"I can play almost anything, like one of them ol Hank Williams songs. And I can sing almost anything, just as long as you can clap along." - Bobby Gene McNeely (from the song Music Man)
I got to thinking about an old friend today while puttering around the yard on the lawn mower. His name was Bobby Gene McNeely and he was a singer / songwriter and a fine musician.
Sadly Bob died, by his own hand, in 1987. Since then, I've occassionally wondered if perhaps the music industry was part of the reason for it. This evening, I thought I'd look to see what information I could find on Bobby on the net. You know what I found? Zilch, nada, nuthin. This kind of disturbed me because it almost seems like he's been totally forgotten already. I havn't forgotten about him however and I thought I'd tell the good music loving folks here his tale.
Bob co-founded a southern rock band in the early seventies called McGuffey Lane. Originally from Athens, OH the band eventually ended up in Columbus. Those were the days of John Travolta and Urban Cowboy and country music was definately hot. McGuffey Lane was the house band for a huge 3 story bar called Zachariah's Red Eye Saloon near the Ohio State campus. I was a student at the university at the time and lived within a 3 minute walk of Zachs. This came in handy on many a night when the best pace you could muster was a stagger (legal age was 18 then). I lived in a big half double house with 5 other guys all of us freshman and sophomores. There were 3 older guys that lived next door to us and one of them was Steve Smith, a solo guitar act that often opened for McGuffey Lane at Zachariah's. Steve was cool. He taught me how to arm wrestle (I saw him break a guy's arm once) and he was a wiz on the guitar. One day, I was coming home from class and found Steve playing on the front porch with Bob McNeely, frontman for McGuffey Lane. Steve introduced us and invited me to sit and listen to them goof off on guitar. This was a real treat for me because at that time, McGuffey Lane was as big to me as any band out there, even though they were mostly just a very popular local group - They were awesome. This sort of front porch jam session happened many times after that too and one of my roomates and I became friends with Bob during that time. Somewhere in there, McGuffey landed a record deal with Atlantic (ATCO). This was great news and I think it was then that Bob bought a house for his then young family. It wasn't anything real fancy, but it was a nice place in a nice neighborhood. He asked me and my roomate if we would landscape it for him (our major was horticulture). This was an honor to us, and we immediately agreed to do it.
The job took a few weeks, and many times Bob would put on some old work clothes and come out and help us out. He really enjoyed it and did whatever needed to be done. Afterwards, he would always offer us a beer or two and a couple of times he even made us lunch. I remember a thing he made once that he called gaucho Chili. Take a grilled cheese sandwich, drop it in a bowl and cover with homemade chili. Try it - it's great. He was a real straight up guy, salt of the earth type.
During this time, the band was starting to attract quite a bit of attention and started touring with Charlie Daniels and The Allman Brothers. It was about this time too that I quit school for a couple of years and went to work for a small oil drilling outfit in Houston, TX. I lost track of Bob and McGuffey Lane. One day, my boss called and said they needed me on a rig near San Antonio. I packed up my gear for a 2 week hitch, jumped in the truck and took off. As you Texans know, Houston to San Antonio is a pretty long haul and I was starting to feel it after a few hours. I had the radio on some local country station and lo and behold "Green Country Mountains", McGuffey's signature hit came on! I was estatic! McGuffey Lane was being played on Texas country radio! Those guys had arrived. I could've driven all night I was so excited.
I called my old roomate up to tell him the news, and he informed me that Steven "Tebes" Douglass, the band's superb keyboard and harmonica player had recently been killed in a car accident. What a huge bummer.
Tebes death seemed to sort of derail the band for a while and their albums did only marginally well nationally. I heard that Bob took it especially hard and had been offered to do some songwriting work with Charlie Daniels, so he moved to Nashville. Although the band stayed mostly together, they never seemed the same after that. I think too, they were probably resentful of Bobby's leaving becuase without him and Tebes, it just wasn't McGuffey Lane. Not only that, but he wrote most of their songs too.
A couple of years later I heard that Bob had come back from Nashville depressed because the Charlie D thing wasn't working out so well and by now he was divorced but had gotten engaged again. Only he discovered that his fiancee had been unfaithful. Whether or not it was just that, or perhaps it was also a sense of failure in the music biz, I'll never know, but Bob ended up shooting both himself and his fiancee to death. I couldn't believe it when I heard. He just never struck me as the type to do something like that. I can only imagine what drove him to that point. That wasn't the same guy I knew.
The band is still together today, but has only one of the original six members. They still play Bobby's old songs that got them so much mileage over the years. It's sad that there is no information whatsoever on McGuffey Lane's website about Bobby or Tebes. In fact, the website is kinda lame.
I've posted a few of the original McGuffey Lane tunes, all but one (Outlaw Rider)were written and sung by Bobby. Listen to Green Country Mountains first, it's the one they were best known for and my personal favorite. I'll leave these up for alittle while, or until I hear from ATCO's lawyers. I know Bobby wouldn't mind.
NOTE: these are in mp3 format and may not stream properly. If you experience a problem streaming, try downloading them instead.
These songs may sound a bit dated, (late 70's early '80's) but they were perfect for the times and I think they're still better than a lot of what's on the country dial these days. If you liked Pure Prairie League, you'll like these guys.
MP3s - hope these links work
Hey Dan, how do I link an image from my site rather than dropping them into these posts? I hate to use your space.
Marc
