin’s songwriting as one of the moments that stayed with him from the session.
A fitting end to Season 1 of Two Auld Folkers, with two musicians shaped by a major Irish folk legacy and determined to add something of their own.
Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEqF7GEWvT0c
Fin Furey:
Website: https://www.finfureymusic.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/finfureymusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/finfurey/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@finfurey
Connor Furey:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/connorbanjofurey/
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Produced By Graco Studios:
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Irish Folk Music, The Music Of The People.
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