SHENANDOAH
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1988 The Real Beginning
1988 was the beginning of us seriously hitting the road and starting to make things happen for Shenandoah.
They had finally released the third single off of our first album called ‘She Doesn’t Cry Anymore’. The first two singles had bombed! But that single put us on the map. It made it all the way to #9 on the Billboard charts and really opened the door for our next records.
After going in the studio in the spring of that year and recording ‘The Road Not Taken’ album, the label decided to include ‘She Doesn’t Cry Anymore’ on this album. They wanted to have something on the new album that the public would recognize. There was no way to know the success just around the corner that this album would bring us.
The single did well enough that we played ‘Nashville Now’ for the first time on the Nashville Network.
Empty set of the ‘Nashville Now’ show. We must’ve played that show 50 times.
‘Nashville Now’ was ‘live’ in those days and it’s pretty nerve-wrecking doing ‘live’ tv I’m here to tell you. We must’ve done that show 50 times over our career but it ALWAYS made me nervous. I can still remember our first night on there, they had a guest host for Ralph Emery who was the regular host. That night Florence Henderson was doing it.
Florence Henderson hosted ‘Nashville Now’ the first time we played it. So sweet!
She was the mom on ‘The Brady Bunch’ and was probably the first ‘big star’ we’d ever met. She was nothing like Carol Brady tho. Cuss like a sailor! She could make a bootlegger blush! Nah…just kiddin there! She was such a nice lady. Had you going there for a second tho..huh? hahaha
Another big thing we got to do that year was play the band ‘Alabama’s ‘June Jam’. Alabama opened the door for self-contained bands like us, Restless Heart, Sawyer Brown, the Headhunters and all the other guys like us that call themselves a ‘band’. Up until then if you were a ‘group’ you were like the Oak Ridge Boys or something and had your band play behind you.
Alabama’s ‘June Jam’. We played here in 1989.
But Alabama played all their own instruments and WAS the band. So to them we will forever be grateful. Plus that June Jam was the biggest crowd we’d played in front of at that
The ‘Grand Ole Opry’ the first time we played it.
That summer we played the ‘Grand Ole Opry’ for the first time. And what a THRILL that was for us. All of our parents got to come too and I believe that might have been the proudest any of them had ever been of us. The Grand Ole Opry… Wow! They actually asked us to be members a year or so later but by that time we were neck deep in litigation over the name ‘Shenandoah’ and had to work as much as we could just to pay the legal bills and all the other ‘Shenandoah’s out there for the name. The Opry required members to play at least one weekend out of every month there and we couldn’t afford to take a night off every month to go play it. We had to make money…and fast!
One of our biggest disappointments was not being able to accept the Opry’s invitation to be members. We’d be Grand Ole Opry members today if it weren’t for that. &*)^$##&#&*%$@@*
The first time we played the Opry, we got to meet the late great Roy Acuff. Here we are with him in his dressing room.
One great thrill that night was them taking us down to the late great Roy Acuff’s dressing room. We got to take a picture with him and he was so gracious and nice. Ole Roy….one of the legends of country music.