Mac McAnally’s song “Down the Road” has reached no. 1 on the Billboard country singles chart this week: “Kenny Chesney Takes “Road” to No. 1“. Mac is also nominated with Chesney for an Academy of Country Music Award in the category of Vocal Event Of The Year.
Kenny’s “Down The Road,” a collaboration with Mac McAnally, marks the first time that Mac has reached the chart summit as an artist, though he’s been making an impact in a variety of ways for more than 30 years. He landed on the pop charts as a vocalist on 1977’s “It’s A Crazy World” and 1983’s “Minimum Love,” and he wrote a Jimmy Buffett pop release, “It’s My Job.” Mac also earned a country hit in 1989 with “Back Where I Come From,” which Kenny now performs regularly in his own concerts.
“I am really happy about having a No. 1 with my very good friend and, frankly, one of my songwriting heroes,” Kenny says. “The idea that you can go in the studio with a couple guitars and a great lyric, that people want to hear that, that it’s still okay to make records like this, that says a lot about what people really want and respond to.”