Shane McAnally

(Shane McAnally speaks About His Private Life And Personal History.)

I’ve written songs since I was six years old. I’d walk around the house outside literally singing songs that I didn’t know where they were coming from. I learned to play guitar at thirteen years old and that’s when I could really put down what I wanted to express. I started demoing songs when I was fifteen years old. I then began singing in the Opry (the Texas Opry circuit) and singing in clubs in Texas. After I graduated high school, I moved to Austin and for about a year went to college before I decided that I really wanted to make a go of a career I country music.

So I moved to Nashville and I didn’t know one person in the music business when I first got there. I was working nights as a bartender and in the day time, I was literally walking up and down Music Row with a guitar in my hand, trying to get my music heard to whomever would listen. I’d go into the record companies and play at the Blue Bird and every now and then, play my music for people at the record companies who would see me. I would network with the writers I could meet in Nashville and that’s how I eventually got my songwriting deal. It was a couple of weeks after that, I got my record deal. That was in 1995. I don’t even know if I had a plan when I first arrived in Nashville, I just started calling these publishing companies and try and find a way onto their staff. I’d say,’ Hey I’m a songwriter.’ And they’d say,’ we’re not looking for any new material.’ That was the constant basic answer.

So I went to the places where they’d let an unknown songwriter play his or her music. Looking back, it was a scary time. I was nineteen years old, I’d never really been away from home. I’d lived in Mineral Wells, Texas and I’d moved from there to Austin to go to college, but that was about it. Until I moved to Nashville, I’d never been away from the wings of my parents. So when I first moved to Nashville, it was a very scary time for me. I grew up in that year, I had to, to pay the bills and make ends meet. I had to have a go at it and I had to take the opportunity to try and land a songwriting and record deal. I had played the Fort Worth Opry and that has a pretty big following and through that I played the Opry circuit.

I learned how to be a stage performer there and I honed my skills as a performer. But, when you’re talking about getting a record deal and going in the front door of a record company with just your songs and a guitar strapped across your back, that’s a whole entirely different deal. It’s a completely different world. I had been singing with house bands back in Texas, other people’s songs and while I had the support of the folks back there, in Nashville nobody knew who I was at all. It was a completely different world.

I think I didn’t find my voice (singing voice) until I started recording my own material. When you’re recording other people’s stuff (Shane was a demo singer when he first came to Nashville) and you’re doing it to pay the bills, then sometimes the passion is not always there. When I finally had the opportunity to go into the studio and record my own songs and have a budget behind the recording project to do the songs the way I wanted to do them, it really made the difference. It made me hone in on my own style and create my own sound.

(Shane talks about his songwriting style.)

Ronnie Milsap, The Eagles and Marty Robbins have all been influences to me. Because I write my own stuff, I can tell you that my music doesn’t sound like anybody else who is out there right now. Sometimes I think that’s a good thing and sometimes I think that’s a bad thing. With the way country radio is these days, sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes that’s a bad thing. It seems as if sometimes, country radio wants to have the same sounding people on the air. A lot of people sound the same and they break anyway. However, I think that I sound different, my music has a cool, fresh sound that I think is a little different then anything else that’s considered commercial in country music right now.

(His views on the ever-changing country music genre.)

You know country music. It’s different now then it was years ago. Now country radio is afraid to take a chance with new artist, however slowly country radio gradually is accepting new artists. The thing is a lot of people have come out and had one hit song and thus had a huge hit record and then they’re gone from the country music scene. So radio programmers are afraid of new artist. So, by giving radio three or four great songs, radio realizes that you’re for real and then they’re not afraid to take a chance. It’s not an “Achy Breaky Heart” world out there anymore, because radio stations aren’t doing that anymore.

(What’s it like to be a new artist in such a highly competitive genre?)

It’s tough. I feel like you’ve got to work a lot harder and longer at convincing radio stations that I am a true artist. But at the same time, it makes you really appreciate any success you have and you really get to have strong relationship with country radio. That’s one thing that you don’t really get to see in other formats of music. I’ve developed a good, solid relationship with country radio and I feel like that’s important.

(What’s it like going through the situations that being a new country artist brings?)

It’s a day to day thing. I’m trying to find out if people will accept my songs or they don’t. And, because I have so much invested on a personal level, the songs are about personal experiences of mine, the music is completely from ,my heart, so if doesn’t get accepted by a radio station that I’ve given my music to and worked my butt of for, then it does affect you on a personal level, even as much as you don’t want it to. Because as an artist, I take it very seriously. It’s part of me and if it’s rejected, so am I.

For the past three years, I’ve been in Nashville, working out of a recording studio. Then, now as the single is just out there, when I’m supposedly living the good life, I’m actually being carted around in a mini van for eighteen weeks, without getting to come home, eating at 7/11’s (he laughs). Sometimes I’m being treated great and sometimes I’m not being treated great (at country radio). I still go in there however, with a smile on my face, because I am doing what I love. Now if ever there’s a moment when I say,’ I want to go home, I also remember what I could be doing and there’s a million other things that I’d rather not be doing then what I am doing now. Because this is about my music and I don’t care how successful it is, I’m getting to sing everyday of my life my own songs and that’s really important to me. It’s a cool thing. I think sometimes I question myself in that I’m putting too much of myself into the music as opposed to just personal gratification.

Sometimes, you get so wrapped up in the numbers of the business part of it and the numbers, that you forget why you got into this in the first place, I really had to fight to get my stuff on my records and Curb is really assume and I’m grateful that they let me do the best project in part because they were letting me do what I wanted to do.

(Shane talks about his relationship with LeAnn Rimes)

She is such a rare case, she just literally just became an overnight household name. She wasn’t one of these artists who have a slow build to make it to the top of their career. She (LeAnn) was one of these fast builds, success happened for her seemingly overnight, and I think that she probably wishes at times that a more slow build around her would have happened. Because, it’s very hard to maintain when your first album sells fifteen million copies and you’re just fifteen years old. Watching LeAnn rise through the ranks and seeing her become so successful at her career is very encouraging to me. To know that someone I knew so well, has done well, is really inspirational. For me to watch LeAnn’s success is a very inspirational and to know that someone I knew so well became who she is today. Because if she can do it, then anyone can do it, that’s the thing. Now that sounds kind of hokey, but that’s true.

LeAnn is a great example of a very talented individual who has lived the dream to no end. I don’t want to sound negative to LeAnn, but in the short term view, yeah, with the kind of success she’s achieved, well who would want to do that? But you have to think, LeAnn’s life had to change so quickly and she was probably bombarded with so much responsibility that she probably feels a bit overwhelmed now. From the outside looking in, it all looks pretty wonderful. But I’ll bet on the inside, there’s a whole lot that we don’t see and I’ll bet that, in that whole lot that we don’t see, there is a whole lot of pressure that comes with this business. I saw her the other night we did a show together on the Grand OLE Opry. I see her every couple of months, we share the same agency and the same stylist, so we do meet each other occasionally whenever we’re at those places. But as far as a real personal relationship between the two of us? No.