The Academy of Country Music has presented award winning singer, songwriter, producer, and musician Mac McAnally with the Poets Award.
The presentation was a part of the annual ACM Honors. The award is presented to a “Country Music songwriter for outstanding and longstanding musical and/or lyrical contributions throughout their career”. Amy Grant presented the award to McAnally.
Accepting the award McAnally said, “I have this wonderful circle of family and friends and great storytellers that believed in me before I believed in myself.”
The Academy of Country Music referred to McAnally as “one of Nashville’s most respected and humble songwriters of the generation, which has come through his passion for music, his musicianship, and his writing both for other artists to record as well as himself.”
McAnally began his musical career as a session player in Muscle Shoals, Alabama where he would also share some of the songs he had written. Over the years a number of artists have recorded his music including Jimmy Buffett, Sawyer Brown, Kenny Chesney, Alabama, and Shenandoah. McAnally also played guitar in Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band.
McAnally is a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
He joins previous winners Alan Jackson, Jimmy Webb, Kris Kristofferson, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, Shania Twain, Toby Keith, and Willie Nelson.