About Gary |
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Gary Furr is a husband, father, musician, writer, speaker, teacher and leader. He has been a pastor for over twenty-two years and has served as pastor of Vestavia Hills Baptist Church since 1993. He served churches in Texas and Georgia before moving to Alabama . A native of North Carolina , he has been married since 1973 to Vickie. Vickie is a Sunday School teacher and interior decorator. They have three daughters. Dr. Furr has a B.A. in religion from Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City , Tennessee, an M. Div. from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. and the Ph.D. in religion from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where he graduated in 1986. He is called on often as a speaker in conferences and retreats and is also a published author. He is author of dozens of articles, both in Baptist life and beyond. He co-edited and contributed to Ties That Bind: Life Together in the Baptist Vision and co-authored The Dialogue of Worship with Milburn Price. He was a contributor to and editor of the Library of Distinctive Sermons series and serves as an adjunct professor of religion at Samford University and for the Doctor of Ministry program at Beeson Divinity School. For fun the Furrs enjoy traveling, reading, and movies. Vickie is an avid mystery reader and loves all things related to house, furnishingsand landscaping and decorating. Gary also enjoys sports and is a serious musician. He plays guitar and mandolin and a little dobro, is a songwriter and has recorded two CDs with Shades Mountain Air. For more on his music, click on music. |
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Musical Background and Influences |
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I met up with music as a boy in Concord , NC . I was part of a musical family, mostly gospel, I guess, from my mother's side-she played piano in church and sang in quartets in the radio there with her dad and sisters. Grandpa Price was the music minister in the little church where we went. I got the "other music" from my dad's family. He and his brothers, Paul, Vance, Thad, Bruce, and Rodney, carpenters and brickmasons all, but also pickers. Dad lived next door to famous old-time player J. E. Mayner and played with him and his brother Wade on the radio every now and then. |
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Dad is a wonderful mandolin player and I grew up listening to him play by himself to relax at night. He would sing Hank Williams and other country tunes. We'd occasionally go over to my Uncle Paul's, his brother, when we went home after moving from Concord in later years of my childhood. We'd sit on the porch and Paul would pull out his fiddle and tear it up on "Orange Blossom Special" and other tunes. Playing with my dad is still one of my favorite things to do, and we do it every time we're together. |
Dad gave me an old Harmony arch-top acoustic to learn on when I was nine-or ten. He also had a Sears Silvertone electric guitar that would shock you when you played barefoot on a concrete floor. I learned the three chords needed for country music. |
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 During high school, I began to get more interested in the guitar and got my twelve-string one Christmas. By that time I was in an amazing youth group at my church where I met two outstanding musician buddies who are still friends, Paul Harmon and Woody Lingle, Both went on to careers in music, although Paul is now doing other things. Woody is in Nashville and has played bass for rock bands, jazz bands, country stars like Ty Herndon, Steve Wariner and a long gig with Ricky Van Shelton. Currently he is playing for Gary Pucket and the Union Gap. Read more about him on his website www.woodylingle.com. Paul and I recorded together some in the seventies and had a reunion in Nashville last summer. The magic is still there! Who knows? Paul influenced me a lot musically-introducing me to Bob Dylan, CSNY, Buffalo Springfield, The Band, and we shared a love for real country music. He was also the first banjo player I ever performed with. I wrote my first songs during high school and college and a lot of melodies I still write with I created during that time. |
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I continued to play the guitar and perform every now and then, mostly at church and civic things, and continued to secretly write a song every now and then. When I came to Birmingham , I found myself reconnecting with my musical roots. I started cruising music stores and buying guitars and learning about bluegrass. About 1997, I met some friends and started playing with what eventually became Shades Mountain Air, the band I still perform with a lot. Since that time we have performed in a wide variety of venues in three different states, from college campuses to professional stages and bluegrass festivals. It was a great learning time. I discovered the Carter Family, Bill Monroe-the King!--, Tony Rice, the Stanley Brothers, Ricky Skaggs, David Grisman, Del McCoury, Nickel Creek, the Bad Livers, Rodney Crowell, Emmy Lou Harris, Allison Krauss, Don Reno, old-time music, and dipped back into some old favorites-Johnny Cash, Vince Gill, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the Seldom Scene, and many others. |
Shades Mountain Air |
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During this time, two friends here in Birmingham have been a huge influence on me. One is my friend Glenn Tolbert, from whom I took guitar lessons and learned the bluegrass style of playing. The other is Herb Trotman, from whom I've bought most of my instruments at his store-Fretted Instruments of Homewood , Alabama . Herb is an amazing banjo player, a friend, and a man who respects music and musicians. |
In the summer of 2005, I went on sabbatical. As a part of that time away, I studied the creative arts-visual and musical. I spent a week in Nashville , learning about the craft of songwriting and singing at the Bluebird Café on open mic night. I worked with Barbara Cloyd, Kate Campbell and other songwriters. I came away with a renewed commitment to songwriting as a part of my calling in life. Eric Hoffer said, "Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature. "God the creator put within us all the yearning for connection, order, peace, and creativity. Songwriting and writing are how I try to do it.In a way, songwriting (or any artistic medium) is rearranging the raw material of life to give it voice or vision. Ninety percent of a good sermon or poem or song consists not in originality but in recognition-that something we had not thought of in quite that way before was as familiar to us as a recurring dream when it meets usin real life. |
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