McGuffey Lane

McGuffey Lane is an American country rock band from Athens, Ohio, and/or Columbus, Ohio, United States. The group was formed in 1972 by Terry Efaw and Steve Reis, who played together under the name Scotch & Soda. After adding songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist Bobby E. McNelley, they branded themselves McGuffey Lane, the location of Reis's Athens, Ohio, home. The band eventually expanded to a sextet and became well-known locally, releasing their first album on their own Paradise Island record label. The LP sold more than 40,000 copies, and eventually resulted in their signing with Atco Records. They reissued the debut in 1980 and toured with the Charlie Daniels Band, The Judds, and the Allman Brothers Band. The follow-up, Aqua Dream, featured the single "Start It All Over", which spent three weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 97 in February 1982. The group scored several minor hits on the country charts, but their label wanted to market them more as a pop-country act in the vein of Alabama. They moved to Atlantic Records to focus more on country chart success, but as they prepared 1984's Day By Day, keyboardist Tebes Douglass was killed in a car crash. Soon after, Bobby Gene McNelley left the group to pursue a solo career as a songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1985, McGuffey Lane was dropped from Atlantic. In 1986, they released a Christmas album in support of the Central Ohio Lung Association; toward the end of that year, they inked a sponsorship with Miller Beer, but a planned comeback fizzled. The group played into the late 1980s but had dissolved by 1990. In 1995, they reunited after releasing a greatest hits album, and continued performing locally in Ohio into the 2000s. Two full-length releases followed the reunion, in 1998 and 2002. On August 18, 2009, they opened for Lynyrd Skynyrd at The LC in Columbus, Ohio. In March 2010, Lick Records signed a distribution deal with E1 Entertainment, which allows the new McGuffey Lane album to be sold in Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

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