Songoftheday 8/27/18 - The road I have traveled on is paved with good intentionsm and littered with broken dreams that never quite came true...
from the album Big Iron Horses (1992)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #11 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 13
Today's song of the day comes from the country band Restless Heart, who was one of the first acts after Alabama to be able to cross over into pop radio, landing a top-40 hit in the summer of 1987 with "I'll Still Be Loving You". Two more songs from the album it came from, Wheels, also reached Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart: "Why Does It Have To Be (Wrong Or Right)" (#11) and "New York (Hold Her Tight)" (#23). The following year, the group released their next album, Big Dreams In A Small Town, and even though they landed four top-5 country hits from the set, including two #1's in "The Bluest Eyes In Texas" and "A Tender Lie", nothing clicked on pop radio, which had by then eschewed country music altogether. After that came Fast Movin' Train, which sported another pair of top-5 country hits, but clearly the momentum was heading a bit south (the title track did the best at #4). The band recapped their career to that point with a greatest hits set, which included another top-3 country single with "You Can Depend On Me", and a re-release of earlier ballad "'Til I Loved You" from their debut that put them back on the Adult Contemporary chart at #33 (an early return to the pop-oriented format). However this compilation saw the last (at the time) of lead singer Larry Stewart, who left to pursue a solo career (in 1993 he had a top-5 country hit with "Alright Already").
Continuing as a quartet of guitarist Greg Jennings, keyboard player Dave Innis, bassist Paul Gregg, and drummer John Dittrich, they released their fifth studio album Big Iron Horses. Jennings and Gregg sang lead on part of the album, but it was Dittrich's Don Henley-esque voice that was front and center on the first single, "When She Cries". Written by Sonny LeMaire from Exile and Marc Beeson, and produced by the band with Josh Leo, the soft-rock throwback would fall more into the Bolton-Dion sound, and go on to be their biggest success on mainstream radio...
"When She Cries" came one notch from reaching the pop top ten in America in January of 1993. The song spent seven weeks at #2 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") radio chart, while on their Country Airplay chart it peaked at #9. Internationally, the single climbed to #6 in Canada.
The second release from Big Iron Horses, "Mending Fences" (sung by Gregg), which got to #13 on the country chart, followed by the Dittrich-led "We Got The Love" peaking at #11 on the country list. But during the promotion of those singles, Innis would leave the band a trio. A fourth single from the album, "Big Iron Horses", stopped at #72 on the country chart in the U.S. Also, saxophonist Warren Hill featured the group as singers on his single "Tell Me What You Dream", which would end up being their highest-charting hit on the Adult Contemporary chart, spending a week at #1. The track, co-written by Timothy B Schmit from the Eagles, came so close to reaching the pop top-40 at #43, and did go all the way to #14 in Canada.
With Dittrich, Gregg, and Jennings remaining, the trio released their next album Matters Of The Heart in 1994, but at that point even country radio was moving on, with lead single "Baby Needs New Shoes" stalling down at #52. At that point, the rest of Restless Heart would call it quits for then. Dittrich would form another band, the Buffalo Club, who landed a top ten country hit in 1997 with "If She Don't Love You". A year later, Stewart reunited with Dittrich, Gregg, and Jennings to record a pair of songs for another greatest hits set, and "No End To This Road" returned them to the country top-40 at #33. In 2002, Innis also came back, and the original lineup released their most recent studio album Still Restless in 2004. The album's lead single, "Feel My Way To You", is their latest country chart hit at #29. They continue to tour and hope to release new music soon.
(Click below to see the rest of the post)
Here's the band (reunited with Stewart) in 2007 in concert...
...and lastly from an appearance on the Huckabee show on Fox...
Up tomorrow: The new Sexagenarian goes low.
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