Ten-time Country Music Association Musician of the Year Mac McAnally has been the right-hand man in the Coral Reefer Band for Jimmy Buffett for some 25 years or so now.
And his longtime association with the Pascagoula native has made McAnally a favorite in Buffett’s hometown.
McAnally is set for a triumphant return to Pascagoula this summer, as he is scheduled to play at The Grand Magnolia Ballroom on Saturday, June 17th. Tickets are already on sale at www.grandmagmusic.com as well as at Scranton’s Restaurant in Pascagoula. The show will start at 7:30 p.m.
This will be McAnally’s fifth show in Pascagoula in the past six years, and he’s once again back by popular demand. He played a pair of consecutive sold-out shows last year in May just several days after he and Buffett led the Coral Reefer Band on stage at Jazz Fest before 80,000 fans. In addition, he also accompanied Buffett in his performance on the beach in The Flagship City in 2015 and Buffett also joined McAnally in his first show ever at The Grand Magnolia in 2017.
“I’m a Mississippi guy,” McAnally said, “I like coming back home and playing my songs. I like playing my own shows in small venues because my music is like a story you would tell to a small room of friends.”
McAnally is a Belmont, Miss., native, and his 10 CMA MOTY Awards is a record in that category.
The multi-talented McAnally is also a member of the Nashville Songwriters’ Hall of Fame, the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame, the Alabama Music Hall of Fame and was nominated for a Grammy Award. He was also honored recently with having a star dedicated in his name on the Music City Walk of Fame in downtown Nashville
McAnally has also written numerous top hits over the years for the likes of Kenny Chesney (“Down The Road”), Alabama (“Old Flame”), Shenandoah (“Two Dozen Roses”), Sawyer Brown (“All These Years”, “Thank God for you”) as well as Steve Wariner (“Crazy World”) and Sammy Kershaw (“Southbound”) among others.
Buffett has also covered many McAnally songs such as “It’s My Job” and Buffett and McAnally’s rendition of Mac’s song “Back Where I come from” in Buffett’s live shows have become a crowd favorite all over the world. Chesney also had a number-one hit with that song.
“I’ve been around storytellers all my life, Southern whittlers and guys at the courthouse,” McAnally concluded. “I’ve listened to the melodies in their conversation, the rising and falling. I’ve watched how they use their hands and tried to translate that into music. I’ve read a lot of Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor, you know the Mississippi writers. I’m definitely not in their league, but I’ve tried to write as if I were cooking short stories down to a reduction of three-minute songs. It’s not that I’m a brilliant guy or anything; that’s just the way I work.”
