Eric Shain

Eric Shain wrote both sides of his first record. Cheyenne Records issued it in 1978 as CH-126, pairing 'Ruined' with 'This Drunken Life'. Bob Munro produced the session, Prestar published both songs, and the MAPL logo sits on both labels.

Cheyenne was a small country label run by Don Turner out of Markham, Ontario, and Munro also produced its singles for Ed Smith and Sherry Black. Both of them recorded other writers' songs. Shain came to the studio with his own.

On June 4, 1978 the Shain Gang played the Jamboree in the Stix near Parkhill, Ontario, on a bill with Marie Bottrell, Honey West, Eastwind and Mike Mulhern, and RPM counted more than 2,500 country fans in the crowd.

The single helped keep him busy. In July 1979 RPM reported that M.C. Talent had re-signed the Cheyenne recording artist on the response to his first single, which the trade paper called 'Drunken'. Shain was spending that summer in Western Canada. He had already worked his way through much of Saskatchewan, had Alberta dates booked for July, and was due back in Ontario at the end of the month with engagements running through the rest of the year.

He kept at it for decades. On his own website Shain counted close to thirty years of performing and said he had played every province but three. He had released his eleventh and twelfth CDs, and among the shows he remembered was an evening at the Bessborough Hotel in Saskatoon, playing for a former prime minister of Canada. The Shain Gang name stayed with him, and in 2015 Eric Shain & the Shain Gang had a new CD out, recorded with the Purple Hill Show Band.

-Robert Williston