Shenandoah is an American country music group founded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama in 1984 by Marty Raybon (lead vocals, acoustic guitar), Ralph Ezell (bass guitar, backing vocals), Stan Thorn (keyboards, backing vocals), Jim Seales (lead guitar, backing vocals), and Mike McGuire (drums, background vocals). Thorn and Ezell left the band in the mid-1990s, with Rocky Thacker taking over on bass guitar; Keyboardist Stan Munsey joined the line up in 1995. The band split up in 1997 after Raybon left. Seales, Munsey, Thacker and McGuire reformed the band in 2000 with lead singer Brent Lamb, who was in turn replaced by Curtis Wright and then by Jimmy Yeary.

The band achieved its biggest hit in 1990 with the three-week number-one single "Next to You, Next to Me." Written by then-solo singers Robert Ellis Orrall and Curtis Wright, this was the first of five singles from Shenandoah's third album, Extra Mile. "Ghost in This House," "I Got You" (co-written by Teddy Gentry of the band Alabama) and "The Moon Over Georgia" all peaked in the Billboard top ten between late 1990 and mid-1991, with the latter two reaching number one on Gavin Report; "When You Were Mine," the fifth single, stopped at number 38 on Billboard in 1991. Also that year, the band won the Academy of Country Music's Vocal Group of the Year award. Alanna Nash of Entertainment Weekly gave Extra Mile a B rating, saying that it was "unflinchingly commercial" but adding that "the band goes beyond Alabama's jingoistic flag-waving and Restless Heart's vapid mood-brighteners to showcase intelligent ballads and jaunty rhythm numbers." An uncredited review in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said that the band "proved that no matter how overcrowded the field is, there's always room for quality." Extra Mile earned a gold certification in the United States. Following the release of Extra Mile, a band from Kentucky threatened to sue Shenandoah over the use of the name Shenandoah. After a financial settlement was made with the Kentucky band, two other bands filed lawsuits over Shenandoah's name. The lawsuits depleted the money earned by the band on the road, which led to the band asking the label and their production company to all pay one-third of their legal costs. The production company refused, and Shenandoah was forced to filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in early 1991 after paying more than 2 million dollars on court settlements and legal fees. Although the lawsuits allowed Shenandoah to keep its name, the bankruptcy filing terminated the contract with Columbia after a 1992 Greatest Hits package. The production company's officials then filed a lawsuit against the band, claiming that it had tried to void its agreement with them. After Shenandoah's departure, there were no other bands on Columbia's Nashville division; as a result, producer Larry Strickland assembled three musicians to create a new band called Matthews, Wright & King in an attempt to keep a commercially successful band on the label.

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