After receiving his
BA in music from
Pennsylvania State University in 1969, Reid would perform as a pianist for the
Utah Symphony Orchestra,
Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. When he abandoned his football career, he formed a band and began playing at a Holiday Inn location across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, then abandoned the idea of performing in bands and began playing solo at the Blind Lemon, and in the process, beginning to write his own songs. Living in Mount Lookout, he drove Eastern Avenue daily, and slowly "Eastern Avenue River Railway Blues" grew out of that. After a gig in Atlanta, Reid and some other musicians attended Southeastern Music Hall about 3:30 a.m. A cassette tape of that session somehow found its way to Jerry Jeff Walker, who, in 1978, became the first artist to record a Reid song, that being "Eastern Avenue River Railway Blues". In 1980, Reid moved to Nashville, and quickly became known as an in-demand songwriter for
Ronnie Milsap.
Larry Gatlin also helped Reid spearhead his songwriting career. In 1984, Reid won a
Grammy Award for Best Country Song with "
Stranger in My House", which was recorded by Ronnie Milsap. Reid would also contribute compositions to artists such as
Marie Osmond,
Tanya Tucker,
Collin Raye,
Alabama, and
Conway Twitty. In the 1980s and 1990s, Reid wrote 12 No. 1 singles including "
Forever's as Far as I'll Go", which was recorded in 1990 by
Alabama; their 29th number one country hit. He was also featured as a guest vocalist on Milsap's "
Old Folks", a No. 2 hit from early 1988. He also co-wrote, with
Allen Shamblin,
Bonnie Raitt's hit "
I Can't Make You Love Me", which reached #18 on the Billboard Pop Charts and has been covered by countless artists. In 1990, Reid signed to
Columbia Records as a recording artist. His debut album
Turning for Home produced a No. 1 country hit in its lead-off single "
Walk on Faith", although the album's other singles were not as successful. His second album, 1992's
Twilight Town, produced two singles which both missed the Top 40. A third album,
New Direction Home, was released two decades later in 2012 by the small Off Row Records label and is available on iTunes and Spotify as well as in an mp3 download from Reid's website. By 1991, Reid composed the music for the
Civil War musical
A House Divided. Over the following two decades, he wrote more
musicals, including
Quilts,
Different Fields,
Eye of the Blackbird,
Tales of Appalachia,
In This House, and
The Ballad of Little Jo, a 1997 winner of the
Academy of Arts and Letters' '
Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater'. In 2019, he again returned to the musical theater stage with
The Last Day, a commissioned production co-written with NYU Tisch School of Performing Arts Assistant Dean, Sarah Schlesinger, for Reid's alma mater, Penn State. ==Discography==