“A Note Of My Own” with Mac McAnally

Shownotes:

Eddie and Chris join music legend Mac McAnally in a delightful conversation about music, making your mark, and leaving the world a better place than you found it. Mac is a native of Belmont, Mississippi, but he’s better known as a country music singer, songwriter, session musician, and record producer. He is an award-winning talent who has worked with country stars Kenny Chesney and Sawyer Brown, and he is a long-time member of Jimmy Buffett’s band, The Coral Reefers.

Mac’s career started at just 13 years old, when his parents allowed him to play piano in a honky tonk bar in Iron City, Tennessee. He left high school in the 11th grade to pursue his music career (which, even though it worked out for him down the line, he wouldn’t encourage anyone else to do). He sees his role in the music industry as being “Johnny Musicseed,” carrying the responsibility of helping up-and-coming artists realize their dreams.

Resources:

Find Mac online and on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and Spotify.
Find his latest album, “Once in a Lifetime,” here.

Transcript:

Chris McAlilly 00:00
All right, I'm Chris McAlilly.

Eddie Rester 00:02 And I'm Eddie Rester.

Chris McAlilly 00:03
Welcome to The Weight. [LAUGHTER]

Eddie Rester 00:05
We are so glad that you're with us. Do we... It was a little awkward.

Chris McAlilly 00:09
Little awkward. I know we're off our game. We haven't done it in a while. Let's try one more time.

Mac McAnally 00:13
That's perfect. What are you talking about?

Eddie Rester 00:19 We're gonna roll with it.

Chris McAlilly 00:20 Yeah.

Eddie Rester 00:21

Today we're with Mac MacAnally and he is a legend and a hero to many. My brother wants him to sing at his 50th birthday party. He keeps texting me that while we're doing the interview today, but also a Mississippian. And it's just just a good day to talk to someone who has honed his craft and loved his craft, and is known for his craft, as well.

Chris McAlilly 00:48

This is a fun conversation. And part of what I have been reminded about is just how powerful music is and the way in which it can connect us. Not only when we listen across time and space, when we're just in our car rocking to somebody else's tunes that were written 30, 40 years ago.

Mac McAnally 01:06 Oh Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 01:06
But to the ones that we get to experience in the room. Mac, what did you enjoy about it?

Mac McAnally 01:13

Well, I enjoy the brain tickle of going across, you know, good times, hard times that end up pretty much they petrify into all good times. All the good times and the hard times end up being good times. And actually, you just reminded me of something because I forgot that The Weight is your is your title. I gotta say one thing. One of my best friends in the world is is ukulele player, Jake Shimabukuro from Hawaii, he's like the best. He could be half as good as he is and he'd still be the best in the world at his instrument. But we're at the Newport Folk Festival. And Jake's, like, American kid of Japanese descent and he just punches up music. And he radiates positive everything.

Mac says it's perfect. We're rolling with it. Let's do.

Mac McAnally 02:04

We're at the Newport Folk Festival. It's the last year that Levon Helm was alive. And I got to work on Levon's records in Muscle Shoals when he was there. And that's, you know, that's a whole different thing. But anyway, Jake played his set. And we're doing sort of a an all skate deal at the end of the festival. And Jake comes back and goes, "Mac! Guess what?" I said, "What Jake?" And he said, "Levon wants me to play The Weight with him." I said, "That's awesome, Jake." He goes, "What is The Weight?"

Mac McAnally 02:42

So I stood off the edge of the side of the stage and I showed The Weight to Jake so he could get up on stage and play it with Levon in the finale. But since you guys are talking about The Weight, and the wait for The Weight, I thought I'd make you wait for The Weight a little bit longer at the end of the day.

Chris McAlilly 02:56
And if you like that story, you're gonna love this episode. If you're still asking what is The

Weight, you got to listen to this episode and the backlog.

Mac McAnally 03:04 All right.

Chris McAlilly 03:04
Thanks for being with us today. We really enjoyed this episode. We hope that you like it, share it with your people. We're glad that you're with us today on...

Mac McAnally 03:13 The Weight.

Eddie Rester 03:14

[INTRO] Life can be heavy. We carry around with us the weight of our doubt, our pain, our suffering, our mental health, our family system, our politics. This is a podcast to create space for all of that.

Chris McAlilly 03:26

We want to talk about these things with humility, charity, and intellectual honesty. But more than that, we want to listen. It's time to open up our echo chamber. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]

Chris McAlilly 03:41
Well, we're here today with Mac MacAnally. Mac, thanks for joining the podcast.

Mac McAnally 03:46 Glad to be here.

Chris McAlilly 03:48
We're pumped to be here. We've got Eddie at distance. Eddie, it's good to see you too, man.

Eddie Rester 03:53

I know. Y'all get to hang out with great people. And in here I am sitting in an office. Mac, I want you to know, I told my brother last night we were going to be interviewing you today. He never gets overly excited about the work I do. But last night he got fired up.

Mac McAnally 04:10 How about that.

Eddie Rester 04:11

He's been to see you in North Dallas, he and his wife, and he's a big fan of Dave Allen Coe, George Jones. All those guys you've worked with through the years, so he was pretty excited for me.

Mac McAnally 04:24

Well, my standard line is I question your tastes and I appreciate it. But honestly, somehow or other over this many decades of fooling with music I've only got maybe seven or eight car loads of fans, but they're real serious.

Chris McAlilly 04:43
Well, yeah, one of the gifts today is that we're, you know, we all have roots in Mississippi.

Mac McAnally 04:48 Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 04:49
Before we got on, Eddie, Mac was telling us a story of one of his favorite guitars and I wonder if

you might tell the story of how you picked that one up.

Mac McAnally 04:59

Oh, sure, yeah. My main writing guitar, for my whole life really, is a little 1946 single 0-18 Martin and somebody had seriously molested it for years before I was ever introduced to it. But there was a fella from Fulton, Mississippi that worked at the pants factory that had it for sale for and was asking 50 bucks for it, and it had holes in it. And, you know, you've seen Willie Nelson's Trigger, that guitar. It's not too far from there before I ever touched it once. But my dad drove me up there and and I gave the guy $50.

Mac McAnally 05:40

And my thought process was however this is, whether it's good or not, I can take it to the lake, I can take it fishing, and I can leave it in the woods and get it rained on and it won't hurt anything. It was already beat to a pulp before I got it. And it turned out to be an awesome guitar. But as soon as the $50 went out at the end of my hand, the guy grabbed it and said, "You ain't getting it back. I ain't giving you the money back." And I was like, "Well, you're not getting this back, either." You know, we both got a good deal. And I wrote probably about a third of the entire my life time catalog was written on that guitar.

Chris McAlilly 06:17
And you're saying you don't have it anymore.

Mac McAnally 06:18

I no longer have it. Kenny Chesney is a great friend. And he's been a good advocate of a couple of my best songs. He cut "Back Where I Come From," with a caveat that he said Tennessee instead of Mississippi in the last chorus. But he also did that duet with me of "Down the Road." And I wrote both of those songs on that guitar. And after we had a number one party and got a Grammy nomination, I told him I said, "I'm not a wealthy man, I can't give you something that's worth a whole lot. But I can give you something that's worth a whole lot to me." And that was probably my most prized possession. But I gave Kenny that guitar after we had that record and he cried like a baby but, and says someday it's coming back to me, but I don't want it back. It was a genuine, give it to him. But that was my favorite guitar.

Eddie Rester 07:12
Wow. You grew up in Belden, Mississippi.

Chris McAlilly 07:16 Belmont, man. Belmont.

Mac McAnally 07:17 Belmont.

Eddie Rester 07:18 Belmont.

Chris McAlilly 07:18 Come on, Eddie.

Eddie Rester 07:22
I got the first three letters right.

Mac McAnally 07:25 That's rockin'.

Eddie Rester 07:27
And you started writing. I mean, the story is that, you know, your mom played at the Baptist

Church there and your start in music was really right there at the Baptist Church.

Mac McAnally 07:38

That's true. Yeah. And she played. She was really a fine stride gospel piano player. And she played, we don't want to go technical, but she played shape notes. I don't know if you guys.

Mac McAnally 07:51

You guys know what that is. And she wanted me to learn correctly. She wanted me to learn regular classical notation. She always felt like she was somehow substandard, because she played the shape notes stuff. But in reality shape notes is a lot like the number charts that we use in Nashville, you know, if you know the shape, whatever key you're in is, you know, is a triangle. So, but she put me in regular piano lessons.

Eddie Rester 07:51 Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 07:51 Yeah.

Mac McAnally 08:21

But our entertainment, we didn't have a TV when I was growing up. We were one of the last families to get a television. And neighbors would come to our house with hymnals. And my mom would play and my dad would strum a guitar. And people would bring instruments that didn't fit together. You know, it might be a dulcimer and a saxophone. And we'd have 20 people in the house smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and stomping their feet and singing gospel music. And that's, that was my entertainment growing up and that music is really burned in on me.

Mac McAnally 08:52

And my mom, she was a really gifted piano player. I'm not, necessarily. I write on the piano. I try to emulate what I remember her doing, but I can't do it. You know, I just it makes me feel good and makes my heart open up to try to do it. You know. So my neighbors here in Sylvan Park get to hear some bad gospel music really early in the morning sometimes.

Chris McAlilly 09:15
I want to come forward to your family, but back up and just for folks who aren't familiar with shape note, I think that's a really interesting Southern tradition.

Mac McAnally 09:25

Yeah, it is. Although the music is still written out on music paper like regular music. You could read it like regular music. But there is a shape for do re mi fa so la ti do. And on the sheet music, it still has the sharps and flats like regular. So if you know the shapes of do re mi, do is the key you're in. So even if it's music notation that's written in A flat, you can play in any key.

And my mom would play with some of the quartets when they would come through North Mississippi. She played with the Speer Family and some with the Blackwoods. Back in those days, they didn't necessarily carry a piano player or an accompanist for a whole tour. They would go like 75 miles with one that they trusted. And then they have another one that they picked up, you know, halfway to Memphis or whatever. And she would do those kinds of concerts.

Mac McAnally 10:18
It's probably some pretty intersting theology.

Mac McAnally 10:18

And so I grew up sitting at the end of the piano bench with her for all day singings. And the Baptists have this ridiculous preaching competition called association where nine guys hit you with a sermon during one calendar day. And it's just broken up by occasional singing and a piece of fried chicken if you're lucky in the middle of the day. And I developed a little bit of a knowledge of music and a little bit of patience from listening to nine consecutive sermons, that I will still use to this day.

Mac McAnally 10:52

Yeah. Honestly, it did inform my songwriter... My storyteller-songwriter aspect of my life was informed by that, because what I deemed to be the best preaching out of those nine preachers on a given day. And I was a young kid. I didn't really know much about the theology of what was going on. But it did hit me that that the people who are the most effective were the ones who got you to the point of drawing a conclusion and let you draw it, rather than just beat you over the head with something.

Chris McAlilly 11:27 Right.

Mac McAnally 11:28

If you decide something is the deal, that goes deeper than if somebody tells you something is the deal. So a storyteller that gets you up to the point where you can close it is a more effective storyteller than a guy who's just bludgeoning you with his version of the truth. And so I did learn that. That has actually helped me all the way through my life as a storyteller and as a songwriter and as a brother and a Coral Reefer and an America and all those things were informed in a good way by association.

Chris McAlilly 12:03

I do think, oh, Eddie's got a question, then I'll jump back in.

Eddie Rester 12:07

I'm just thinking about your background, the family singing and as you went off to Muscle Shoals, and you began to write and do these things, how did your family feel about that? Were they supportive of you? Did they encourage you? Did they say, "what are you doing?"

Mac McAnally 12:23

You know, there aren't many musicians that are what their family wanted him to be, you know, but in reality, they tell me when I came home from the doctor's office in Red Bay, where I was born. There wasn't a doctor's office in Belmont. Slight aside, I was from Belmont and was born in Red Bay, Alabama, because it was the closest doctor's office. Tammy Wynette was from Tremont, Mississippi.

Mac McAnally 12:48

Was also born at the same doctor's office, Dr. Dempsey's office in Red Bay, because that was the closest doctor's office to Tremont as well. And Tammy and I've had this conversation a few times. I got to work on some her records and she actually sang a little harmony on my version of "Back Where I Come From." We got...

Chris McAlilly 12:48 Yep.

Chris McAlilly 13:05 How about that.

Mac McAnally 13:05
We went and got as many Mississippians as we could get up and down Music Row the day we

were doing backgrounds.

Chris McAlilly 13:10
Did you say the word Tennessee or Mississippi in your version?

Mac McAnally 13:14

Chris McAlilly 13:15 [LAUGHTER]

Mac McAnally 13:17

Honestly, I was such a... I wasn't a professional songwriter, really, I just was writing my heart, you know. And so when I wrote "paint your name on the water tank," I didn't imagine anybody more than the 900 folks at Belmont would even get that.

Chris McAlilly 13:31 Right.

Mac McAnally 13:31
Because I was just writing about that water tank.

Chris McAlilly 13:34 Yeah.

Mac McAnally 13:34

It didn't hit me that everybody had a water tank and that somebody in every town painted their name on it, you know. Kenny saw his water tank, you know, in Luttrell, Tennessee. And so it was unintentionally universal, I guess.

Chris McAlilly 13:49

I do think that that particular kind of, I guess, upbringing with a communal... For music to be a communal kind of enterprise for you and your family, I do think that that's interesting, and that, you know, there's a kind of... Shape notes singings were communal enterprises.

Mac McAnally 14:09 Sure.

What do you think?

Chris McAlilly 14:10

And then, you know, I think... I don't know. There's something that breaks down when you get the television in the room and everybody's piping in entertainment from other parts of the world.

Mac McAnally 14:18

Sure. And I probably felt deprived at the point we didn't have a TV and my friends were all talking about, you know, this episode of Andy Griffith or whatever it was that they were watching at the time that I wasn't getting access to. But in reality, I was pretty lucky, you know. And although I didn't ever really have formal theory, formal harmony teaching, you pick up stuff. And something about my nature, I always wanted to have a note that was mine. And so the neighbors that were in our house singing gospel music, were doing the regular old soprano, alto, tenor, bass, you know, that's what they were doing. And I was always trying to find a note on top of that, a little suspension--a second or a fourth or a sixth. I was trying to get a note that was just mine.

Mac McAnally 15:09

And, you know, later on when people from Nashville started hiring me to come to the studio, to do some background vocals or whatever, they would literally call and say, "Hey Mac, we want you to come up here and bring that note that you sing." Because I did it a little bit different than if you just blocked it out, like regular harmony. And I still am always looking for a little bit different of a note than the next guy down the road. That doesn't make me good or anything, but that's just my nature.

Eddie Rester 15:42

Yeah. As I think back about your career, and you know, the songs you've written, and the people you've gotten to work with and sing with and working with Jimmy Buffett, you know, you've had some amazing successes along the way. And I'm very sure you've had those projects that just, they flop. They weren't what you wanted them to be, yet, you still have this, you know, this self effacing joy in your life. What keeps you level and sane through all the ups and downs of your career?

Mac McAnally 16:14

Well, you know, I'm a small town guy, so I'm always gonna give some credit to that. What you mentioned, that sort of community spirit, Chris was... You know, I knew almost everybody in my world by the time I was six years old. And I know how what everybody does affects everybody that I care about, and the two or three folks in town that I may not care about. You see it's a nice microcosm. And being able to see how everything you do affects everybody you know, is a, I don't want to say it's a behavioral governing aspect of it, but you do see how we all benefit from one another and how we benefit from getting along--whether getting along means holding your tongue one day when you'd rather not, or whether it means going out of your way to help somebody that you know is not going to ask you for help, but you know they need it.

Mac McAnally 17:14

In Belmont, people were pretty proud. There wasn't a lot of folks that would come up and ask you for help. But it usually got taken care of before anybody ever had to ask it. And that aspect of small town, it's a big part of how I carry myself in the world. And I think... When I think about people from massive population areas in New York City--I used to say this from the stage when I was 20 years old, first starting touring it. I'm always fascinated by New York. But if you walk out the door of your house in New York, and you punch out the first person you see, there's not very much of a ripple. You can walk on and you don't really know how much you affected somebody's life or the people going on.

Mac McAnally 18:02

In Belmont, it's going to get talked about for a while. It's going to. That ripple will go all the way to the edge of your world. And you see, and I think that made me a little bit... I don't want to say a better person, but it made me more aware of how much what I do affects the people that I care about and the people that I don't. But all of it is interconnected.

Chris McAlilly 18:27
Going back to your early days, when did you start writing music? How old were you?

Mac McAnally 18:36

My sister and I made up songs on the piano before we started taking piano lessons, and that's how we entertained ourselve. I would learn how to pick out a little bit of the Batman theme. I got to where I could go "da na na na na na na na" and my baby sisters would run around in the house. And it was way before I knew that that's what I was doing. I would never have had the nerve to call myself a songwriter in a conversation or for sure on a tax return or a loan application or anything like that in those days, even after the first album came out. But that was pretty much on a dare.

Mac McAnally 19:15

And I honestly had none of the ambition that's involved in ending up in show business. I never wanted to be in the middle of a stage, have never had any desire. Well, and you mentioned earlier about keeping your head cool in the middle of working on good projects and bad projects. But one of my early assessments about showbusiness,it was a foreign world to me. But I honestly think that being up on a stage or being down in an audience and looking up, I think both of those things have an unhealthy aspect to them--being above people. You got to be careful being above people and you have to be careful ending up with the notion that you're below people, too. Neither of them. I like eye-to-eye. And I've always tried to, whether I'm in the below section or the above section, I have always tried to do some conscious leveling. I want to be... I don't want to be above or below anybody. And probably my natural opinion of myself is to go as far below as you could get.

Chris McAlilly 20:29

Yeah, one of the things I wanted to ask you about, I mean, I assume around 2015 or so was about the height of your notoriety in terms of getting awards and whatnot. And you put out a record called "AKA Nobody." I wonder kind of, at the height of the time when you were somebody, you put that out. I wonder kind of what went into that title?

Mac McAnally 20:52

Well, a little bit of it was you know, being sort of... I'm from farm people, and it's not considered a character quality to call attention to yourself. And show business is the ultimate antithesis of that, where you're pretty much dead in the water if you don't figure out a way to call attention to yourself. And I just have a natural aversion to doing that. So all my life it's been put upon whatever my work is to get whatever attention it merits or doesn't, or don't get it if it doesn't, and that's the only way I'm comfortable working. I never went and knocked on anybody's door and said, "Listen to me." I never even played the songs that were on my first album--even after they were written--I never played them for my parents. They had never heard those songs.

Mac McAnally 21:44

The fact that I ever got a record deal is like nine Old Testament miracles daisy chained together. Because, like, I would have never gone to Nashville and tried to make it from Belmont, even though it's less than, it's three hours away. Muscle Shoals, 45 minutes away. I could go there and fail and be back home by supper and it didn't cost anybody any big deal, you know. So I started going to Muscle Shoals some and I started playing in bands. I played and sang in church. I didn't really play much in church, but I sang in church till I was about 13.

Mac McAnally 22:23

And when I was 13, the first band I was ever part of--talking about your circle of life--was called Dean and the Reefers, was the name of the band. There was a guy who worked at the body shop at the Ford place in Muscle Shoals. He drove down. A buddy of mine told him that I was a good piano player. And he mainly told him that because he was quitting that band. My friend who was the piano player in Dean and the Reavers quit and told him he should hire me. So Dean came down to my parents. We sat out on the porch. He pulled up and told my parents that their 13 year old son he wanted to play at the state line in Iron City, Tennessee, in a honky tonk five nights a week. I think I was probably in the seventh grade.

Mac McAnally 23:12
And neither of my parents had ever been in a honky tonk and were never ever going to go in one. Never walk in the door of one, you know. Tishomingo is a dry county. My parents are like, one. Never walk in the door of one, you know. Tishomingo is a dry county. My parents are like, really, really, they were very accepting of everybody, but they were never gonna go in a honky tonk. And I was just figuring they were about to throw this guy off the porch. But he kept talking. He said, "I understand you want your son to be a musician?" And they said, "Yes, we do." They probably always envisioned that I'd be a youth minister of a church or a music minister at a church. I went to singing school and conducting school and that sort of stuff along the way.

Mac McAnally 23:49

He said, "Well, they tell me he's talented. And I'm a good Christian man. And I will look after him. And I'll make him behave himself. And I will drive down here from Muscle Shoals when I get off work at the Ford place, and I'll pick him up, drive him to Tennessee, and we're going to play till one in the morning. And I'll feed him and drive him back home. And I'll pay him $250 a week." Somewhere in that presentation, he got through to my parents and that Friday night, I was wearing a lime green leisure suit, which I despised, and playing country songs that I'd never heard in my life on piano. And I was a member of Dean and the Reefers. And I'm a member of the Coral Reefers now. It's, you know, gonna be 65 years old here in a couple of weeks. And there's your circle of life.

Chris McAlilly 24:37 Right.

Mac McAnally 24:37

But my parents, to their credit, were very open minded, even though they were never going to go to any of the places that I played early on. They assumed that I was going to behave the way they raised me to and that I was going to learn stuff I needed to know to go forward in music. And I did.

Mac McAnally 24:58

Even though I was scared to get off stage. When we took a break, I just laid down behind the piano. the Circle E Club in Iron City, Tennessee was rough. I mean, there were people that actually brought chainsaws in the building and revved them up instead of applause. It was rough.

Eddie Rester 25:12 Oh gosh.

Chris McAlilly 25:12
That is fantastic. What a story.

Mac McAnally 25:15 Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 25:15 That is so awesome.

Eddie Rester 25:16
Maybe we should do that in the church. Get some chainsaws in the church. It'd be fun.

Chris McAlilly 25:20
Yeah, you try that, Eddie. See how that... Let me know how that goes for you, brother.

Mac McAnally 25:26
It's something extra to be saved from.

Chris McAlilly 25:32 [LAUGHTER]

Eddie Rester 25:32

So just thinking about your parents, how long ago did they passed away? did they get to see some of the successes that you experienced? Did they get to celebrate you and celebrate that with you?

Mac McAnally 25:44

Well, my dad was assistant principal of high school when I was in high school and I left high school in the 11th grade to be in a band. So I had to sell him on that notion. And I knew I had to. I wouldn't have done it without his permission, because I knew he was gonna get more grief than I was. I was gonna be gone, you know, and he was gonna get whipped by his fellow faculty members. And he gave me permission. I made a stupid little presentation with a pie chart and everything. And maybe he at least gave me an E for effort. It wasn't a very good presentation, but he let me lead school.

Mac McAnally 26:18

So when I got a record deal, and when I got to play on some records, and it came out. I had it... The first song we put out was "It's a Crazy World." And it was some. It was a top 40 pop hit, and it was like a top 5--what was then easy listening chart--hit. And I was, you know, I couldn't believe any of it. But my dad carried a vinyl record with him the rest of his life. So it was like justification that it was okay to let me go against all of his instincts and allow me to leave school. And I wouldn't instruct anybody to leave high school. And I don't even think that was a good idea for me, at this point in time.

Mac McAnally 27:03

But by virtue of having, you know, all of those Old Testament miracles that I talked about, and probably I probably put seven or eight guardian angels in assisted living along the way, just from surviving what I survived. And the whole time, I've still pretty much attempted to behave the way I was taught to behave. I'm not, nobody's perfect, and I've done some idiotic things. But for the most part, I consider the fact that my parents are expecting me to come to the house and account for myself at the end of the day still, and I enjoy that. I like that being part of my life.

Chris McAlilly 27:42

What have you learned about just... So you put some records out, you've had some success, you've made it to Nashville, and your life has unfolded. I wonder, what do you like about the music industry? And what are some of the things that have been challenging about it?

Mac McAnally 27:58

Well, you know, the natural not fitting with the whole show business part of it, it has never changed for me. I do at this point, realize that it was actually like my calling. I feel like, when I have anything to do with music, no matter what job it is, I feel like I'm doing what I was put here to do. Not because I'm especially good at it. I just think that's what I'm here for. And I tried, I've been so lucky to do this.

Mac McAnally 28:31 What about the challenges?

Mac McAnally 28:31

You know, music, show business is like an athletic career. It's not supposed to last more than five or six years. And I have somehow or other kept an electric bill paid since I was 13, and I'm about to be 65 doing my favorite thing in the world--and incidentally, the only thing in the world I'm any good at. I'm totally worthless, you know, off the end of a guitar neck. So that's a real blessing, you know, to only have one thing you can do and for that to actually support you and it's your passion. I would rather do it than anything, and so I get to do it. You know, we're hitting the road tomorrow, and I get to do that. So extremely grateful.

Mac McAnally 28:36
Oh, I didn't mean to sidestep your question.

Chris McAlilly 29:04 That's all right.

Mac McAnally 29:19 I just ran away.

Chris McAlilly 29:21 Naw, it's good.

Mac McAnally 29:21

But no, the challenges are fighting that aspect of my nature, which is just sort of poopoos everything. But the music part is like, it's like a blessed puzzle. There's magic in music and it's one of the only things in the world that--I'm giving you the good stuff first. It's one of the only things in the world that can turn bad into good. Whatever's the worst thing that happened to you in your life can be an amazing piece of music. And it can reach across all kinds of media formats, including just oxygen, and go into the heart of somebody else that's had the same hard time you had and let them know it's a common experience and maybe voice it, define it in a way that they hadn't addressed it yet that makes them see it as something to learn and improve from as opposed to just something to survive. There aren't many things that turn bad into good at, and I get to be connected to one of those. So that's the best part of it.

Mac McAnally 30:34

You know, the challenges are anything in the world that can generate wealth and fame at an accelerated pace attracts a certain lesser aspect of human nature. Anywhere there's fast money or fast attention to be had, some of the folks that deserve those two things the least in the world will come running toward it, you know. And I'm a naturally trusting person. Growing up in small town, if somebody told me something, I believe it, you know. There wasn't a whole lot of false pretense in Belmont. And so you know, I am susceptible. I'm an easy guy to to trick because I believe everything anybody tells me till it proves otherwise. And you can go a long time in Belmont, Mississippi and not get proven otherwise.

Mac McAnally 31:31

In showbusiness, there's quite a few folks that don't mean what they're saying. So I've had to build up a little bit of a exoskeleton toward that and hope that that doesn't detract from being sensitive to the things that music comes from, and that the creativity comes from. And I don't need to go deep in conversation, but those things go deep in my life. So that's something to be aware of. And by the same token, the fact that I've been allowed to work this long, I take as a responsibility. I try to be a little bit of Johnny Musicseed, because I know there's some folks, there's some small town folks that are bashful like I was. And I wouldn't really be able to start right now in this world of The Voice and America's Got Talent and, you know, all of the Idol, the reality shows, where you can only really begin by saying, "Hey, look at me." I don't have that.

Mac McAnally 32:32

So I try to be... I've got a studio that I allow folks to use that I find, you know, and I want to be Johnny Musicseed. I want to help anybody that's trying to get better at something. I want to share whatever it is that I figured out the long way. I'd like to help them shortcut it a little bit because it's a shorter attention span world. You got less time to make a racket than you used to.

Chris McAlilly 32:54 Right.

Eddie Rester 32:55

You know, Mac, one of the things I think's interesting that you said a second ago, is that you said, you know, most folks get about five years. You know, they have this five year window. And what's interesting is that in my church when I served in Hattiesburg, Craig Wiseman's mom was in that church.

Mac McAnally 33:13 Right.

Eddie Rester 33:14
So I got to bump into Craig from time to time. And one time she told me the same thing. She said Craig anticipates he's got five years. That was when he was really starting to take off.

Mac McAnally 33:23 Right. Yeah.

Eddie Rester 33:24
He's lasted a little more than five years.

Mac McAnally 33:27 Oh, yeah.

Eddie Rester 33:28

But one question I'd follow up with what you just said is, who were some of the folks who were a Johnny Musicseed for you? Who are some of those folks early on that invested in you, that kind of saw in you something a little bit more? Who are some of those names or faces that you look back on and you are so glad they were part of your journey?

Mac McAnally 33:50

Well, I mean, there's really a bunch. But you know, I learned a lot about making records and striving for a higher level of excellence than I was privy to at that time from the guys in Muscle Shoals, from the record makers in Muscle Shoals, from the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, from the guys atWwishbone Studio that took me under their wing in the beginning, and Rick Hall of Fame Studio. It was a blessing for me because back in those days that the Muscle Shoals recording camps were all, they were competing with each other. There was a Rhythm Section at Muscle Shoals Sound. There was a Rhythm Section at Fame. There was a Rhythm Section at Wishbone, one at Broadway. They didn't cross very often. You didn't go from one place to the other, but none of them had an acoustic guitar player that was a dedicated acoustic guitar player.

Mac McAnally 34:43

And so I kind of got to be... I kind of got to cross pollinate those four schools of record making. And, you know, I was so young. I wasn't... The money that I should have been blowing on drugs and stuff, I was like, I want another guitar. I want a microphone. I wanted ice cream, but then anything that went above the ice cream level went toward learning to make something sound better. And those guys were really giving about what was important. And their whole spirit in Muscle Shoals was really, they didn't they didn't genre-ize anything. It could be Aretha one week, and Willie Nelson the next week, Paul Simon the next week and they always just like, "we're going to make a record with this person. And we're going to do the best we can do. And we're going to try to make what they do shine as much as we can make it shine."

Mac McAnally 35:37
They didn't ever say, "Let's put on our cowboy hats. We're doing hillbilly music with Willie Nelson." It was literally, "let's play from the heart and make this as good as it can be". And Nelson." It was literally, "let's play from the heart and make this as good as it can be". And that's burned into the way that I look at everything. If I'm playing on a gospel demo for somebody, that's that's still the way I look at it. If I get to play on the stage with Paul McCartney--which has happened, I can't even believe tha--it's the same thing. You know, whether I'm playing with my heroes, and I've gotten I got to play with Ray Charles. I can name drop, and still not even believe it myself when I'm saying the folks that I've gotten to play with. But it's no different than if I'm singing on somebody new that came to town's demo, because you're talking about people's dreams. I'm getting to contribute to someone's dream realization. And that's amazing. That's an amazing thing. And it's a responsibility.

Mac McAnally 36:33

I never look at being a guitar player, like, "Oh, I'm making X number of dollars for strumming a guitar today." That doesn't have anything to do with it. I'm helping somebody try to see their dream, even if I don't know what it is. I've tried to interpret it as much as I can and push it a little bit forward more than if I wasn't there. I want it to be a little better because I was there. And that's pretty much every day for me in whatever I'm doing.

Chris McAlilly 36:58
Yeah. And I think at the heart of that is this belief in the--I can't remember exactly the words you used--but the magical power of music to turn something bad into good.

Mac McAnally 37:09 Oh, yeah.

Chris McAlilly 37:10
Because most of the dreams of the people you're encountering are people that are bumping up against music as... They've encountered that power.

Mac McAnally 37:18 Right.

Chris McAlilly 37:20 At one place or another.

Mac McAnally 37:21
Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I mean, I knew that was there on the front porch at Belmont before anybody knew I could play guitar. I felt that.

Eddie Rester 37:34
Mac, my brother, he says that your best song--I texted him. He said, "Tell Mac his best song was 'All These Years' sung by Sawyer Brown."

Mac McAnally 37:45 Right.

Eddie Rester 37:46

Great song. You know, he was wondering, and this is, I was wondering as well. What's your process? How do you begin to write a song? Is it just something you have a notebook that you start sketching things into? Or do you sit at the piano or the guitar? What is your process for letting that come out of you?

Mac McAnally 38:07

Well, yeah, it changes over time, because early on things just pour out of you. And like the first four or five songs that I wrote, I literally just sang them. The first one was in a church on the piano. It was on the first album, I wrote a song called "People Call Me Jesus." And I was just sort of curious about what that vantage point would be like, and it's sort of a funny song.

Chris McAlilly 38:32 It is. It's lonely.

Mac McAnally 38:34
It is that. It gave me a little bit of... I don't want to say you feel sorry for the Messiah. But...

Chris McAlilly 38:44
Nothing's going right, man. He's lonely.

Mac McAnally 38:46

Right. Yeah, I mean, you get blamed and hollered at and. But anyway, that just, I just played a D minor chord and that song fell out. And I said, that must be how people write songs. They just sing them. And that happened about three or four times. And I acknowledge that at this point now as being more of a gift than I knew then, because I just figured that's how everybody wrote songs. And then, after five or six of those, nothing came I said, Well, maybe I gotta poke at them a little bit. Or maybe I got to take a phrase and try to turn it into a song and that so regular songwriting sort of grew out of that.

Mac McAnally 39:24

But you mentioned "All These Years." That one was one of those. I played in A minor 9 chord, and just all of a sudden saw that whole thing, and just sang it like I'd learned it out of a book. It was literally written in the amount of time it takes to play. I didn't pause. I didn't sit there and strum. I sang the first verse and the second verse and the two choruses, and that was that. And that's a gift, you know. It's not because I am gifted, it's because I'm getting the gift.

Chris McAlilly 39:58 Right.

Mac McAnally 39:59

No, I'm just the guy that's up that late that played an A minor 9 chord, you know, and maybe I was cognizant enough to remember it. You mentioned about writing stuff down. For the first, until I think maybe my fifth album is the first time that I ever wrote anything down. And my premise was that if I couldn't remember it, I didn't have the right to inflict it on the public, you know, so I never wrote things down. What is seriously flawed in that premise is that eventually you have a catalogue. And if you're a performer, you have to try to remember those things, you know, to play them. And if you've got 45 things in progress, and you're trying to remember those, too, all of a sudden, important stuff, like aunts' and uncles' names start falling off the table, you know. Things that you really need to remember, you don't remember anymore. So it hurts my hand to write. So I still don't really write things down. In the computer, I'll word process and cut and paste. That's sort of my process more now that I have more stuff to remember and keep up with.

Eddie Rester 41:08

Who are some of your favorite--nd now that we're kind of drilling into some of the music right now--but who are some of your favorite collaborators? Who are some of the folks you just love to sit and play with, dream up songs with? Who are some of those folks for you?

Mac McAnally 41:25

Well, you know, all of these years via Mr. Buffett, who I actually I meant to mention him, because he was, when my first album got signed, the same guy gave me my first record deal that gave Jimmy his first record deal at ABC Dunhill. And he sent Jimmy a copy of my first record and said, "This kid's from Mississippi like you. "He's a storyteller. He reminds me of," you know, I'm, like 11 years younger than Jimmy, he said, "he reminds me of a young you."

Mac McAnally 41:58

And Jimmy just happened to be stuck in LA for about three days. And he rode around listening to my first album, and he sent me a little note, "Hey, we're both from Mississippi. We're both storytellers. I like what you're doing. I'm going to sing some of your songs. We're going to end up making some music together. I look forward to it. We're going to be friends."

Mac McAnally 42:17

And that probably meant more than anything up to that point professionally, because I looked up to him. He was a great writer. I'd sat on the porch and figured out how to play "A Pirate Looks at 40" and, you know, a couple of his early songs and he's a hometown... As he says, he's from the fun part of Mississippi, down there closer to the saltwater than I was, but somebody from my home state that made it, that did well, it made potentially making a living in music seem less hypothetical, the fact that he was doing it.

Mac McAnally 42:53

And via him, all of those things came true. He sought me out. We wrote songs. He recorded. "It's My Job" was first song of mine that he ever recorded. And he had a hit record with that. And then he'd call me occasionally, "You want to write?" "Yeah." I'd go hit the road and became acquainted with his whole touring company. The Coral Reefers, it's like second family to me now. I've worked with those guys, I've worked on the records back to 1980. And worked on the road since my kids got up enough that they could come out and hang with us in the summertime. And at this point, my oldest daughter married Mike Utley, our keyboard player's oldest son. We got second generation Coral Reefers in the family now, so it is a big circle of life that way, too.

Mac McAnally 43:44

But so Buffett and everybody in that organization, you know, I write a lot with Pete Mayer, the lead guitar player in the band. He's phenomenal. Pete and Jim are the sons of Lutheran missionaries. They grew up in India, with a big Lutheran family there, so we have in common the juxtaposition of faith and the music business. And we have a lot of things that we see similarly, and Pete's an amazing singer. So being able to write for a guy that's a way better singer than me is kind of fun, too. But honestly, I enjoy, from a collaboration standpoint, I don't think there's any situation that I don't look at as a way to learn and take something good from and maybe leave a little something good there.

Chris McAlilly 44:35

You know, as you're talking and just thinking about you guys going out on the road and being back, presumably with a bunch of folks who maybe haven't been to a concert in some time and...

Mac McAnally 44:46 That's right.

Chris McAlilly 44:47
Maybe kind of reengaging with some of their favorite music again. I went to a concert, Eddie and I both went with our wives who are both big Indigo Girls fans.

Mac McAnally 44:58 Right.

Chris McAlilly 44:58
This was in Tupelo or, no, this was in Oxford.

Eddie Rester 45:00 It was in Oxford.

Chris McAlilly 45:01
At the Lyric. And we were there. And it was the first concert that I had been to on the other side of, you know, the pandemic.

Mac McAnally 45:08 Sure.

Chris McAlilly 45:08

And I'm not... I mean, just, you know, don't hold this against me, any Indigo Girls fans out there, but I'm not a huge fan. And so I was watching people who loved them. It was almost like an insider/outsider experience.

Mac McAnally 45:20 Sure.

Chris McAlilly 45:21

But I mean, it felt like church, you know. It felt like a group of people who, there was this energy that was feeding from the stage to the crowd, and back and forth. And everybody knew those songs. And those songs is, to use your words are burned into people's hearts.

Mac McAnally 45:37
They are. Absolutely they are. Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 45:38

And it was incredibly powerful to see this thing happening. And it was transcendent. It really was. It was powerful. I wonder how that has felt for you? Or what do you anticipate as you get back out on the road? What do you... Just tell us about that from your side.

Mac McAnally 45:56

Well, I never, I never miss an opportunity. In every Buffett show, he leaves the stage, he empties out the stage and I play the my little version of the Allman Brothers "Little Martha," that sort of whiz bang instrumental thing. It's not as hard as it sounds. But at any rate, I get the stage. And I'm sort of the generic country duet partner for Jimmy. I get to be George Strait and Alan Jackson and Zac Brown, whichever, Kenny. You know, I'm the guy with this accent that can sing duets with Jimmy. So I get plenty of stage time during the course of his show.

Mac McAnally 46:38

But I never, at my own Joe's and Jimmy shows, I never miss the opportunity to say how much it means to play with people, for people. You know, I don't think I ever really took that for granted. But I also never valued it as high as I do now, after that stretch of time, which for me, was largely in this room that we're sitting in right now. I did a lot of singing into my phone, you know, for various causes. And Jimmy and I, for the first several months of the pandemic, we did Fridays, where they would they would assemble 40 first responders and healthcare technicians that were huge parrot heads. And Jimmy would answer questions, talk to them individually, call them all by name, asking them how they're doing and how they were fairing, make them feel more important than us. Because what they were doing was more important than what we were doing. It wasn't patronizing. It was honestly more important than what we were doing.

Mac McAnally 47:40

But we did the only thing that we're good at, to try to help the people that are doing the most important stuff in the world. And we did that Fridays for a while. And because it's a zoom, you can't really play together. We couldn't sing harmony with one another, even though we tried it a couple times. But you know, the timing doesn't work out. But I played a song and Jimmy played a song. And playing into your phone, you know, it's amazing that we get to do that, that that's part of this pandemic as opposed to back when it was scarlet fever and everybody was literally locked in their room and best case scenario, your grandmother's reading to the office scaffold outside your window. But there was no cable, there was no internet, you know, in prior pandemics before. So we're lucky to have what we had. But by the same token, we're so blessed to get to return to be in the presence of people. And what that means to us on the stage and what it means to folks--I've been in the audience and on the stage and it means a lot in either direction.

Eddie Rester 48:42

Well, Mac, I just hope and pray that it's a great tour, that y'all have a great five, six weeks out on the road, that it's all that you've all that wanted. Thank you for your gift and your graciousness, spending some time with us. And just thankful for your music and thankful for the stories you shared with us today.

Mac McAnally 49:05

Oh goodness. I appreciate the privilege, and I consider everything that's happened, for the most part since I was 13 years old, a privilege, including some of the stuff that people count is dues paying. I enjoyed that, too. I've ridden on top of the gear in the back of the U-haul trailer, it had no windows in it, because I was the new guy in the band. And it was too close to the ceiling for me to turn over so I had to decide if I was gonna go face down or face up, which I prefer face up by the way, if it ever comes up.

Mac McAnally 49:38

And also I enjoy flying on Jimmy's plane to a really nice hotel where I don't have to lift my bags in my 60s. I appreciate all of that, too. And the Mac gigs that we're going to play at the end of the Jimmy run, I'm not flying to those. I'm driving in my truck or a rental car, but I appreciate all of that. And, you know, it doesn't matter if anybody, if it's a big crowd or a little crowd, just the fact that we still get to do it is amazing and I appreciate you guys helping with the outreach program that I don't personally have.

Chris McAlilly 50:14
Mac, thanks so much. Thanks for your time. Thanks for your presence. Thank you for your music. Thanks for the time

Mac McAnally 50:21

You guys keep rocking it in Mississippi. I tell everybody spare time is our major export. And there's not as much of it as there used to be still, but we got more than a lot of folks do, and it's a good thing.

Chris McAlilly 50:32 Indeed.

Eddie Rester 50:33
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.

Chris McAlilly 50:42

If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to th weightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]