Remembering Brian “The Furrier” Furlong – legendary musician and lover of waistcoats

As the brothers and friends of Brian “The Furrier” Furlong lifted his wooden coffin, a great wave of applause rose through the crowd.

Music played through the speakers of the Our Lady of Consolation Church in Donnycarney on the morning of 26 August. 

It was a recent live version of Furlong playing “The Lonesome Boatman” on the low whistle – a fixture in his repertoire.

Overhead, a seagull glided under the ornate roof of the huge church. It landed, and looked down.

George Furey, of The Fureys, says a friend beside him in the pew leaned over and asked if he thought that was Furrier.

Could be, Furey says he told him. He probably wants to know is there many here! he said.

With a whistle

While his tin whistle would soundtrack his final journey, it also first kicked open the doors to the life of music that Furlong – known as a kind, funny and powerful musician – went on to live.  

Furlong learned the instrument as a primary student in Scoil Chiaráin in Donnycarney, picking it up from Flann Ó Riain, an Irish teacher and cartoonist for the Irish Independent.

“Brian always attributed his skill to Flann,” says Sean Furlong, his younger brother.

The house that they grew up in was also musical, says Sean. Many of the siblings played guitar.

Brian was the seventh of 10 siblings. Sean was the youngest.

Older brother Joe would busk on Grafton Street with their neighbour Barney McKenna, the legendary banjo player and an original member of The Dubliners, Sean says.

Brian was always very generous, says Sean. “He gave me more pocket money than our dad did. He’d no bother give me 50 pence, when Da was giving me 25.”

Back then, Brian had a good sales job with a company called Ticher International, which would ship goods such as watches from the former Czechoslovakia, says Sean.

He would travel abroad for work, says Sean – an early introduction to the life of a touring musician.

Brian would work other jobs too – from sales positions to Christmas postman – but the music was always his big love, says Sean.

Looking back

Brian was about 15 years old when he started hosting jam sessions with friends in their home, says Sean. By then, Brian played guitar and bass, and was a gifted singer.

In the late 1970s, he got some of his first professional music work, playing in the live band for pantomimes.

In the mid-’80s, his folk group Moonshine took off. Furlong’s whistle was at the core of their sound.

The Isle of Inishfree, played by Brian "The Furrier" Furlong

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Banjo player Gerry O’Connor first met Furlong around 1984, he says. He was auditioning for Moonshine.

Ireland was in the midst of a grim recession, O’Connor says. There was little work for musicians, especially traditional musicians.

O’Connor – who would eventually take up banjo duties with The Dubliners after Barney McKenna died in 2012 – got the gig. He was delighted to suddenly find himself with a packed diary, he says.

The Moonshine line-up included Furlong, O’Connor, Colm Mooney, Donal Nagle and Rory McKeown.

They had regular shows in venues like the St Lawrence Hotel in Howth – now Findlaters – and a contract as the house band for Jury’s Irish Cabaret, O’Connor says.

With the cabaret, Furlong and Moonshine toured America and elsewhere.

“I remember we did something like 95 concerts in 100 days. It was full-on,” says O’Connor. 

But they were well-drilled by Jimmy Potter, the producer, says O’Connor. “We got a really good grounding in stage craft. Brian was just great with the audiences.”

Band members were expected to dress well, he says. Their audiences were often high-falutin.

It came naturally to Furlong, known all his life as an impeccably snappy dresser. “He was the best-dressed man in Ireland,” says O’Connor.

At his funeral, among the items brought up to the altar was a waistcoat. He had many, Sean says. “That was just part of his life.”

Paul Harrington – who along with Charlie McGettigan would go on to win the Eurovision in 1994 with “Rock ’n’ Roll Kids” – remembers his first taste of touring with Furlong and Moonshine.

Moonshine brought Harrington on a tour of The Netherlands around 1986, as their bass player, he says. “Brian was the happiest bloke I ever knew in them days. He was just absolute fun.”

The gang all travelled by van and ferry over to the continent. 

Breaking down on a Dutch motorway, needing a tow – nothing got Furlong in a bad mood, says Harrington.

One night in Amsterdam, after a few jars, the pair found themselves wandering through the red-light district.

“We were full of bravado and then, realising where we were, terrified out of our minds,” says Harrington.

Propositioned by a woman, who quoted her price to them, the pair were “like scared cats running away”, Harrington says.

Whenever the pair met after that tour, Furlong would lean over to Harrington, he says, and whisper “fifty guilders”.

The road became a huge part of Furlong’s life.

Sean recalls slipping on ice outside Killester DART station the same day he received a postcard from his brother from Bermuda.

In 1994, while having dinner in a rotating restaurant in Texas, Brian got big news. 

His partner Rhona was pregnant. That November, their daughter Jess was born.

A father

Brian and Rhona would eventually split when Jess was one, but the pair stayed friends. Furlong always played an active role in his daughter’s upbringing, she says.

“We were always best friends,” says Jess. “He didn't know how to say ‘no’ to me growing up. He always wanted to keep me happy. He was a great dad. He really was. And very thoughtful.”

She remembers regular trips to Howth together. The pier, ice cream and seal-watching. 

She remembers trips to Pride & Joy, the toy shop in Donaghmede Shopping Centre.

She also fondly remembers their visits to the house of songwriter Pete St. John, the author of folk classics “The Fields of Athenry”, “The Ferryman”, and “The Rare Ould Times”.

“Dad and Pete were always working away together on something. I’d be there playing away with Pete’s dog,” Jess says.

St. John and Furlong were close friends always, says Sean.

In the ’80s, St. John ran a show called “Dublin in the Rare Ould Times” in the Gresham Hotel, says Sean. It mostly catered to Americans.

Punters would get a bowl of coddle and a pint of Guinness. Ballad groups like Moonshine would perform live.

Sean recalls one Sunday in the Gresham Hotel in 1985.

He was working the show as a roadie, he says. “As the show is finishing, who walks in but Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemons. They were just after playing Slane!”

Furlong encouraged Jess to learn the guitar herself when she was younger. He taught her a few chords, then set her up lessons in the Clontarf School of Music.

Jess once asked her dad why he was so attracted to the life of a musician, and life on the road, she says.

“I didn’t understand sometimes why he wanted to be tired all the time?”

But with her dad’s encouragement, she started getting up and singing in public herself. The penny dropped.

“I said to him, ‘Oh, I get it. It’s because it’s making everyone else happy’. He loved that side of it,” she says.

In later years, she asked him to teach her the bass. He wouldn’t have the patience, he told her.

“Is that a you-problem or a me-problem?” she asked him.

He wasn’t sure, he said.

Now, Jess has her dad’s Tanglewood acoustic guitar at home. She plays it often, she says. “It’s part of him.”

Supporting the next

Furlong was always supportive of younger acts, says folk-singer George Murphy.

Murphy always knew the name “The Furrier”. But it wasn’t until shortly after Murphy’s break on You’re a Star in 2003 that their paths crossed in the RTÉ studios.

Furlong was in Montrose playing a session with balladeer and pal Patsy Watchorn. “He just came over and he says, ‘George, you're flying it, kid’”.

Murphy started to go see Furlong play in the Lower Deck regularly. He found himself moving in the same circles.

A strong friendship blossomed, he says. “He was always very young at heart. He never talked down to people that were up-and-coming because he had been there, done that.”

“He was always embracing people coming through and trying to clear a path for them. He was always interested, and always wanted to help,” Murphy says.

When approached to start an informal Monday night session in the Beaumont House in 2022, Murphy asked Furlong if he’d be interested in coming down the first night. To kick things off with a bang.

Furlong rarely missed a Monday session after that, says Murphy.

Paul Banks from folk group Madra Salach says the first time they played together as a band was in 2022. It was an open session in the 1884 pub on the Malahide Road.

Furlong, who gigged and socialised there a lot himself, was listening that night. He liked what he heard.  

He arranged Madra Salach’s first ever paid gig, says Banks, a weekend slot in the 1884.

He continued to line them up with paid work – in the 1884, Raheny Inn, Raheny GAA Club.

“He was incredibly supportive, allowing us to borrow gear free of charge and giving us much needed advice,” Banks says.

“Without him, it’s doubtful that Madra Salach would exist at all.” Banks said.

Always in demand

He was a natural musician, says George Furey. “Anything he picked up, he was good at,” he says. 

After his time with Moonshine, Furlong played and recorded with many others –  like The Dublin City Ramblers, The Kelts, The Fureys and Patsy Watchorn.

George Furey first got to know Furlong when they would both gig in the Wexford Inn.

After Finbar left The Fureys in the ’90s, George said it felt like they were starting all over again.

Eventually, they asked Furlong if he wanted to come on the road with them. He accepted.

For a while, they were billed live as “The Fureys and Brian Furlong”.

Furlong went on to record with the band on the 1996 album May We All Someday Meet Again.

Said Furey: “We travelled so many roads together. He was a great man to be around.”

Furlong also shared many’s the stage with Finbar Furey, after they met in the 1980s.

“We became good friends through the music,” Finbar says. “Brian was a very funny character, full of stories and craic. He was always great and easy company.” 

Himself and banjoist Gerry O’Connor reunited in the early 2000s, several years after their Moonshine days.

They took a regular “corporate gig” playing at the Jameson Distillery, for tourists and other functions, that lasted until 2015, O’Connor says.

In 2013, Furlong was invited by Pete St. John to perform his song “The Fields of Athenry” on his behalf in the Aviva Stadium when Liverpool played Celtic in a pre-season friendly.

Jess bragged to friends that her dad, a huge Liverpool fan himself, was singing in the Aviva, she says.

“Furrier was more than just a fellow musician, he was my friend,” says Watchorn, formerly of The Dubliners and The Dublin City Ramblers. “He always referred to me as Da. There's only 10 years between us.”

Every night onstage with Furlong was a new adventure, says Watchorn. Never knowing what antics he’d come up with next, he says.

“He had this incredible ability to live in the moment, and it was infectious,” he says.

Watchorn retired from touring in 2014. But they stayed in regular contact, he says.

“When his name popped up on the phone and I heard, ‘How's it goin' wack?’ I knew what I'd be doing for the next hour – breaking me bollix laughing. Even when life took us in different directions, our friendship endured,” Watchorn says.

Peace, love and Temu

Near the end of 2024, Jess was with her father at his home in Donnycarney when he suddenly took ill and had to be rushed to hospital.

In the moment, Jess thought her dad was having a stroke, she says. It turned out his blood sugars were very low.

In February, tests revealed that he had cancer. It had already spread.

Chemotherapy wouldn’t have helped much, Jess says. “He was terminal at that point.”

After he became sick, Jess says her father told her that he made his peace with everything in his life.

The life of a musician isn’t always easy, says Sean Furlong.

He reached great heights with his music but, with that, musicians miss out on so much – weddings, parties, family events, Sean says.

Everyone always understood that this was the path Brian chose, he says.

In his last few years, Furlong developed another love, Jess says – the online marketplace Temu.

Packages arrived non-stop, she says, filled with random stuff.

His house was full of Dublin flags ordered from the online store, says Jess, a display of avid support for Dublin GAA.

When Jess was feeling low, she says, he gifted her a torch to brighten her mood.

Another time, Jess returned from her dad’s house, with a new Stanley knife, a bottle of calamine lotion and a small deck chair for her phone.

When Sean was with him in the hospital, not long before he died, Brian asked him to drop up to his house to collect a Temu parcel.

Sean asked him what was in it. He had no idea.

He said it was like Christmas, said Sean. He didn’t know what he was getting because he couldn’t remember what he ordered. 

A few days after he died, Jess says, a Temu package arrived. It held two Liverpool tops, tongs, and a case for a zippo lighter.

The Furrier

In June, friends and family threw a huge party and music session in Clontarf Golf Club for Furlong.

It would be his great farewell.

Watchorn, who made a rare stage appearance, says he is grateful to have had the chance to share one last show. To celebrate his life, he says.

“It was a fitting tribute to a man who lived life on his own terms,” says Watchorn. “There are so many stories, but as we say, what goes on tour stays on tour.” 

Brian “The Furrier” Furlong died in Beaumont Hospital on 21 August, with Jess by his side.

A few weeks earlier Jess had told him that, every year on his anniversary, she would have a big session for him. “He seemed happy with that.”