SHENANDOAH
Official Page
First Album-Shenandoah
So we went back into the studio and finished recording the last few songs on the album (yes, we actually had a ‘album’. You know…one of those little plastic discs that look like a flat Frisbie?), shot the album cover and turned it into the label.
Marty doing vocals on our first session
We felt it was ‘so-so’ at best, and Rick decided to release what WE thought was the worst record on the whole album….a song called ‘They Don’t Make Love Like We Used To’. But what did WE know? He’s the guy that produced umpteen-thousand hit records. All I know is it was embarrassing to perform. It wasn’t that the song itself was bad…it was actually a well written song, written by my dear friend and room-mate (and eventually our first road manager) Billy Henderson, we just didn’t like it for US.
It was a 50’s ‘do-wap’ kind’ve thing. Some of the lyrics were “Shoo-be Do-wap, wap, wap shoo wad-do wa, na na na na, na na na na na” If we’d have only been ‘Shanana’.
Jim and Walt Aldridge horsing around on our first session
We didn’t grow up in the 50′s, Rick did. But Rick tends to push his weight around whether you like it or not and we didn’t really know what we were doing at the time, so we just went with it. As a note…Robert Byrne, our co-producer didn’t like it either. But they put it out there and it peaked at #58 on the Billboard charts….just about what we expected out of it. I don’t mean to sound like I’m Rick-bashing. We are ALL thankful for the opportunity he gave us. If it hadn’t have been for him Shenandoah would’ve never happened. But anybody will tell you that knows him (including himself), he’s hard to work with.
I remember the day I heard our record on the radio for the first time. I was with my other room mate, Bobby Tomberlin who went on to co-write one of Diamond Rio’s signature hits, ‘One More Day’. (I’m still so proud of him and Steve Jones who I went to high school with, for writing that song)
My dear friend Bobby Tomberlin who was with me in my car the first time I heard Shenandoah on the radio.
Bobby co-wrote ‘One More Day’ for Diamond Rio.
It was exciting, but we kind’a cheated a little….we called and requested the new Shenandoah song on the radio. That’s how we heard it. We were sitting in my 1979 Thunderbird outside the apartment at Pickwick Village apartments….just me and Bobby. Is that cheating? haha Bobby and I wrote a lot of songs together back in that day.
Next we released one of the songs that Robert had found and produced called ‘Stop the Rain’. Rick and Robert co-produced, but they both had their favorites and tended to let the other kind’a take the reins on the ones they liked best.
Robert Byrne and Mike in the studio
Most of the guys in the band will tell you that it was Robert that had the ‘mojo’ as far as we were concerned, and we really trusted in him and felt like he was PART of the band……like a sixth member almost. He never got the credit he deserved as our producer.
‘Stop the Rain’ was a really awesome song written by Waylon Holyfield and Richard Leigh, and the whole band fell in love with it the first time we heard it. It probably would have been one of our biggest hits if it had been released later. It peaked at #28 but it finished up better than our last.
Part of the problem with these single releases is that our label didn’t really want us if you remember, and they hardly put any promotion behind us. Remember the ‘Shooters’? That’s who they were behind in the beginning. Their first single I think made it into the top 10 but their second and third and forth singles kept doing worse than the previous ones. Ours was just the opposite. So when our third single ‘She Doesn’t Cry Anymore’, written by Robert, made it to #9 with hardly any promotion, our label kind’ve woke up and said, ‘Hmmmm, wait a minute…maybe these Shenandoah kids are better than we thought’.
And that’s when everything changed……