The Macks on “Bonanza” and Making Cartoons Come To Life

When it comes to innovative music, The Macks have mastered the art. The Portland based group made up of Josef Windheim, Ben Windheim, Sam Fulwiler, Aidan Harrison, and Jacob Michael Perris, have made a name for themselves with their “miscellaneous rock,” a term that refers to their style that sticks to no one side of the genre. Each album is a continuation of their story, but the recent release Bonanza solidified the narrative, mixing together characters stemming from the mind of Fulwiler, and real encounters chronicled in their lyrics. Each song is so individual and unique yet fits eloquently with this body that is so essentially The Macks. Ben and Sam sat down to chat with us about the album and life on the road.

Super cool to be interviewing you guys today! I'm from Eugene, so it’s always fun to chat with a band from Oregon. In fact, I saw you guys are playing at John Henry's in Eugene pretty soon. Okay, I'm just going to start by having you introduce yourselves, and tell me what you do for the band.

Sam Fulwiler: I'm Sam, I sing.

Ben Windheim: I'm Ben, I play guitar.

So you guys hail from Portland, Oregon, right? Were you born and raised there? 

BW: in the area, the suburbs, yeah. 

As an Oregonian myself, I know that our state is one full of life and creativity. How would you say your time here has influenced your music, whether that be through the community, the sounds of the city, or anything else? 

SF: That’s a good question. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, growing up in Oregon, geographically, you get so many different things. You have the ocean, you've got high deserts, you’ve got forests, you name it. There's a wide variety of terrains to explore in the area. I think our music tries to conquer that. Obviously still within the rock sphere, but we still try and capture as many territories of music as we possibly can, while still maintaining our own sound. 

Then, you know, we have seasons in Oregon, which some states can't boast. So I think that really lends itself to the writing process, you know? I think we always, not even really on purpose, but just kind of happens this way, we kind of hunker down in the winter and start writing some music and get a little sad, and then we bring it out in the spring. It’s a nice cycle. 

I love that. It's like hibernation season, so I can see how it would lend a hand in different seasons of life. Musically, who would you guys say are some of your biggest inspirations as a band or individually? That could be musicians or literally anyone that you look up to.

SF: We each have our own lanes that we all listen to, but for the band, there's a couple groups where we all shake hands and agree, like, okay, this is fantastic. I think early on, it was the greats, like Zeppelin and The Beatles and Stones. But in a more contemporary sense, I think there's that West Coast psych scene that was really big bands like Osees and like Ty Segall, that was another one where we all kind of bonded over that.

Nice, yeah, I love Ty Segall, that's such a great answer. I want to talk a little bit about Bonanza, your most recent project. It was released on September 25th which was not that long ago. What would you say to a first time listener going in blind to this project, and what would you want them to know about you as a band and the record?

BW: I mean, I think the album tells you as much as it possibly can about us. I see it kind of as one of everything that we can do. So, you know, go in with an open mind, in the sense of, you're going to see us explore the lengths of our sound. And you know, prepare for some miscellaneous rock.

When you began writing and recording this record, did you find that there was anything new about the process in comparison to your past projects? Or have you nailed a pretty good routine with writing, recording, and being in the studio? 

BW: We try to avoid routine when it comes to writing and recording. With our previous release, we kind of threw a lot at the wall intentionally. We wrote about 20 songs for that one and had a lot of overdubs and a lot of layers. We went particularly ham with the backing vocals for this project and had the track list set up already before we even started recording.

Sam did nearly every single vocal. Most of it was live. There's very few overdubs, so it was a much more intentional and much more sparse record. And I think, you know, we're kind of treading in that direction right now. We're already talking about going even more sparse and even more minimal with the next one.

SF: Articulation was a big word for this one. If something’s in there, it's in there for a reason, and that's anything from sounds to lyrics to all of it. We’ve tried to get a bit more pinpoint accurate with each motion.

So you’re trying to be more purposeful with each detail. There’s not necessarily a routine, but there’s a purpose, and you can still learn from that process each time you go into it.  Are there any songs on Bonanza that were particularly hard to get right? Additionally, were there any that came easily and naturally to you?

BW: “Strict Patterns” we had down. Sam's had that demo for years, and “Donnie 737” was similarly easy. The hardest one to pull off was “The Way Out.” There were a lot of different iterations of that vocal delivery. Originally, Sam had a very long, drawn out kind of low singing thing going on, and then we all heard it for the first time in the studio, the way he has it on the record.

SF: Yeah, that one took a lot of attempts and a lot of tries to get the vocal approach right.

I want to talk a little bit about your tour. How has it been to play these songs live? 

SF: Great. This is by far the most fun I've ever had playing the set list each night. Yeah, these new songs just feel really good and people are digging them. We’re four dates into it now and it's feeling great. We love Acid Mothers Temple, it's been fun to watch them every night. 

Are there any that have surprised you in any way? Like, playing them live to an audience that had a reception maybe you didn't expect? 

SF: We had a show with another Portland band called 40 Feet Tall. We played “Cypher Sore Eyes” for the first time live and the show was sold out. That song wasn't out yet when we played it, and it was just immediately met with positivity, so that was a very good feeling. 

Has it become one that you've really enjoyed to play on this tour because of that? 

BW: Definitely, yeah. I think we all were kind of feeling not very confident about that one, and then just kind of gave it a try at that show, and it went way better than we thought. 

What are some of the must-have essentials that you guys have on the road while touring?

SF: I have to have my sleep mask. It’s really dense, like, filled with a bunch of beans or beads or something. I’m super light reactive, and I just can't sleep if there's any light in the room. I have to have that on the road, or else I'm kind of a wreck. 

BW: This is a new one for me, but I brought a squishmallow with me. It's the best neck pillow I've ever had, and you can just press it up against the window and it just holds your head perfectly. 

Squishmallows are so comfortable! What about food or snacks? Have you eaten anything really good on the road so far that you've loved, whether that be like something you've brought with you, or food in a certain city? 

BW: We're in California right now, and Mexican delis are definitely the move in California. Trader Joe's and Costco are both just like, if we need a quick lunch that doesn't, you know, hurt. 

SF: Economic grab & go health food is really important on the road. 

BW: Yeah, we're all on very tight budgets, and it's easy to eat a lot of really bad food, so taking our salads when we can. 

Is there anything else that you'd like to plug or to talk about with the tour or album, or anything else upcoming that fans could be excited for?

BW: Well, let's see. I mean, we’ve got a music video coming out soon that I'm really excited about. I'm working on a video game. It sucks right now. We'll see if it turns out any good. We intend for this release to have a long lifetime, so we're kind of just pumping life into it. Sam's got these animations that he's been working on that really tie into the story of the album. 

SF: Well, yeah, I'm putting together a comic. There's like, little cartoon characters that are kind of involved in the album cover and the lyric sheet and part of the rollouts and everything. I have a storyline that connects all of them to us, and this make believe story that I've concocted. I want to make a very short form comic book. 

I love that! So you do all the animations for the press photos and album?

SF: Yeah, yeah, I did those. 

How did that come together? 

SF: Well, we've got an album called Yup that came out in 2019 and there's a little bird character on it. That was just something that I used to doodle all the time as a kid. You'll notice that there's a lot of similarities between that bird and the bird on Bonanza. That's like an actual, like, freestanding thing. It's almost my height, but it's the same bird, but just kind of brought to life a bit more. 

I wanted to kind of explore Roger Rabbit style cartoons in real life. So I created all these little characters, and the heroes and the villains and all that. It was fun to explore that and try and keep some sort of cohesion and through line that connects each of the past albums into this current one. 

Would you say there's a specific storyline through all your albums? 

SF: Well, I would say that the one thing that I've tried to do with the lyrics is make them a bit more autobiographical, because that was a problem that I had with rock music-- The lyrics were not a focus at all. It was mostly just the melody and the production. But I've always been a word guy, and so I noticed that all the words just kind of get really vague, or they're just not purposeful. Album to album, things kind of get a bit more precise and a bit more specific. I'm even name dropping people that other people don't know because the album is for us, you know? There is an ongoing storyline, just because it's our lives, and this is the same group of people making the same art through and through. So yeah, the characters are something that I came up with for Bonanza, but there's moments where it ties back into older albums. 

Thank you so much for chatting with me!