MINERAL WELLS, Texas — Grammy Award winner Shane McAnally was always entertaining -- even at a young age.
The singer-songwriter has since made it big on an international scale in country music, but his career started little in the city of Mineral Wells. In a city historically known for its Crazy Water, his success might have some people wondering just what's in that water here -- and how much Shane had to drink of it.
"He did everything well, Shane did everything well," said Serena Wigginton, who Shane calls his second mom.
"He was performing at 4 years old and he wanted us to watch," said his mother Margaret Terry.
Mineral Well sits 50 miles west of Fort Worth, and while McAnally spent his time growing up on and off in Mineral Wells, he still considers it his hometown.
No, it's not exactly the epicenter for music. But that didn't stop a young McAnally from showcasing his skills at every local gig he could score here. Margaret recalls all the times he performed at the Crazy Water Hotel. McAnally simply would not pass up any chance to entertain, even while in daycare.
"We told him to pick up the toys, and he'd sing 'Take This Job and Shove It' by Johnny Paycheck," Terry said.
Clearly, McAnally was unlike his peers growing up. When others were playing sports and fishing, he was listening to music from the likes of Barbara Mandrell and Dolly Parton -- and writing his own music, too.
"He got voted 'Most Talented' in our senior class, so it was not only me that saw the talent," said Rhett Warren, one of his best friends from growing up in Mineral Wells.
Warren and McAnally remain tight to this day -- another testament to the importance Mineral Wells continues to hold in McAnally's life.
"[Mineral Wells], to me, is the perfectly imperfect small Texas town," McAnally said. "I still drive into that town and still feel 17."
Warren said that, here in Mineral Wells, people don't see McAnally as their "famous friend" -- they just see him as Shane, whose passion for music eventually took him to where he wanted to be.
He's written for fellow Texas like Kacey Musgraves and Kelly Clarkson, plus stars like Reba McEntire and Kenny Chesney, among a few. But it's still those closest to him that provide him his greatest inspiration.
"Anything you said [to him growing up], he was jotting it down to make a song," said Terry. "One day, one of the songwriters [he was working with] said, 'What's going on across the street at your neighbors?' I said, 'They're either selling Mary Kay, smoking Mary Jane, or daddy's doing Mary... and so they wrote 'Merry Go Round' [for Musgraves]."
Of course, his journey to that point was much like a typical county road, with all the bumps you encounter along the way between Nashville and Los Angeles. It would also bring him to his lowest of lows -- to the near point of quitting.
"He didn't make it until he was 40 [years old]," said Terry.
But her son was too in love with writing and performing to ever commit to anything else. And that gumption to see his dream through, to keep putting in the work and keep making the right connections -- no matter how long it took -- is what finally helped him get over the hump.
"I wanna make someone feel the way I feel right now," McAnally said when he recently caught up with WFAA over Zoom. "The first turning point was letting go of the idea of getting rich."
Switching his path away from performance more toward songwriting, while finally committing to living his life as his authentic self, were what McAnally most credits for his recent successes.
"I don't think most of us are that brave," said Wigginton.
It wasn't until McAnally -- now married to his husband Michael Baum and the father of two children -- stopped living his life in the closet, figuratively but also sometimes literally, that his art really started to take shape, and the accolades he'd for so long sought out in the music industry finally started to fall his way.
This year, those include earning five nominations at the 56th annual Country Music Association Awards taking home at least one win -- for co-producing "Never Wanted To Be That Girl" by Carly Pearce and Ashley McBryde, which took home "Musical Event of the Year" honors.
Awards and trophies like those may just be the most recent to be placed upon the mantle at his mother's Mineral Wells home when earned, but for a kid who was always born to be what he became, they still mean the world to those back home in the town that shaped him.
Said his mother of watching his career continue to flourish with each passing year: "I just get so excited in my heart, it just wants to jump out of my chest."