Interview: Bill MacKay

The Chicago-based guitar player and songwriter Bill MacKay released Locust Land, his third full-length solo album for Drag City, last month. Working as a solo artist in 2024 stands in contrast to the previous year, in which MacKay contributed to recordings as a member of two different groups: the self-titled debut of the improvisational-based trio Black Duck and BCMC’s Foreign Smokes, the first release by the duo MacKay is in with Bitchin Bajas’ Cooper Crain. 

With the mix of instrumentals and singer/songwriter-type songs that make up Locust Land, MacKay demonstrates his proficiency as a solo artist. It’s a warm and inviting album, layering an array of sounds, especially MacKay’s distinct and exemplary playing on electric and acoustic guitars. MacKay also incorporates synthesizers, keyboards, and organs that summon up the sound of 1960s Nuggets-era garage bands. The lyrics have a retrospective feel that MacKay delivers with confidence, while the instrumental songs vary in tone from wistful to insistent to downright spooky. 

As MacKay embarks on a solo tour in support of Locust Land — bringing him to Asheville’s Eulogy on Tuesday, June 4 — Asheville Stages spoke with him about the sonic approach for the album, his partnership with Cooper Crain, how he attempts to represent the album onstage by himself, and much more. 

Scott Bunn: Did you have a conceptual approach for writing the songs for Locust Land, or is it that you simply accumulated enough songs to put out an album? 

Bill MacKay: I think that's probably closer to the truth that it accumulates, but then you do start to see the through-lines — the things that connect [the songs]. I think then in recording is where you often start to emphasize the through-lines more because you want the album to be like a book or something. It's a piece, right? It's disparate stories with different colors, and then it comes together in a piece. 

Sonically, there are things that tie it together so that it coheres as a sonic statement. But I do think being an artist, human, etc., where you have thoughts that obsess you all your life, or thoughts, things you try to work out in a hypnotic way, they tend to come out in songs, revisiting them in different ways and coming back to them. I think it came from the instinctive songwriting process and there's been — personally, and for a lot of people — various kinds of challenges the last few years. So, I think some of that worked its way in [to the album]. I want it to be uplifting in whatever way it can.

SB: We’ll get to the sonic aspect of the album because I did catch some of those through-lines. Much of your songwriting is made up of instrumental pieces, but you have some songs that feature you singing lyrics, including three on Locust Land. How does this happen in your writing process? Do you write a set of lyrics and compose music to work for those words, or do you write an instrumental piece and feel as though there is a natural melody that needs words to fit it? 

BM: That's an interesting idea because I never thought of the singing being much different than playing. I feel like you sing with the guitar. You play with your vocal tones and things. But I think that they come about in the same way; maybe I had a chord progression, was moving around, and start to hum things. I think even the instrumental songs over the range of [my] records, I would often be singing that line or sort of humming it, singing the melody. A lot of them come from the guitar, too. So, it will come from one place or another. It was about hanging the words on a melody first, chord and melody first. 

I will say it's been really gratifying to be singing on these last few albums; there's a few tracks [I sing] on Keys with Nathan Bowles, a couple on Fountain Fire, but it's a relatively recent return to singing after many records, as you suggested. So, it feels very full circle to me. I was doing a lot of singing before I really recorded much and, for various reasons, headed into this territory of instrumental music or non-vocal. But, like I say, it all kind of fits together as one thing to me in a strange way. It does feel very natural to be doing it again.

SB: You mentioned the weird and disruptive times that we live in and your song “Half of You” sort of acknowledges it. You sing the line, “Despite the news.” Also, you sing, “What a thing to write about.” Are you addressing yourself in the song and your own songwriting process?

BM: I think sometimes that's true, and I think other times, certain lines [represent] people that I know but also people that are more mythic that maybe represent others — that wide “other,” that wide “you” that includes lots of people you've met and haven't met and so on. It sort of shifts around who's the persona speaking and who is it speaking to. I think, in a way, it's nice to leave it open. I like poetry like that a lot of times. Sometimes I find myself writing that way with poetry or songs that, all of a sudden, the persona and viewpoint shifts and becomes third person and then comes back. 

I was surprised by the verse about the band traveling from afar [in “Half of You”]. I didn't see it coming. It just kind of came. It's sort of speaking to all of us at the same time as well because we're all going through this stuff. So, that first stanza was, like you said, acknowledging, “despite the news.” The record is playing and we're going to try to have some ecstasy and some lifts where we can.

SB: Coming back to the sonic approach, I love the layers of sounds found on this album and your previous solo albums. To my ears, you seem to emphasize a keyboard sound on Locust Land that I hadn’t heard in your earlier solo songs. Was incorporating keyboards an emphasis for this album?  

BM: I'm pleased that you noticed that because it was something I wanted to use to put more color into it and emphasize things in a different way, song to song. Because I knew there would be a lot of guitar on it and I had the vocal songs ready, but I was thinking, “Instrumentally, what have I not done so much of that I could [try out]?” Then it just kind of took off. 

I had gotten a Moog synthesizer that I played on the first track. Then, in the studio, there were lots of nice pianos and organs, and I kept hearing a touch of a different keyboard all the time. A lot of the organs are kind of subtle, but they're definitely there and they pop out at times, like in “Glow Drift” and some of the other ones. When I looked at [the album], I was like, “Wow, I think almost every song has a keyboard on it.” So, it is really unusual for me. And they're quite different, from the synthesizer to the organ to piano to the pump organ on “Neil’s Fields” that Janet Beveridge Bean sings on. So, it was kind of conscious and then it just took off on its own.

SB: I love that “Neil’s Fields” piece. It's very spooky and experimental. In my notes I wrote, “Where did this thing come from?”

BM: Thank you. [laughs] That's good. The spook is good. [laughs] I like things that are a little haunt-y. It was a really fun thing to do because I had this pump organ piece that I had done, and I really liked it. There's so much noise from the pump, from pumping. I would talk to people or maybe read things and they’re like, “Yeah, that's what you get. If you record a pump organ, you're going to have that physical sound in it,” — which I think is creaky and interesting, like old stairs or something. 

There's a bit of guitar on it, too, but the main thing was Janet Bean's vocal. She is a friend and a great musician, and I was so happy when she sent me back something — but she wasn't that pleased with it. She was like, “I don't know if you can do anything with this.” It was two tracks, and I ended up putting both the tracks of her vocal together. To me, it sounds angelic.

SB: And spooky at the same time. I think angels are a little spooky, inherently. 

BM: Yeah, absolutely. I would agree. 

SB: You were part of two of my favorite releases in 2023, both as a member of a group, and you’re also known for so many collaborations — Ryley Walker and Nathan Bowles, to name two. Does your songwriting change when you're in a group or duo as opposed to working on a solo project, or is it all a continuum?

BM: Songwriting-wise? 

SB: Yes.

BM: Yeah, I think that it's pretty similar. I think the only thing that changes it a bit is after writing something where you start to think, “How will that be played?” So, I think it comes in more into the arrangement side of it, where you're thinking, “Is this playable? Is this a good thing for this grouping of people to play?” 

Generally, the composing part is very similar, or the same. But I also do like the challenge of writing something on purpose — consciously trying to write something for an ensemble. It's interesting to remind yourself that you can ignite your own inspiration. It isn't something you have to wait for. It's just part of sitting down at the typewriter, getting out your paints. 

So, I think for Black Duck, “Delivery,” my main song on there — besides the ones we composed together — I had an idea of something I wanted to do that played on some of our strengths; something that was driving, a little spooky, and also had some that noir element to it. There's something cinematic about the kind of noir film music, a little David Lynch-y, and I wanted to have that in there. So, there was a mix of starting with a riff naturally and then thinking of a melody that would suit that trio. 

SB: Conversely, thinking about the collaborations and being a part of a duo or a group, how does it then inform your solo work? 

BM: Yeah, I think it does. I do feel like I learned things from each of these guys. Almost every performance, you go away with something, or you feel like you do something different, or you picked up something that went well that you'd like to hone in on. So, I think with the recordings, too, it does give you something. 

For example, with Black Duck, I think a reminder more than anything else is the “less-is-more” thing. You have something primal; you can say a lot with a few notes. And the idea is always with me. It's just that I don't always follow that. I like maximal things, too. I like the minimal and I like the maximal. It's great to have a really rich embroidered vocabulary of things that you play — things that are very active, but also to be spare and centered that way is powerful. So I would say, in that way, every record, you bring something back to the next thing.

SB: I want to ask about your partnership with Cooper Crain. He recorded or mixed nearly all of the tracks on Locust Land. Of course, he’s one-half of BCMC with you. He was also a significant part of Fountain Fire, your previous full-length album. How did you meet him and start working with him?

BM: He's been a really significant friend and collaborator, especially recently. Interestingly, we met just before I started putting the records out with Drag City. I think it was about 2016, I want to say. We didn't know each other well, but had lots of mutual friends in Chicago and music scene friends, and I had just played an opening for The Weather Station at The Hideout in Chicago, and he pulled me aside. He was like, “Hey, that was great. We need an opener for this short, four day tour.” It was with the Bitchin Bajas and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and they were playing a collaborative set because their album that year was collaborative. So, it went really well. 

We did these four cities and that was the start of our starting to collaborate. But it took time until we really worked on anything. With Fountain Fire, we were getting into a nice partnership. We worked really naturally well together on that, so it became a nice template for the things that have continued.

SB: BCMC’s Foreign Smokes that you did with Cooper Crain came out last year, and then Locust Land came out this year. Was there any crossover between recording those two projects since they came out one after another, or do they seem pretty distinct to you?

BM: I think there wasn't a whole lot of crossover, but there could have been if they'd been approached the same way. With Locust Land, we kept it pretty much me and him to one main recording session and one main mixing session. And then “Oh Pearl,” I recorded myself and there's some other tracks that were mixed in. So, that was a pretty streamlined, shorter amount of days together. 

The BCMC [album] took place over months, maybe even a year. Cooper just reminded me of this. We didn't use that much from the studio session. We ended up using mostly what we recorded from his apartment because that's a studio, too, essentially. It just ended up that those were the [the tracks] with the best feel. So, [the two albums] might have mixed more, but it was one very extended project, and then Locust Land that was done pretty quickly.

SB: Going back to the sonic approach for Locust Land, I'm talking to you as you're about to leave for a solo tour that will bring you to Asheville. How are you going to replicate the sounds from the album by yourself on stage? 

BM: Good question. Nobody ever asks this stuff! I think I came to a realization at one point in the past that the best thing you can do, playing live and bringing things that people might know from a record to the stage, is to not try to do anything that is going to be overly-ambitious. You're not going to be able to reflect a song in some way. Or the corollary to that is that you completely strip away everything, and it still works as a very primal song, the structure of the song. 

So, I think it's a little bit of both. I mostly try to focus on the tunes that play the best, the most naturally live, that are not a struggle to try to play too many parts. At the same time, you're one person; your orchestra is your voice and guitar. You have some different sounds and things like that; maybe you have another instrument with you. So, I mostly focus on a few of the vocal numbers and then a few of the songs that will work for a solo performer best — probably that are less layered. 

It's funny, you start thinking about it, and then you realize the contradictions because I play “Locust Land” all the time, and that's one of the most layered things on [the album]. But the song works for a guitar. You keep a raga or drone going and a melody on top, so it's always worked very well. It really goes back to hitting the shed and you see what seems to translate the best and that you're not sweating over it so much, so you can focus on the energy and expression. 

SB: Thanks Bill, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk.

BM: Hopefully, I'll see you at the show. 

SB: I've got it on my calendar. My son has a Boy Scouts event earlier that night, and I've already said that we're going to have to drive in separate cars, and I'm going to have to get changed out of the Boy Scout uniform and get into concert gear [laughs].

BM: I'd love for you to come in Boy Scout gear [laughs].

SB: Yeah, I'm not doing that. I’m not that secure [laughs]!

IF YOU GO

Who: Bill MacKay
When: Tuesday, June 4, 7 p.m.
Where: Eulogy, 10 Buxton Ave., burialbeer.com/pages/eulogy
Tickets: $21.49

(Photos by Yvette Marie Dostatni)