Meet the Myrtle Beach native who co-wrote Walker Hayes’ TikTok sensation ‘Fancy Like’
Born in 1978 in Myrtle Beach, Shane Pittman literally sang before he could talk.
Years later he would write songs for the likes of Ariana Grande, Beyonce, Meghan Trainor and other big stars as Shane Stevens, a professional name that derives from his middle name Steve.
The signs were there early on, he said.
“My mom always told me before I was born my dad would lay his hands on her belly and pray over me and say I would play instruments and sing and write songs,” Stevens said. “It was kind of prophesied over me before I was born.”
Before turning a year old, Stevens had already found his singing voice.
“I started singing before I could talk,” he said with a laugh. “There are tapes of me singing before I could talk, really. My nana would sing this old worship song and worship hymn that would say ‘Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.’ She would sing it to me and I would sing it back to her, and that’s literally before I was speaking sentences.”
Stevens has spent years working with some of the biggest names in country and pop music, but the latest hit he co-wrote has allowed his career to skyrocket.
A chance meeting with Walker Hayes, whom Stevens had begun working with in October 2020, ultimately led to the hit “Fancy Like,” which became a sensation as dances featuring the song on TikTok went viral. Applebee’s, which gets a mention in the song, recently did a commercial with the hit and local radio waves have been playing the tune in recent weeks.
The song came to fruition after a laid-back, unofficial meeting with Hayes and fellow songwriters Josh Jenkins and Cameron Bartolini. Stevens and Hayes have both said that the song “wasn’t supposed to happen.” In fact, the only reason Stevens was at the studio was because of a scheduling mishap.
“When we walked out of the room that day none of us knew how big it was going to be. But I looked over at Cameron — it was his first country session ever in Nashville, (Tennessee) coming in from LA — and I said to him ‘I want you to know where this song came from and I want you to remember what I’m telling you because my God is going to show up and show off.’” Stevens said. “And He did. God has completely got his hands all over this and has changed the game.”
Coming from humble beginnings
Though he was born in Myrtle Beach, Stevens’ family lived in Calabash, North Carolina when he was growing up. While he spent many of his early years in Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach, the reason Stevens was born here was because Grand Strand Medical Center was the closest hospital.
Stevens’ father was a shrimper and therefore his son learned at an early age the meaning of hard work. When he wasn’t helping his dad out, though, Stevens spent much of his time in Myrtle Beach and surrounding areas.
“I grew up going to the Pavilion, doing all that stuff, all before Broadway at the Beach and all that,” said Stevens, who is now 43 years old.
Growing up, he spent Christmas at his aunt and uncle’s house in Socastee. Whenever his family would vacation, they would either head to Myrtle Beach or Sunset Beach, North Carolina.
“That’s where I spent my childhood,” he said.
All the while, music was also a big part of Stevens’ life.
He sang in the choir in second grade at Union Elementary School, then continued his art at Shallotte Middle School and West Brunswick High.
“I would be the kid that got all the solos and stuff,” Stevens said.
In his teens, Stevens’ foray into the music industry really took off.
Getting in front of bigger audiences
Stevens worked many jobs in his teens, including gigs at Maurices at the old Myrtle Beach Square Mall and in the music section of the former Electric Avenue electronics store off Seaboard Street in Myrtle Beach. He also hosted karaoke at several venues, including Crawdaddy’s Oyster Bar & Grill in North Myrtle Beach, the Myrtle Beach Opry and others.
“That’s kind of how I got my start in anything country,” Stevens said. “When I was growing up I hated country music cause my parents loved it. I loved Michael Jackson and George Michael and Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston and Luther Vandross and Gladys Knight and some beach music.”
As Stevens tells it, making friends along the way contributed greatly to his life and career. It wasn’t any different in allowing country music to make it on his radar.
“I didn’t listen to Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton until i was a freshman in high school,” he said. “I used to ride to school with my childhood friend Tina and we had a deal that if she would listen to pop music on the way to school I would listen to country music on the way home. That’s how I discovered The Judds and Reba McEntire and really cool ’90s country and storytelling and I was just really intrigued by that and fell in love with country music.”
At 15, though, his life changed when he auditioned for Opryland at The Alabama Theatre. That’s how he met Karyn Rochelle, who would become his close friend and a fellow songwriter for many stars.
“We became best friends and I started staying with her a bunch off Possum Trot Road in North Myrtle Beach,” Stevens said.
By age 17, when Rochelle was 19, Stevens’ friend presented him with a proposition: Would he move to Nashville with her to try to make it big in the country music business?
After getting approval from his mother, Stevens attended his senior prom before revealing that he was going on the road.
“That night I told everybody I was moving to Nashville because I was gonna make it,” he said. “I packed up my 1993 teal green Ford Ranger with a futon and like $250.”
‘All I knew was singing and seafood’
Stevens and Rochelle got an apartment in Nashville and worked regular jobs while trying to get a big break.
Fittingly, Stevens began working at a restaurant called Crabhouse.
“All I knew was singing and seafood,” he said.
One day at the seafood restaurant Stevens had a chance meeting with record producer Jerry Crutchfield. It turned out that the two had the Grand Strand in common as Crutchfield had vacationed and played golf here.
Stevens told Crutchfield about Rochelle and the producer appeared to take an interest.
“I said ‘I don’t know if I’m very good at writing, but she’s amazing and she’s gonna be a star,’” Stevens said. “’She’s a great singer/songwriter. You should meet her.’ I don’t think he was prepared for me to show up at his office literally the following week.”
Stevens was met with resistance from the receptionist, who said Crutchfield was too busy to meet with him. Equipped with four or five of Rochelle’s songs, Stevens persisted and eventually settled for playing her music for the receptionist on a boombox in the room.
“I made her listen to the tape,” Stevens said. “She flipped out and called up to Jerry Crutchfield and said ‘You need to see this kid. This girl he’s playing is awesome.’”
That led to Rochelle getting her first deal in 1997.
It would be three more years before Stevens got his first deal.
“I started hair school because I might need a just-in-case career,” he said. “I still kept writing and getting better.”
Soon, though, Rochelle returned the favor. By 2000, she was working for Famous Music Publishing, where she shared a CD of some of Stevens’ music and not long after he had finally signed with a record company.
By 2001, though, Stevens had gotten another record deal in New York City right before 9/11, but it fell apart soon after. Later, he was back to running karaoke and doing hair.
“I went back to just hustling,” Stevens said.
He ultimately became a celebrity hairdresser, which led to meetings with influential people. With the urging of actress and a friend of Stevens’, Mary-Louise Parker, he decided to throw his name back out there and wrote a new song that he sent to a friend who was working for Bob Doyle at Major Bob Music.
In 2006, Doyle invited him to Nashville to meet and it led to another shot in the business.
“That’s the last time I had to do hair,” Stevens said.
Stevens’ first big writing was for Sara Evans on the song “Low.” He later hit it big in 2010 as he co-wrote Lady Antebellum’s “American Honey,” which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s U.S. Hot Country Songs chart.
“Then it was just cut after cut after cut,” Stevens said.
Fast forward to 2021 and Stevens is once again in the spotlight for his role in “Fancy Like.” That unscheduled meeting with Hayes now has Stevens’ career on a whole higher plane.
“It just felt good. We laughed. There’s no other way to put it other than it was legit a download from heaven,” he said. “American Honey happened that way too. Once it started it just flowed. You just got to get out of the way of it.”
From the stars to back down to earth
Nowadays Stevens tells stories of his interactions with stars as if it’s no big deal.
One time, at Alicia Keys’ studio, Stevens was in a room with Beyonce while Pharrell was in the booth and he remembers her putting her hands on his shoulders and asking “’Gosh, where did such a little guy get so much soul?’”
“I said ‘Honey, the country (in us) and Jesus,’” Stevens remembered with a laugh.
Asked if he ever looks back and is in awe of where he came from to where he is now, Stevens had a complex answer.
“Yes and no,” he said of the awe factor. “When I was a child because of where I was raised and how I was raised I knew that because of how much I loved music and how much I love my God I knew that there was something more for me than just working on a shrimp boat next to my dad. I knew that one day I was going to be there and be in those rooms.”
There was one encounter in which Stevens says he felt truly starstruck, and it all related to the music he loved in his childhood.
“I was obsessed with Babyface and Toni Braxton when I was a child. I’m sitting in the studio and that man turns around and looks at me and goes ‘Shane, what would you say?’ And I was like ‘uhh, uhh, uhh … I don’t know, Kenny,’” he said of Babyface, whose real name is Kenneth Edmonds. “It was like ‘Why would you ask me that? Like, whatever you think.’ That was the first like starstruck kind of songwriting moment I had was why Babyface was asking my opinion.’”
Stevens said he visits Myrtle Beach and Calabash from time to time, but for a long time he never considered moving back. Now, however, he’s reconsidering.
“I really never thought I would go back home. You know, it’s that whole ‘You can’t go home again,’” he said. “But the older I get the more simpler I want things to be.”
Stevens’ mother had a house in Ocean Isle Beach that was destroyed in the tornado that struck a big part of North Carolina in February. He said it ended in his mother’s yard, destroying the home to the point it had to be condemned.
Luckily for the family, his mother was in Kansas at the time caring for his grandmother.
Now, Stevens is trying to decide whether to rebuild in that area or to consider something in Myrtle Beach. He said he’s been visiting real estate website Zillow every night the past two months to see what’s available in Myrtle Beach.
The last time Stevens was in the Carolinas was about five months ago. He said he had just been in the Dominican Republic to do work for rapper Pitbull and returned to Ocean Isle Beach for business with his mother’s dilapidated house.
He decided to make the trek to Myrtle Beach to reminisce.
“I drove to Myrtle Beach and the strangest thing: I just wanted to drive by the hospital I was born in. It’s so weird. I drove by and I thanked it,” Stevens said. “I was like ‘You know what, God? For whatever reason, this is where you chose for me to physically come into this planet and this is what made me and this is where I’m from.’
“So ‘God, I just want to bless this hospital and every person that comes in it that they will be overwhelmed with joy, overwhelmed with the abundance of prosperity and talent. All those things. And that you would just bless this city and this hospital and these people that are working tirelessly giving their lives as people deal with COVID and whatever else.’”
This story was originally published October 27, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
