Kenny Chesney had a multi-week No. 1 smash in 2009 with "Down the Road." The song was written by Mac McAnally, who, as an artist, had previously charted with the song.
Nowadays, you can find McAnally rocking out on his guitar as part of Jimmy Buffett's Coral Reefer Band. He's also an acclaimed songwriter, having penned songs for Buffett, Alabama, Steve Wariner and many others, in addition to Chesney. And he travels around the country performing in his own shows.
Here, in an exclusive HNGN interview, McAnally gives the inside scoop on how Chesney came to record "Down the Road." It might not have been a winding road that lead Chesney to McAnally, but it was a long one. Twenty years long.
"Having Kenny Chesney cut my song two decades after I had it on the charts as a singer was an amazing experience," says McAnally. "You can give Kenny personally a whole lot of credit for that. Maybe the song gets a little credit for not being dated. It was a good song 'back in the millennium' when it first came out, but Kenny deserves the credit for being a good ambassador of a song.
"He heard that song all the way back then and said, 'Man, I'm cuttin' that someday.' When the time came, he called me up and said, 'What are you doing tomorrow?' I said, 'Nothing.' He said, 'Come on out to the studio. We're going to cut one of your songs and I don't care which one.' That's not an insult to 'Down the Road,' as much I took it as a compliment to me for my songwriting.
"Anyway, we got to the studio the next day and Kenny said, 'What song do you want to cut? I know a bunch of your songs.' I said, 'It don't matter to me. I know a bunch of my songs, too.' Then he said, 'Well, I don't have any kids of my own, but, if I did, I think I would want to tell them what you told your kids in that song 'Down the Road.' So let's sing that.'"
Chesney and McAnally turned the song into a duet - which put McAnally back on the charts.
About that day in the studio with Chesney, the hit songwriter adds, "In this rocket- science-uber-demographic-marketing world of country music, that's about as basic and organic as you can get a song cut - 20-some odd years after it was written. I love that it happened that way and I'm a lucky son of a gun!"
Check out Chesney and McAnally performing "Down the Road" during one of Chesney's concerts:
"You know," continues McAnally, "Kenny didn't pick the song because he's a father. He picked it because he was thinking about what a father would think. That's pretty strong. We don't give artists credit for stretching their actual lives very far into something they can get behind and sing. But in the case of Kenny, he could hear in that song that it meant something to the guy that wrote it and could therefore extrapolate that it might mean something to the guys that hear it or the moms that hear it or the sons and daughters that hear it.
"Kenny's got a great ear for songs. That's a tenant of his whole career. He has certainly been a fine ambassador of a couple of my best songs, 'Back Where I Come From' and 'Down the Road.'"
So, what was the spark that caused McAnally to write "Down the Road?"
"It was written on Christmas morning 1987," he recalls. "I was doing some of that 'assembly required stuff' that dad's do sometimes. I was putting together an action mountain deal for my daughters and it had some moving parts. So, I had a frustrating couple of hours of construction and then I sat down. I was feeling pretty good about having everything working and set where it was supposed to be set.
"It was close to daylight when the kids were going to wake up. I just went out and sat down on the porch. I picked up a little bitty Martin guitar that I had layin' there. I was thinking about family. I know what I meant to my parents and I know what my kids mean to me, so I kind of had a nice picture of the family going forwards and backwards. So I wrote 'Down the Road' about that."
That moment remains something special to the singer-songwriter.
"Even with everything wonderful that's happened with that song, my personal favorite memory of that song is sitting there that Christmas morning thinking I was in a pretty good place and that I had things momentarily figured out," he explains.
When asked if he has a favorite line in "Down the Road,' McAnally doesn't hesitate.
"It's easy to say my favorite line. It's 'Is he washed in the blood or just in the water.' It's my favorite because I grew up in the church and me and my mom were at gospel singings at least once a week the whole time I was growing up. So I liked the notion of getting married and her momma wants to know am I washed in the blood or just in the water. I've sung 'washed in the water' in gospel songs just about every Sunday of my life. And I had never heard that comparison - you know, did you just shower off or were you washed in the blood.
"Getting that line in the chorus was kind of a big deal for me. It had some of what my faith meant to me. It had some of what family meant to me. And it had some of what, as a dad, someday I'd want good things for my son-in-laws. I had two daughters then. I have three now. So, I guess I was prophesying about things to come."
McAnally may have been prophesying about the marriage of his daughters, but even someone with a crystal ball could not have foreseen the incredible journey "Down the Road" was going to take - from that cool, crisp Christmas morning sitting on his porch to the top of the charts. That's actually more than a journey - it's an adventure.
