Mac McAnally

His own 1977 self-titled debut – made by accident – endures. Indeed, McAnally’s solo recordings are the secret handshake for Southern literati, recording artists who know songs, musicians seeking inspiration. David Geffen made McAnally his first signing at what was then an unnamed label that would ultimately sign John Lennon, Donna Summer, Elton John, Joni Mitchell, Guns N Roses and Nirvana; the entertainment icon told the young man from Mississippi, “I think you’re probably ahead of your time, but I think you’re a real artist, and I would like to be a patron of the arts in the old fashioned sense. I would like to fund and be associated with what you do. I don’t care what it is, and I will never tell you how to do it, and I will never tell you what to do. I just want to be connected with your work.”

That was a lot to take in for a 23 year old with a few failed albums. After all, it took his father driving him to anywhere he heard someone could play guitar to even get out of the house. Laughing now, McAnally recalls, “My dad would just take me to somebody’s house and drop me off; knock on the door and say, ‘Hey, my boy’s got a guitar like your boy does. You guys shake hands and play.’ I was really bashful, and my dad was precocious that way; he’d hear some guy was a good guitar player 40 miles away in Booneville, Mississippi, and we’d go driving up and knock on the door.”

Word spread. One day the knock was on the McAnally’s front door. Shelby Dean is looking for the 13-year-old to flesh out his country band. If Tishomingo County, MS was dry as a bone, it was also – like the movie “Footloose” – a place not big on dancing. But just over the Tennessee state line, a little over an hour away, the Circle E Club had Dean & the Reefers playing for the drinkin’, dancin’, knife-fightin’ chainsaw bearing patrons. A good Christian man, Dean promised Mac’s parents he’d look out for their son, offering, “He’s gotta learn to play with other people” as an inducement – and weekly pay of $250 as a closer.

“That was more money than my dad made teaching school, or my mom made down at the Wrangler factory. It was 1970, and Dean was a strait-laced, crew cut, God-fearing country singer,” McAnally recalls. “We had a van with Dean & the Reefers painted on the side, and he could never understand why the long hairs gave us the peace sign when we drove by. We didn’t have the heart to tell him. ”

They were playing a cocktail of Conway Twitty, George Jones, Willie Nelson with a little Jim Croce with the young teen on piano. During breaks, he’d practice acoustic guitar behind the piano to stay out of the fracas.

Tishomingo wasn’t the only dry county in those parts. Colbert County, AL, then a major recording vortex, was dry, too. So when the session players from the studios in Muscle Shoals were done, they went to Iron City, TN, too. While known for their wicked rhythm sections, neither FAME, Wishbone or Muscle Shoals had a dedicated acoustic guitar player.

Suddenly, McAnally’s in rooms with some of the ‘60s and ‘70s greatest players, including guitarist Jimmy Johnson and the ghost of Duane Allman. He’s working with legendary producers (Sir) George Martin, Jerry Wexler, and Rick Hall. He’s playing on swampy music that spans soul, rock, gospel and country, including Hank Williams, Jr.’s iconic “Family Tradition.”

All those styles only spoke to the creative mélange that was the American south. He shakes his head about the recording artist who missed their flight; the studio band booked and sitting with nothing to do.

After three rounds of all the musicians saying they had no songs to cut, the engineer spoke up for the reticent acoustic guitarist. “He was from Red Bay, the town I was born in. He knew me, and said, ‘He’s bashful, but he’s got songs. I know he’s got songs.’ They eventually got me to play something, my little song ‘It’s A Crazy World,’ which was the first record I ever released.”

“They all said, ‘Well, shit! Let’s cut a record on you!’ I thought they were nuts. But they cut a record on me, went and got a record deal. All of a sudden, these songs my parents had never heard, my friends had never heard are out, and one of them is on the radio… ”

Seems Clinton Ivey and Terry Woodford had been staff producers at Motown. They’d wanted to go back to Muscle Shoals to start a studio, but they still knew people. Not only did they get McAnally a record deal, but longtime record exec Jay Lasker, who also signed Jimmy Buffett, passed Mac McAnally on to the young Southern songwriter also trying to find his place in American music and pop culture.

“I didn’t know anybody in the business at all, but Jimmy wrote me a little note. It said, ‘We’re both from Mississippi. We’re both storytellers. We’re going to be friends.’ Who means what they say in show business? If you say nobody, you’d be more right than wrong. “Jimmy had ‘Come Monday,’ a couple failed albums, and was about to record Changes in Latitudes with ‘Margaritaville’ on it. He was riding around with all those songs, trying to figure it out. That’s when I met him. ”

A shared affinity for Southern writers including William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, as well as Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck cemented not just their friendship, but a colony of writer/artists that included Steve Goodman, John Prine, Jerry Jeff Walker, Fred Neil and Gamble Rogers, whose English professor at UVA was Faulkner. It also informed a songwriting aesthetic that was tenderly human, weighted by detail and the echo chamber of the heart.

“I took what may be average short stories and mashed them down into three minutes with a little fingerpicking, and they got a little more impressive,” he offers. “I think from the reduction sauce aspect of things, I reduced ten page short stories into three minute songs, so some details pop out a bit more. “I’ve always seen depth in just human conversation, just observing. My dad was a very observant guy. Faulkner had depth.“What he saw in people – most people might not perceive as depth, he saw it. ”

That gave me license to dig those things out, between that and all the sermons I endured going with mom, the storytellers back home, those three things made a sauce for what I think is important in telling stories.”

Barely 19 when his first album hit, just 23 when Geffen uttered the above, McAnally became a journeyman storyteller, musician, occasional, then full-time Coral Reefer, duet partner on Nanci Griffith’s seminal “Gulf Coast Highway.” What he didn’t become was bold-faced, single-named famous. But he can tell you about recording the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans and Jimmy Buffett’s vocals in Key West, marvel about Kenny Chesney driving to Canada and back to see a girl listening to his 1990 Simple Life the entire way or consider, “ridiculous things: I’ve gotten to work with [producer] Owen Bradley, open shows for Willie Nelson, play with Ray Charles and talk music with Sir Paul McCartney. I don’t mean to name drop, but I love all those people and their music.”

Awestruck, alive with reverence and joy, McAnally has no problem being unabashed about the life he’s created. Awards. Recognition. Adventure. Fellowship. Fun. Stories to tell. It’s all there.

“I say this about our business: there’s no treadmill that builds the muscle of music. The only way to do it is over and over, succeed and fail, learn from both.”

“It’s a privilege to get to play. All the things that come from music when people say, ‘I want to be a star,’ those aren’t the deal to me. That’s icing on the cake, ancillary. MUSIC IS ITS OWN REWARD. “Everything about music is wonderful. The music is the deal.”