McBride & the Ride represented Tony Brown’s most calculated attempt at mainstream success in the ’90s.
Easily dismissed as a classic label creation, the trio was intentionally assembled with three total strangers: Terry McBride was a Texan songwriter and guitarist, Floridian Billy Thomas was a drummer, and Ray Herndon was a guitarist from Arizona.
Tony Brown brought the three of them together at Fan Fair in Nashville in 1989. Story has it that he believed there was an opportunity to break a new band in Music City because he believed Alabama’s radio dominance was coming to an end.
Individually, each band-mate had an impressive musical pedigree. McBride was the son of Texan country singer Dale McBride and a veteran songwriter, Billy Thomas had been playing with Vince Gill for years, and Ray Herndon had played with Lyle Lovett since 1985.
Their collective musicianship sparkled on their 1990 MCA debut, Burnin’ Up the Road. Special guest appearances an the album also included Steve Fishell on steel guitar, Pete Wasner and Matt Rollings on keyboards, and Mark O’Connor on fiddle. Fishell had initially been selected by Tony Brown to be the fourth member of the quartet he imagined competing with another Fort Payne-foursome in purported decline, but he ended up co-producing the trio’s album with Brown instead.
On the album, McBride capably co-wrote nine of the ten songs,. The songs were melodic and strong, if unremarkable, standard neo-traditional fare of the day. Unfortunately, the collection didn’t include a signature, or even a standout, song.
Most notably the harmonies were tight; shockingly so for a manufactured trio who had no previous history of singing together.
As evidence of that magic, a power outage at a Country Radio Seminar in the middle of a McBride & the Ride set caused all the instruments to go silent, but the group continued singing and harmonizing a cappella.
Everything was seemingly in place, yet, all the pieces of the puzzle never quite fit for the outfit. As good as they sounded, their was an audible passion and purpose deficit to the overall listening experience, a case of the missing charisma.
The most common criticism was the band was just a loose excuse to promote Terry McBride.
Despite opening for the Judds while on tour, McBride & the Ride’s first two singles died upon release at country radio. Neither “Every Step of the Way” nor “Felicia” even charted.
Anyone, however, with access to CMT in 1991 recalls how insanely popular their third single, “Can I Count On You,” was. Its success as the most watched video on the channel in 1991 saved their career, and and allowed them to record two more albums with MCA. “Can I Count on You” climbed to fifteen on the Billboard charts.
The top thirty success of the follow up single “Same Old Star” largely hung on those mesmerizing harmonies.
I remember writing a review of Burnin’ Up the Road in my high school newspaper in 1992, full of hope that V’s hypnotic harmonies would catch air and the group would fully take flight.
Turns out they hovered and only hung around for a little while.
After recording Scared Ground (1992) and Hurry Sundown (1993), and managing to run four consecutive singles into the top ten, Thomas and Herndon left the trio in 1994. McBride would reinvent the Rode with new membership, but those original tender three-part harmonies were lost, even as the Ride’s sound hardened and became louder.
All three original members would go on to impressive solo careers. The trio would reunite in 2002 to record Amarillo Sky on Dualtone.
For what its worth, traditional artists like Ricky Van Shelton, David Ball, and Aaron Tippin would cover songs from the McBride & the Ride songbook.
Looking back to their 1990 debut Burnin’ Up The Road, there was a sentimental and nostalgic sweetness to the group, a quiet and old-fashioned sensibility which may have been out at odds with Brown’s goal of introducing a contemporary band to new and younger country music audience.
I didn’t watch CMT for the first time until 1993, so “Can I Count on You” has never been on my radar. I saw McBride and the Ride at Leinie Lodge at the Minnesota State Fair in 1992 so I’m sure they performed that song there but it was basically the same as an album cut for me. My first initiation with them was “Sacred Ground”, which is still my favorite of their singles. I’ll have to check it out for the first time later today on You Tube.
As a teen, I knew I had heard the name “McBride & the Ride” but just never matched it to any of their songs. Then I got a copy of “Hurry Sundown” from Columbia House and was like, “Oh yeah, THOSE guys.” After that, I actually heard both “Love on the Loose, Heart on the Run” and “Sacred Ground” on the radio within a couple days of each other and bought their entire discography. I also created their Wikipedia article, which is still a “Good Article” to this day. Apparently Steve Fishell was supposed to be a full-time member of McBride
Another curiosity is that all of their albums are the only 90s albums I’ve found that list the session musicians but don’t say what instruments they played. I usually saw that kind of space-saving tactic on cheap 70s and 80s LPs, not on a mainstream major label disc well into the CD era. I think one of Sunny Sweeney’s albums did the same thing, and Eric Church’s “Mr. Misunderstood” eschews credits entirely. Just a very strange omission.
I love harmony groups like this way too much for my own good. If they’re not the most amazing thing ever, they’re still massive comfort food for me. They slot in right next to other forgotten harmony-driven groups of the 90s like the Remingtons, the Buffalo Club, Black Tie, Corbin/Hanner, etc. Of course, Diamond Rio did that formula best by playing all the instruments themselves and having killer songs, but I think a lot of the underdog acts had some great cuts too.
MCA executives didn’t seem to know what to do with McBride & the Ride. Terry once said MCA nearly dropped them despite “Sacred Ground” going gold, for no other reason than “it didn’t go multi-platinum”. MCA were the ones who kicked out everyone except for Terry, picked new members, and renamed the band “Terry McBride & the Ride” — and two of the members they picked switched out within a year. It didn’t work, and none of the new guys played on the “Terry McBride & the Ride” album anyway, so what even was the point?
I’m glad they got back together. The “Amarillo Sky” album is strong, and their new project “Marlboros & Avon” finds them sounding like they haven’t aged a day since 1992.
(I’m assuming Peter S wrote this article?)
I liked some of McBride and the Ride songs, including “Been there, Done That” and “Sacred Ground”, but I haven’t heard them in a long time. I’ll have t see if I still like them.