It doesn’t look like my Mac McAnally interview for Stomp & Stammer will be available online, so I’m putting the article up here. It’s a pretty interesting piece about a modest cult artist who’s written plenty of hits and recently became a chart-topping country artist. There’s not much political content, but here’s a link to a patriotic fan-made video for the first single from McAnally’s new Down by the River
album. And here’s a McAnally quote that didn’t make the article, although it helps explain how the guy has spent a long career impressing both rednecks and the intelligentsia: “I’m always a little bit of a devil’s advocate. In Toby [Keith]’s circle, they all think I’m a liberal. When I’m with the [Jimmy] Buffett band, they all think I’m an emissary of Fox News.”No Problem Here
Avoiding Attention Pays Off Just Fine for Mac McAnallyJohn Prine. Don Williams. Dean Dillon. Those are just a few of the great American songwriters who could be sitting anonymously in the chic lounge of a midtown Manhattan hotel. But none could be as anonymous as Mac McAnally, despite—or maybe because of—his stint this year as a #1 artist on the county charts. That came courtesy of proper star Kenny Chesney, who insisted that the songwriter share a performing credit after joining in a verse on the McAnally-penned “Down the Road.”
To be fair, McAnally’s taped appearance on
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon hasn’t aired yet. Maybe somebody would notice him from that. McAnally certainly hasn’t changed since he made his self-titled debut album back in 1977. Maybe he’s a little less cherubic, but the massive mop of red hair and matching full beard is pretty distinctive. That’s the same distinctive face on the cover of his new album
Down by the River.
Which, incidentally, isn’t what Mac was promoting on Jimmy Fallon’s show. He was appearing in his usual role as sideman to Jimmy Buffett.
“Yeah,” says McAnally, “I’ve been playing live with Jimmy since 1996. He gives me a little showcase in the middle of the concert, and we do a short acoustic set together. I’ve also been guesting with Kenny on some live dates. I’ll be doing some solo shows on nights off to promote the new album, and I’ve done a few interviews here in New York. It’s mostly been people who are just curious about why a guy my age is still around. Either that, or it’s people who go back to the beginning.”
That would be fans like myself, who were listening when “It’s a Crazy World” made it into the Top 40 as McAnally’s first single. It seemed like a promising start for a songwriter who was barely out of his teens. That was before 1978’s
No Problem Here kind of bombed. Nobody cared that the twisted humor and sharp insight worked as a Southern-fried companion to Warren Zevon’s
Excitable Boy. By 1980, RCA had signed McAnally up for the fine
Cutting Corners. That one might have launched McAnally into the realm of lite-pop heroes like Michael Franks and Jim Photoglo.
But
Cutting Corners didn’t sell, and the casual observer might have thought McAnally was set to join Dean Friedman and Starbuck as the quirkiest one-hit wonders of the ’70s. That’s when McAnally’s career became one of the more fortunate stories in rock ’n roll.
“The regime was changing at RCA,” explains McAnally, “and David Geffen came along and bought my contract. I knew RCA wouldn’t be pushing the album, but there was David telling me that he wanted to be an old-fashioned patron of the arts. He didn’t care if I was commercial or not. He just wanted to be connected with what I was doing. That was pretty inspiring. I remember writing ‘Old Flame’ on the way home from that meeting, which became a big hit on the country charts for Alabama. I was going every which way musically, but I knew that David Geffen was there wanting me to keep working.”
Geffen, of course, already had his plans to move from artist management to record mogul. McAnally would end up as the first act signed to the Geffen label.
“Actually,” McAnally notes, “there wasn’t even a Geffen Records yet. My contract was with ‘an as-yet-unnamed joint venture.’ It took me about three years to get the next record ready.
Nothin’ But the Truth came out in 1982, and that was probably my biggest attempt at doing something that wasn’t natural. It’s nothing embarrassing. I was in love with a lot of Steely Dan records, so I was trying to expand my harmonic knowledge. I fooled around with a few things during the ’80s. By the time that
Live and Learn came out in 1992, I was back to that narrative storyteller kind of thing.”
That stretch between
Nothin' But the Truth and
Live and Learn was also when McAnally became a popular country songwriter. He was having a fine time raising his children, hanging around the house, and thriving despite some classic industry woes.
“I had signed a contract at the beginning of my career,” he explains, “and now it’s framed on the walls of lawyers’ offices as the deal you shouldn’t sign. I was a teenager from Mississippi, so maybe I can be excused for signing this all-inclusive deal that covered management and production and everything else. But the way the publishing deal went, I owned the publishing rights to any of my songs that didn’t go on my albums. My publishing company was flourishing, and I was playing on sessions and getting to sing. Then I started producing bands. It gave me plenty to do while I was trying to work out my contract and make another album for Geffen.”
McAnally was also spared trying to launch a career in the video age. Things were tough enough for a burly and bearded redhead back in 1977. There wasn’t a stylist alive who could’ve gotten McAnally on MTV.
“Yeah,” agrees McAnally, “I was never going to be a visual artist. My heroes were literary guys. Flannery O’Connor was my big influence. Writers were third-person voices, so I never even thought of myself as being there in the song. You know, I grew up on a farm where you were told it’s a character flaw to draw attention to yourself. I’m not comfortable doing it now. Fortunately, that’s put more pressure on my songwriting to bring in whatever attention I can get.”
McAnally would wrap up the ’80s with the joint release of
Finish Lines and
Simple Life on, respectively, Geffen and Warner Bros. He wouldn’t be free from his contractual debts until he was released from MCA after 1994’s
Knots. (“It’s good to know a friend’s doing you a favor when you’re dropped from a label.”) Geffen brought McAnally back for 1999’s
Word of Mouth on DreamWorks, and then the songwriter went indie for 2004’s
Semi-True Stories.
McAnally wrote plenty of hits for country artists during all this—but nothing suggested that he’d be topping the country charts as a performer in 2009.
“I’d written ‘Down the Road’ 21 years before on a Christmas morning,” McAnally recalls. “It was a very organic song, and making the record with Kenny was just as organic. He called me up and asked me to come over because he was going to record one of my songs the next day. He didn’t know which one. We decided to do ‘Down the Road,’ and Kenny asked me to join in the last verse as a duet. There wasn’t any A&R input, no drums, just me on two guitars and Erik Darken beating a wooden box. I never thought any of that would make me somebody.”
Fortunately, that fluke stardom would also lead to the release of
Down by the River. McAnally’s dedicated fan base—and he has one—is used to waiting long years for a new album.
Down by the River is yet another fine collection of catchy country-pop and gorgeous balladry. You also get a typically sardonic novelty tune, and one of McAnally’s genuine tearjerkers. In this case, it’s a salute to selflessness called “You First.”
“There probably wouldn’t be a new album if it hadn’t been for ‘You First,’” McAnally says. “I wrote that thinking it could be a big hit for someone, so I went to my manager—who’s also Toby Keith’s manager—asking him who I should pitch it to. He told me he’d listen to it and give it some thought. He called me back 20 minutes later saying, ‘You sing this. This is you.’ I told him that it wouldn’t be as big as a hit. He said he didn’t care, that I had to sing this song. Nobody had said that to me in a while.”
Typically, McAnally also had to be reminded that it’s a good idea for a #1 country artist to try putting out an album.
“I’m a hard worker as far as being a songwriter,” McAnally says, “or working in the studio, but I haven’t always been the best ambassador of my own work. I’m never going to be the kind of guy who seeks out the spotlight. When I’ve written something that sounds like a hit over the past 20 years, I hand off the baton to one of my buddies who has a bus payment and a personal trainer and a career already going. That’s worked out good for everybody.”
It’s worked out well enough for McAnally to join the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007. McAnally also remains busy with other people’s tours and producing other people’s albums—ranging from Little Feat to ukulele whiz kid Jake Shimabukuru. It’s a busy career from a guy who could’ve long ago dropped out of the industry.
“It’s true,” agrees McAnally. “There’s every reason to think I’d be gone by now. I’ve received a couple of big honors over the past few years that all feel like Lifetime Achievement awards. You’re supposed to be finished after you get a few of those, but I feel like things are just starting. I realize I’m very blessed, and I can enjoy the process a lot more now—whether or not the audience knows who I am. But there are times when I wish I was a better guitar player.”
