(Here’s an article I just found that I wrote back in the early 90’s. Since then McGuffey Lane has regrouped and still going at it, playing about 30-40 dates a year throughout central and southern Ohio.)
From the mid 70s until the early 80s, McGuffey Lane simply was Ohio’s best band. Based out of Columbus, their popularity extended south through the Ohio River Valley and throughout towns and college campuses through the Midwest.
When the band was at full strength it was loaded with talent, easily besting other popular country rock bands of the time. The Marshall Tucker Band, the Charlie Daniels Band, the Outlaws, Lynyrd Skynyrd. McGuffey Lane might not had been as popular as any of them, but they were better than all of them.
The McGuffey Lane era officially ended this fall with a farewell tour and final concerts in Dayton, Cleveland, Athens (where they first started) and finally in their home of Columbus.
McGuffey Lane will be remembered as another one of those Ohio bands that just didn’t break it nationally. There was so many of them at the time. Out of Columbus there was McGuffey Lane as well as Spittin’ Image, MSB, the Generators, Love Affair, Deadly Earnest and an endless line of Cleveland bands: Tin Huey and other groups out of Akron. Why any of them never made it God only knows.
McGuffey Lane was the best of a pretty god batch of regional country rock bands. Buckeye Biscuit, Deadly Earnest and the Honky Tonk Heroes and Flatbush all had their moments, but all played second fiddle to McGuffey Lane.
But McGuffey Lane’s run was as good as any of them. Give national releases, concerts across the country. They played Charlie Daniels’ Volunteer Jam and opened for many national country and rock acts. 15 years of peaks and valleys and accomplishments and disappointments and good times and tragedies. Yes, they had a good run…
It all started when Steve Reis met Terry Effaw at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and they shared their mutual interest in rural music as well as rock and roll. They met Bob McNelly and Steve Douglas and named their band after an Athens street. As they developed their sound, their popularity stretched and slowly grew through the Ohio Valley and especially in the Columbus area. A local musician named John Schwab started to open for them and they liked him so much they asked him to join and they were on their way.
By the late 70s their popularity had them as the most popular band on the Columbus bar and central and southern Ohio college campus circuits. They played extensively, traveling throughout the Ohio Valley area, night after night of playing in bars and gymnasiums.
It was at this time when they were probably at their finest. They were writing, arranging, and performing the songs that filled their first two albums and then some. Their sound came from a variety of influences, from Jimmie Rogers to the Grateful Dead to the Rolling Stones to the Monroe Brothers. Almost everyone in the band contributed songs. McNelly’s would be about rural life and broken love and Civil War heroes. Schwab’s ballads and upbeat tunes about confusing women. Reis’s rowdy ballads.
Intertwined amongst their own music were their covers, diverse and unpredictable, many becoming standards for their concert fans. McNelly and Douglass’s version of “Panama Road,” Schwab’s version of “Danny’s Song,” Reis’s vocals and Effaw’s picking on the band’s medley of bluegrass standards, the band would jam in their mix of “Can’t You See” and “Hey Jude.” They would even at times use Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” as an encore, “Red Neck Mother,” “She Used to Love Me,” and “Brown Eyed Girl” were other popular concert tunes.
In 1980 they released their first album, just plain “McGuffey Lane,” and it is still a classic. One of only a few (I can think of four others) albums where every song is great. Originally released on their own Paradise Island Records, and later released nationally by Atco, the album is one great song after another, filled with introspective, yet simple, lyrics, electric, acoustic and pedal steel guitars, and unbelievable vocals and harmonies. It was the Marshall Tucker Band meeting the Grateful Dead meeting James Taylor and the Monroe Brothers all at one time. Any of the songs on that first album became signature tunes, especially “People Like You,” “Long Time Loving You,” “Green Country Mountains,” and “Stay in Love with You.” If you see a copy of this in a used record store someplace, buy it. You won’t be disappointed.
In 1981 they released the follow up, “Aqua Dream,” a very good album. A mixture of songs they had been doing for years (“Tennessee,” “Don’t You Think About Me When I’m Gone”) and newer material, the album featured more of the same sounds. A national release, the album had a guest appearance from Charlie Daniels. Several of the songs got airplay on country stations nationally, the album’s two best tunes are the Bob McNeely ballad “Fallin’ Timber” and Stephen Reis’s signature tune “Outlaw Riders.”
Both of the first two albums made a lot of noise in central and southern Ohio, and got some play here and there across the country. It got the band some pretty good work, most noticeably touring with Charlie Daniels and playing the Volunteer Jam.
Hoping to make it in main stream country, the band in 1982 relocated to Nashville, where they recorded their 1982 release “Let the Hard Times Roll.” A risky career move, the album didn’t do what the band hoped it would do. It didn’t make a dent on country charts and no air play on any rock stations outside the Columbus area. Things stalled for McGuffey Lane.
It was while they were recording their next album that tragedy first struck the band. Heading back to Columbus from a gig in Dayton, keyboardist Tebes Douglass got involved in a serious accident, lay in a coma for several days, and then died. Although the band would play on for over seven more years, a part of McGuffey Lane’s unique sound was gone and the first of several major setbacks struck the band.
The next release, 1984’s “Day by Day” was a mixture of their original sound and their Nashville influence. Longtime fans found enjoyment in several selections, including “What’ll You Do About Me,” “Jamaica in my Mind,” and “The Legend.” A good album, but like its predecessors, it never caught on beyond its regional following.
Tragedy and disappointment would strike the band again. Frustrated by their lack of national success, lead guitarist and singer Bob McNelly decided to leave the band and strike out on his own. As short time later, for unknown reasons (isn’t this always the case), in his Columbus apartment, he shot and killed his girlfriend and then turned the gun on himself. Things once again permanently changed for the worse for McGuffey Lane.
I remember seeing the McNelly-less McGuffey Lane at a Cleveland bar gig before his suicide and asking one of the other band members if they had seen him lately, and he just rolled his eyes and said “I wish I knew what he was up to. He acted real weird the last time I saw him.” What a shame it was.
After the loss of two of its main pieces, the band shifted a great deal in its style and purpose. Faced with the prospect of getting real jobs or to continue to make music, the band changed its concert format to that of a party/dance band. Their live shows became more and more cover tunes, and their own music took a back seat.
On stage together they were a powerhouse. Stage right would be keyboardist/harmonicist/”voice” musician extraordinaire, Stephen “Tebes” Douglass. On bass would be founding father, Stephen Reiss. Center stage would be the very talented Bob McNeely, doing vocals and telling his stories in song. Next to him would be John Schwab, just as talented as McNeely. Then on pedal steel would be the band’s best musician, Terry Effaw, ironically the only one who never sang. They went through a variety of drummers until in 1981 settling on Dave Rangeler, who proved to be the best of the bunch.
And now 15 years later it has ended and time marches on. It’s been six years since Douglass’s death in an automobile accident. Five years since McNelly’s suicide in his Columbus apartment. The band played on through the 80s, adding several new members and becoming more of a bar party band.
So where do we go from here? Steve Reiss states he’s “finally going to use my degree” and do commercial artwork in the Columbus area. Terry Effaw has some studio work lined up. John Schwab has just released his first studio album. Dave Rangeler, along with Casey McCowan (who joined on as a keyboardist after Douglass’s death) are reforming a hard rock band they had in the 70s. All of them state they are going to try to stay away from any real jobs that might come their way.
Record history
Find notes from the night at Peabody’s
And in closing, this writer would like to thank McGuffey Lane for all the good times and for all the different types and styles of music they turned me on to. They were the first country rock band I had ever seen live and they turned me onto bluegrass music. This 33 year old high school teacher once was a 20 year old college student listening to McGuffey Lane and hearing them play outdoors on beautiful springtime days in Delaware County, Ohio. When the beer was cold, the girls were entrancing, hearts were young, and McGuffey Lane music was in the air. They have been a part of me since then and they always will be. As long as Traveling Circus Inc. owns Tommy’s Tavern, there will always be McGuffey Lane on the jukebox, and as long as I stay young at heart there will always be that occasional moment when I get out their albums and take off to the rodeo or to some green country mountains.