Mac McAnally adds second show at Grand Magnolia in Pascagoula
Ten-time Country Music Association Musician of the Year Mac McAnally will be on stage in front of an intimate crowd of a few hundred at The Grand Magnolia Ballroom in May for two shows at the venue.
McAnally is set to play a pair of “Jazz Fest Unplugged” shows presented by Grand Magnolia Music in Pascagoula after the first show sold out in less than a week. He will play shows on May 13 and May 14.
Tickets for the Saturday show only will go on sale at noon Thursday on the venue website at www.grandmagmusic.com.
This will be McAnally’s third and fourth shows in Pascagoula in the past five years. 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 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, a Belmont, Mississippi, native, has been Buffett’s right-hand man in the Coral Reefer Band for the past 20-plus years. 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 start 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.”
