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| Fred Knobloch | Mac McAnally |
Award winning singer-songwriters Mac McAnally and Fred Knobloch will perform a two-hour acoustic music show on Saturday, March 7 at 7:30 p.m. in Delta Music Institute’s Studio A in the historic Whitfield Building on the Delta State campus.
This concert is one of several events that are part of the Grand Opening weekend for the Delta Music Institute (DMI). Joining McAnally and Knobloch will be DMI Director Tricia Walker, who spent over 25 years in Nashville as a performer and songwriter before returning to Delta State in 2006 to lead the DMI program.
A Belmont native, McAnally is the writer and featured guest vocalist on Kenny Chesney’s new single, “Down The Road,” which scored the #1 spot on the Billboard/R&R and USA Today charts last week. The song was nominated recently for the Academy of Country Music’s Vocal Event of the Year award. McAnally is one of the most accomplished songwriters, musicians and vocalists of his time. He has written literally dozens of hit songs, including chart-toppers for Alabama "Old Flame" and Sawyer Brown "Thank God For You."
McAnally continues to tour as part of Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer band. As a producer, he’s worked with Sawyer Brown and Little Feat, and was named 2008 Musician of the Year by the Country Music Association.
As an artist, McAnally has released 10 albums, and was the first artist signed to David Geffen’s legendary Geffen Records. He owns and operates his own recording studio, in addition to his ongoing work as a writer, publisher, producer and musician.
Knobloch, a Jackson native, has been performing since the age of thirteen. In 1973, he left school to play music full-time; he began performing solo at nightclubs across the south and landed a few dates as a session guitarist at MALACO Studios in Jackson. While working for such R&B notables as Dorothy Moore, Eddie Floyd and Anita Ward, he met drummer James Stroud and pianist Carson Whitsett. The hit single, "Why Not Me," co-written with Whitsett, reached #1 on the Billboard AC chart and # 18 on the HOT 100.
On the heels of that success, Knobloch moved to Los Angeles to pursue an artist’s career, but it wasn’t long before the South started calling him home and he relocated to Nashville in January of 1983.
After moving to Nashville, he made a name for himself as an artist, session musician and songwriter. With his good friends Thom Schuyler and Craig Bickhardt, who formed the group SKB, he recorded two albums for MTM Records, including the hits "No Easy Horses" and the #1 "Baby’s Got A New Baby", co-written by Knobloch with fellow Mississippian Dan Tyler.
Knobloch’s lists of cuts include artists such as Faith Hill, George Strait, Delbert McClinton, Etta James, Ray Charles, John Anderson, Trisha Yearwood, Sawyer Brown, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Kenny Rogers.
The Delta Music Institute began with a generous donation by Fred Carl of the Viking Range Corporation in 2003. The focus of the DMI is to provide students with a broad and thorough education in the technological, business, and creative areas of the music industry.
The concert is free and open to the public. For more information on the Grand Opening weekend schedule of events, please call (662) 846-4579 or visit dmi.deltastate.edu.
