#threemonkeysonline

[fuckyeahmackenziescott]

Interviewer: Is your songwriting a cathartic tool to deal with your emotions?

Mackenzie Scott: Yeah that’s kind of how I deal with everything.

*

“Catharsis is usually why I write.”

*

Interviewer: Is there any worry that those words that have been frequently used to describe you on your first album—cathartic, honest—could create a pigeonhole for you?

Mackenzie Scott: I try not to let myself take those reviews, those things that people say, as anything that could be considered pejorative. That being said, when people say things like that, that’s their impression of it, and everyone is entitled to their words that they want to use. But absolutely. Cathartic. Emotional. Honest. Those are all words that are…

Interviewer: It’s art.

Mackenzie Scott: Yeah, it’s art. Sure there’s certainly that fear of getting compared exclusively with female singer/songwriters for the rest of my career.

Interviewer: Did those words feel like pejoratives?

Mackenzie Scott: Not in and of themselves, but when it’s all I hear, it gets to be a little monotonous. I don’t mean to sound like a snob. “No, use different words when reviewing my music.” But I think about it sometimes.

—Interview #1 source, Interview #2 source, Interview #3 source

[fuckyeahmackenziescott]

Mike Scott from the Waterboys has written, ‘I figured music wasn’t worth the air it occupied if it didn’t change both its makers and its listeners’; do you agree?

“Change” may not necessarily be the best word, but I do agree for the most part.

[fuckyeahmackenziescott]

I liked what Annie Clark (St. Vincent) said recently about musicians and the current industry. To paraphrase, she emphasized how the industry is inundated with ‘dabblers’ and half-hearted attempts that ultimately are depressing pieces of rubbish.

http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/torres-talks-of-toska-catharsis-and-johnny-cash/

[fuckyeahmackenziescott]

If there was one song in the world you could forget, what would it be and why?

Anything by Justin Bieber. I can’t stand that runt.

[fuckyeahmackenziescott]

It’s a selfish thing. I write for me first, and others second. I can’t do it any other way and I don’t want to.

http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/torres-talks-of-toska-catharsis-and-johnny-cash/

[fuckyeahmackenziescott]

“I’d say the five day recording time was just what this first album needed. I didn’t require any more time; if I’d had six months, I would’ve ruined the songs. I would have driven myself mad with perfectionism and imposed flourishes on the songs that weren’t necessary. I cannot imagine spending six months to record an album, unless the recording was sporadic and spaced out. But a consistent six months? That’s unnecessarily daunting.”

*

“There was a lot of talk pre-production about how we wanted to go into it, because we only had that very limited amount of time in the house to record, and it’s obviously not cheap. Also, I know that going into something without a vision can sometimes result in something that maybe you didn’t want?

“For example, had I gone in not knowing what I wanted, we could have potentially come out with something that was really over-produced. Or ended up adding too many things--too many instruments, and too many parts--on a song.”

—Quote #1 source, Quote #2 source

[fuckyeahmackenziescott]

Interviewer: Is [your songwriting] all autobiographical?

Mackenzie Scott: Whether it is or not, it’s all relevant to the universal human experience.

*

“I do write from personal experience, that’s often where I draw from, but I always try to make sure that whatever I am writing about is something that can be interpreted in a lot of ways and mean different things to different people.”

*

Interviewer: We’re always interested in the effect of geography on songwriting – did Nashville influence the songs and the album, or is it a case that you could have written/recorded them anywhere?

Mackenzie Scott: I probably could have written them anywhere, but my experiences are what shaped the songs, and my experiences took place in Nashville.

*

“I tend to write autobiographically. Writing lyrics feels like having a conversation after the fact. What I mean is that a lot of the time, my lyrics are the words that come too late. They’re the unspoken things I should’ve said, the words that I wish I’d been able to articulate to someone face to face.”

*

Interviewer: Are these characters you’re singing about or are you writing about yourself?

Mackenzie Scott: It’s all there — I’m all there. I wish I were better at writing about characters [but] I tend to be really in my head when I’m writing songs. And it’s catharsis for me to just get it out. It’s all me… as devastating as that may be.

—Interview #1 source, Interview #2 source, Interview #3 source, Interview #4 source, Interview #5 source

[fuckyeahmackenziescott]

Interviewer: You have stated that you consider yourself to be more of a storyteller and songwriter. When did you start writing and what was the first thing you wrote?

Mackenzie Scott: I think the first poem I wrote was actually about September 11th and the Twin Towers. It was a morbid but patriotic poem, and I’ve always been kind of a morbid person. But honestly, I didn’t know exactly what I was doing.

Interviewer: You would have been about 10 years old when you wrote it?

Mackenzie Scott: Yeah, I was 9 or 10. And also around that time, I was writing a lot of epitaphs. My poetry writing started around that time, and I would carry around a small notebook that I would write epitaphs in. I would write epitaphs for people, characters I created. Looking back, it was kind of creepy.

Interviewer: Do you still have the notebook?

Mackenzie Scott: I probably could find it if I looked around my parents’ house in Georgia.

Interviewer: So writing poetry and epitaphs were your “gateways” into short-story writing. When did that begin?

Mackenzie Scott: I started writing short stories in middle school, when I was 12 or 13. I’ve written a few, but I’m mostly focused on poetry.

Interviewer: Have any of your songs evolved from your poetry?

Mackenzie Scott: The last song on the record, “Waterfall”, did start off as a poem that I wrote in my freshman year of college. I came back to it a year-and-half, two years later and made it into the song that it is now. However, it did start off as a straight up poem.

Interviewer: Have you considered publishing your work?

Mackenzie Scott: I have thought about it, but to do that I would need to stop turning my poems into songs. I need to have my poetry be just that. I still write a lot of poems and have written hundreds. . . .

*

Interviewer: Let’s talk about the record, and sort of where it came from, and where the songs came from, I mean, and how you wrote them. What’s—what was your process in putting them—putting it together?

Mackenzie Scott: I mean, the writing process itself was—you know, it took place over three, four years. It was—I mean, it was a birthing process.

Interviewer: You would have been nineteen when you started writing this?

Mackenzie Scott: Eighteen when I came to Nashville for college. I came here for the songwriting program at Belmont, and was sort of just—I don’t know. You know how it goes. I’m sort of a tortured… tortured soul. I just—I spent that time writing songs for myself, and also, in the meantime, getting graded for it by professors. It was kind of a kill two birds sort of deal, just, you know, the catharsis, plus I’m getting my credit for this. That’s actually, you know, why I majored in songwriting. It’s not because I thought that I needed a songwriting degree. It’s because I figured, if this is what I want to be doing anyway, why not just get grades on it?

Interviewer: It, you know—I want to know, like, so, the songs that are on this record, they all were workshopped by other—teachers, or no?

Mackenzie Scott: Not all of them, but I would say a quarter to half of the record was reviewed by professors and classmates alike.

Interviewer: What did they think? Be honest.

Mackenzie Scott: A lot of, you know, a couple of the songs on the record, I got really good feedback, and a couple were frankly just not the kind of song that my professors wanted to hear.

Interviewer: Are those your favorite songs?

Mackenzie Scott: Usually.

Interviewer: [Laughs.]

Mackenzie Scott: Yeah, usually the more obscure ones are my favorite ones. I never like the ones best that other people like best.

Interviewer: Oh. Wait a minute. So does that mean that—did you—do you not like “Waterfall” as much as other people like “Waterfall”, then?

Mackenzie Scott: Oh, I—well, I’ve dug myself a hole here. I don’t dislike, you know, performing any of them. I would never make a record with any song on it that I dislike performing.

*

Interviewer: Let’s playfully imagine that you are forced to choose one song to represent the album Torres, what would it be and why?

Mackenzie Scott: It would probably be “Waterfall”. It ties in most of the themes represented on the album, namely resignation in the midst of dire uncertainty.

—Interview #1 source, Interview #2 source, Interview #3 source