SHENANDOAH
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The van burns
The ‘Top 10’ success we had with ‘She Doesn’t Cry Anymore’ started bringing us more dates. By the time the year was over, we had been gone from home 310 days. Matter of fact we had t-shirts made up, which I still have one of, saying ‘I survived 310 days with Shenandoah’.
Toward the end of that single we had been on a run down in Austin, Texas and we were on our way back home to Muscle Shoals to record what became the biggest album of our career; ‘The Road Not Taken’.
New Boston, TX just west of Texarkana.
That’s where our van burned out from under us that Sunday morning driving home to record the ‘Road Not Taken’ album
It was a Sunday morning, I’ll never forget, because we had to be in the studio the next day to record on Monday. It was just after sunrise and we were just about to cross the state line From Texas into Arkansas….about 15 miles from Texarkana….New Boston, TX to be exact.
We had a little bed in back of the van where 3 of us could sleep.
We were piled on top of each other most of the time.
We all slept on top of each other in that van and I had just woke up and crawled over everybody to get up between the front seats when Marty, who was driving, looked in the side mirror and said, ‘Man! I think we’ve blown an engine. Smoke’s just boiling back there’. So we pulled off the side of the interstate and opened up the side door only to be pushed back by the flames that were blazing up from underneath the van right in front of the door. We yelled ‘FIRE!’ and woke everybody up to get out. None of us had shoes on because we had just woke up and we all jumped through the fire to escape.
This is the spot on I-30 where our van burned. You could see the charred asphalt for years but now it’s gone.
Once out, we knew we had to unhook our trailer from the van. All of our gear was in there and if we didn’t get it off quick it would burn up. So we all got back up there behind the van and started trying to pry the trailer from the hitch, when all of the sudden BOOM!!!! Man, we scattered like a ants on an ant-bed thinking we had surely gotten blown up! We thought we’d gone to ‘Hillbilly Heaven’. As it turned out, it was only one of the tires blowing from the fire. So we got back up there and 3 more times the same thing happened. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Of course it scared the crap out of us every time. But we finally got the trailer off and rolled it back to safety.
I remember us standing there on the side of the interstate barefoot, while cars whizzed by, looking at that van blazing right in front of us and not really knowing WHAT we were gonna do. Some guy pulled up behind us and said he had been coming down the interstate from the other way and turned around because he saw us driving down the road with a huge fire underneath us and wanted to know if he could help. That’ll just go to show you that people are ‘good’ at heart. At least they are in Texas…I believe everywhere tho. We have a picture somewhere of the van after it was completely burned up. I’ll try and find it and get it on here if I can.
There was an older couple too, that had a house next to the interstate and saw what was going on and they brought a bucket of water and an old-timey pitcher to drink out of and gave us cold water do drink. And that interstate was HOT on our bare feet by then. Wasn’t that nice of those folks?!! I’m tellin’ you folks are ‘good’ at their core…for the most part.
Anyway….that guy that had turned around, it ends up owned a trucking company down the road and drove us down there so we’d have a place to make arrangements to try and get home. It was Sunday, remember? So there was no car rental places open…there was no airport there…nothing! And we didn’t know HOW we were gonna get home. We were still 500 miles from Muscle Shoals and were suppose to be in the studio the next day and not a clue HOW we were gonna get there.
After exhausting ALL options, there was this kid there that worked at this guy’s trucking company named Eddie McGill that volunteered to drive us all the 500 miles home, back to Muscle Shoals. So we all piled into his Bronco II. 7 of us in a Bronco II.
Eddie McGill. The guy that drove us 500 miles home so we could record our biggest hits the next day.
Have you ever been in a Bronco II? We might as well have been piling into a phone booth like they used to do back in the 50’s. Three of us were behind the backseat and the hatch door (myself included). It wasn’t very comfortable, to say the least! But ‘ole Eddie…he saved the day. If it weren’t for him, we might not have been able to record “Two Dozen Roses’ and ‘Church On Cumberland Road’ that next day. So let’s ALL thank Eddie!
THANK YOU EDDIE!!! Eddie has gotten into EVERY show he’s come to since, for FREE! Always will…..
I had forgotten but my sister Jan pointed out that the next morning someone sent us a copy of their local paper with a headline that read, “HOT NEW GROUP BLAZES TRAIL ACROSS TEXAS”. haha How funny!