About the time ‘She Doesn’t Cry Anymore’ peaked on the charts in the fall of 1988 we were opening up at a show in Louisville, KY for Eddy Raven.  All the sudden the sheriff’s department pulled up, while we were sound checking, with a document that said we couldn’t play there that night because there was a local band that owned the trademark on the name ‘Shenandoah'.

 

So we called our manager and explained what was going on and he assured us that there was nothing to worry about and that we should ‘hang tight’ and he’d take care of it.  So we’re just hanging out at the venue waiting for him to call us back.  Later on we finally get the call from him that he’d taken care of it and that he’d explain everything after the show.  So we went ahead and played and couldn’t wait to hear the story about what had happened.

 

It turns out  there WAS a band that owned the trademark on the name ‘Shenandoah’.  And in order for us to play the show that night (that we were getting probably $2,500 on) our manager did a deal with these guys, without our consent, to pay them $25,000.  We were furious!  We always felt he did that deal just so he could get his 15% commission on the $2,500.  That’s not a decision that HE should’ve made.  That’s a decision that WE should’ve made!

 

Looking back over my notes we never did like the way he handled us anyway.  He was ALWAYS harping on ‘don’t talk to anybody else’ but him.  Plus at one point according to my notes, there was some kind of ‘shady’ deal with one of the high-up record label execs getting a percentage of us ‘under the table’ too.  My notes said that he insisted that we not mention that to our attorney.  I don’t think that deal ever happened but it just makes you wonder about what kind’a people you are in bed with.  It wasn’t too much later we fired him.

 

By the time ‘Mama Knows‘ peaked there was another band in Las Vegas claiming they owned the trademark on the name ‘Shenandoah’.  And right behind them came another one.  And they both wanted a LOT more than $25,000!  A WHOLE LOT MORE!

 

We went to our production company that named us in the first place and told them that we couldn’t afford to pay these people.  We said we’d be willing to work to pay a third of all this but that because it was them that named us to start with and didn’t do a trademark search and because they were getting a ‘piece of us’ that  they should pay a third and the label should pay a third and we’d pay a third.

 

The label agreed with us that we all had a lot to lose and a lot to gain and was willing to pay their part.  The production company however, just absolutely refused to help in any way.  You know my daddy always told me that ‘greed’ will get you every time.  Greed for money, greed for control, greed for recognition…..   Some people’s whole lives get eaten up by ‘greed’ and when it takes them down, they don’t care who they take down with them.

 

I’m not saying that production company was ‘greedy’.  I’ll let YOU be the judge. I’m sure if you ask them they would tell this story completely different.  But by the fall of the next year, we were in bankruptcy court.