Mackenzie1st

Gemma interviews Mackenzie1st on the set of their new music video.

CONFRONT: So firstly would you tell me how you guys got together as a band?

DAVE: Um well we started off pretty much the way a lot of bands start off. We were in high school in a bunch of different bands all playing music, similar passions and stuff like that but the story of how me and Dom got together is ridiculous. He was in a band and I was singing in the halls, their singer got suspended and couldn’t play the talent show and you know this is a serious crisis when you’re 14 years old, so they heard me singing Blink 182 in the halls, I think I was singing “Dammit” and was running around like an A.D.D. jackass so Dom heard me and asked me to sing at the talent show with them and the rest sort of wrote itself at that point. Later on eventually members changed and stuff like that when we got older. We were blessed to find Justin over here our phenomenal bass player and kind of our management actually and just recently we’ve acquired Graham who’s quite a fantastic drummer also. It’s been a long get together we’re not one of those bands that all met in the subway one day “oh my God this works out perfectly; you’re a drummer, I’m a singer, he’s a bass player, lets get together man!” so yeah it’s taken almost 10 years to get the whole thing together, it’s been an evolving process.

CONFRONT: Generally speaking, how would you say music affects you and the people around you?

DAVE: Oh my God, so much! Profoundly. Like I get up some days and like I have an iPod shuffle and depending on which song comes onto the shuffle, ’cause I never know right? it’s a shuffle. That influences my entire day and even when I was a kid you know, to state the obvious, people listen to songs about depression, love and since I was a kid it’s almost like a drug, we’ve been going back to it every time, every time they need a ride and luckily we got to become the drug makers so to speak as we got older and choose our own drugs you know?

CONFRONT: Is there a specific message you’re trying to convey through your music?

DAVE: Yes and no, sometimes there is and sometimes it’s just about the jamming. Really good bands can jam and be all about the music and even in the music the message is still there. The message is we’re rocking really hard right now and enjoying it and there’s not a lot of rock bands anymore it’s really weird, they’re kinda disappearing and going the way of the buffalo, but I think it’s important if you’re gonna be in a band not every song has to have this deep incredible meaning, some of them just feel really good but sure there’s underlining meanings in all of our songs, we’re full of shit to spill out.

GRAHAM: You are full of shit.

*laughter*

CONFRONT: It’s a cool way to look at it. I never thought of it that way, like you just have feel good songs without having some deep meaning.

DAVE: Sometimes feeling good is the deep meaning, you know what I mean? Like sometimes you just wanna bang your head up and down and rock. Not every Rise Against The Machine song are people listening to the political meaning, a lot of them are but sometimes people just like to hear those bass lines and heavy riffs, you know?

CONFRONT: Yeah, yeah that’s true. Umm would you say your music has evolved since you first began playing together?

DAVE: Oh hell yeah! We’re very proud of that actually, that we haven’t abandoned our original influences but we never stopped growing with them and taking them to new places. I think that’s why so many other bands who started off in the pop/punk era as we did disappear, you know what I mean? But we’ve always been experimenting with our sound and sure bring a keyboard on, lets scratch over one of our songs, anything we’ll try it. We’re musicians first we love to take the music we love and create something new and “today” with it. But tomorrow that song already won’t make me happy I’m gonna wanna already start trying to incooperate what I’ve learnt and where I’ve come from and plus as you grow up you change. It doesn’t mean that song wasn’t good it just means that that song represented a place and point in time and if you keep doing that and keep taking your new points in time and making songs about them music should just evolve naturally, you know?

CONFRONT: You really make me think..

DAVE: I try.

CONFRONT: You guys have released two albums called ‘Got Mack?’ and ‘The Way Up!’ Who recorded and produced those?

DAVE: The Way Up was recorded at Fox with Bob Telera (spelling?), we co-produced with him, he’s been along side this band since we were kids. We’re really fortunate to have people who know what they’re doing and keeping up from making horrible mistakes and believe me we’ve still found a way of making horrible mistakes. The first CD Got Mack was recorded with a guy named Jay Lefebvre who’s actually the brother of one of the guys in Simple Plan and we actually don’t play any songs from that first album anymore, that was like a really long time ago but we’re still very very proud of all those song and if you can find them online which you probably can’t you should check them out.

CONFRONT: What do you write first, the melody or the lyrics?

DAVE: Always different every single time. “I Shot The Monkey” specifically it was after a show at like 2 o’clock in the morning and the whole song just wrote itself inside my head so I don’t really know which came first, it was like I was singing I shot the monkey and that riff just came along with it. For other songs sometimes Dom will come to me with a guitar part and he’s rocking out in it and it’s like “oh my God that has to be in our band!” like we have to be the band who made a song out of that and then it may take me 7 to 15 tries before I finally come up with something I like and other songs I’ve done like 17 things out of and I make up my mind the day we go in the studio so we jam right up until recording time.

CONFRONT: Which song means the most to you…or do they all have their own individual meaning to you?

DAVE: They all have their own individual special meaning, again, different places and points in time, some older songs make me reflect on older periods in our life. “Jillian” is actually a very very special song to me, it’s about my sister who passed away, it was on the CD that was recorded with Jay Lefebvre, Got Mack. Um recently on ‘The Way Up’ my favorite song has to be probably “Nervous Breakdown” or “Renegade” and on the newest CD I really like “Monkey” a lot, no particular reason, today I like Monkey tomorrow it’ll be something else.

CONFRONT: How do you promote your band and the shows you plays?

JUSTIN: A lot of it is done online using as much of the viral mediums as possible so a lot of Facebook, MySpace, and did you hear of Twitter? It’s kind of new to all of us right now this whole twitter thing, but I see it being a tool.

DAVE: Word of mouth really helps a lot also, I mean one kid hears your band then they tell their friends. It’s important to get to new people all the time so that that’s constantly happening but ones you get the ball rolling it really rolls and you know, getting songs on the radio or on a really hot internet site, just any type of publication or promotion you can get is like greatly appreciated but for the most part we’ve been pretty dependent just on rocking out as hard as we can when we open up for other bands or play our own shows, we bring as many as we can back and like we always have a really good turn out. When it comes to promoting and publication you can go on forever, getting bigger and bigger and right now we are somewhat of an indie band, we’re not on a major record label so we just do what we can and we all take it very passionately and seriously and you always have a really good turn out because of that so I think the best promotion we really have right now is just heart, you know?

CONFRONT: Would you say you’ve established a relationship with your fans?

DAVE: Definitely! We have these two girls who actually came to every single show from the time they were like 15. We played a battle of the bands once a few years ago at Le Swimming when it was still open and they actually didn’t get in and they cried so hard that the bouncer let them stand at the door just to watch our show and we get girls coming back every now and again doing that.

GRAHAM: Dave keeps great contact with the fans. We have a Mackenzie1st MSN and he goes on once or twice a week and talks to anyone, anyone who has questions for him.

DAVE: Add mackenzie1st@hotmail.com to your MSN, we’re on every Saturday except for today obviously because of the music video but every Saturday from 1 to 2pm. I come on for an hour, you guys can ask whatever you want, it’s really me, you know, we don’t pay other people to do it or anything like that. I get people quizzing me all the time “What’s your birthday!? How many freckles do you have?! Where do you live!?”

*laughter*

DAVE: I’m not telling you where I live, lets not go crazy! Naw, I’ll tell you where I live. Come hang out with me I’m lonely. I smoke weed and play Call Of Duty all day.

GRAHAM: That’s really all he does.

*laughter*

CONFRONT: What do you think it takes to be successful in this career?

GRAHAM: Dedication.

DAVE: Yeah that’s the first one. Definitely without a doubt dedication. If someone’s telling you you’re not good enough is enough to make you give up then you probably chose the wrong business to begin with. This is a business that has a lot of peeks and valleys in it and you got to find your way over the valleys and to the top of those peeks and I mean there are going to be some down times so you gotta know that and see that coming. The other thing is you have to be smart and listen to people. A lot of people who are willing to help you in this business especially when they see that you’re passionate in what you do and if you’re willing to just keep your ears open and listen then a lot of people will give you the advice you need. I’ve always believe that it’s not as hard as people think it is to make it but then again I’m not a millionaire yet so I haven’t exactly made it anywhere but I think that what it comes down to it band give up, people quit, people get emotional. The best advice that was ever given to me in my entire life was the “eat shit” lesson. The eat shit lesson consists of this: The more shit you can eat and smile with shit in your mouth even though it tastes like shit, the further you’re gonna go and the person who told me that told me “Dave you have no idea how many times I’ve had to sit there and eat bowls and bowls of shit in from of people and you just wanna throw it up all over them but you eat it” and the guy who told me that is a very successful man right now.

*laughter*

DAVE: So yeah.. dedication, listen, and eat shit. That’s how you make it in the business.

CONFRONT: That is awesome, haha. So what are your pet peeves?

DAVE: People who think Will Farrell isn’t funny. What the fuck is your problem? He’s hilarious. “I don’t like Anchorman” That’s because you were born without a sense of humor and you need to go see a doctor.

GRAHAM: What if you haven’t seen Anchorman?

DAVE: Well do you think Will Farrell is funny?

GRAHAM: He has his moments. I don’t think he’s hilarious.

DAVE: Graham is my new pet peeve.

*laughter*

DAVE: I love you buddy.

GRAHAM: No you don’t..

*laughter*

CONFRONT: Justin, what’s your pet peeve?

JUSTIN: I hate dishes.

CONFRONT: Dishes?

JUSTIN: Yeah if there are dishes stacked next to the sink and no one fucking addresses them, I lose my mind. That has got to be my pet peeve. I’ve been conditioned to hate dishes.

CONFRONT: Well that’s different, haha.

CONFRONT: Dom?

DOM: I have nothing right now, haha.

DAVE: You hate nothing?

*laughter*

DAVE: Graham?

GRAHAM: Me? Uhhh well what do you think my pet peeve is?

DAVE: Ignorance.

GRAHAM: Yeah, I hate ignorance and I hate bigotry as well. I think for me I just hate prejudism, people who are instantaneous to go to whatever judgement they have about anything. It could be a person, a situation, whatever it is, if someone hasn’t sat down and given a value thought about it and just immediately judges something by it’s cover, that drives me really fucking mad.

CONFRONT: Ok for these last three you guys are just going to have to finish the sentence..

DAVE: Ah yes!

CONFRONT: I would never…

GRAHAM: eat Dave’s shit.

*laughter*

GRAHAM: I’ll take his shit figuratively but I will not eat a bowl of his feces.

DAVE: I’m too damn slutty to answer that. I’d do just about anything.

GRAHAM: If I laid swirly in a bowl he’d eat my shit.

DAVE: No, ok, I would never eat Graham’s shit. Ok I think it’s fair that we would not eat each other’s shit.

DOM: I would never eat shit, period.

DAVE: We won’t eat shit, we are not shit eaters!

JUSTIN: I will never finish an interview where we are taking about shit.

*laughter*

CONFRONT: I would love to…

GRAHAM: Ok here’s a real one. I would love to support myself playing music.

JUSTIN: I would love to have babies all over the world.

DAVE: I would love to go to be the first band at one of these countries that the United States is at war with and rock in favor of peace.

CONFRONT: Ok one more. I can’t wait until…

DOM: I can’t wait until I get out of these tight jeans.

JUSTIN: I can’t wait until Dave takes off that glove and I smell it.

DAVE: I can’t wait to go see The Watchmen.

CONFRONT: Ok well thanks for doing this guys.

ALL: Thank you too.

To learn more about Mackenzie 1st visit their homepage and Myspace…

www.mackenzie1st.com, www.myspace.com/mackenzie1st

Photos by Gemma Pietrollino