KIRA MAC – AN INTERVIEW WITH ANNE ESTELLA

 

Anyone tuning into the latest season of The Voice UK will be aware of the impressive Blues Rock vocalist Kira Mac, who quickly earned herself a place on #teamwill thanks to a blistering blind audition. Her early departure from the show, whilst disappointing, is unsurprising given the woeful lack of industry support for emerging talent within the alternative music genres. However, little could dampen the spirit of a musician who is clearly on an upward trajectory, with a debut album and a headline tour just around the corner, and a whole world still to conquer. It’s going to be chaos…

[Anne] You recently appeared on The Voice UK and smashed your audition with a rendition of Metallica’s ‘Nothing Else Matters’. What can you tell us about your time on the show?

[Kira Mac] Thank you so much. I knew I wanted to do a Rock cover and stick to my roots. it’s easy to get swept up into showbiz and do something you think might sell, or go down well, but I’m glad I stayed true to the band, and it paid off.

It was honestly so incredible, I’ve been playing covers gigs for the last ten years whilst writing with the boys and trying to break through, so to be able to have a national stage to showcase on was incredible, also being able to absorb all the wisdom from the coaches and everyone involved in the show was a priceless experience for sure.

[Anne] Please introduce us to the band! How did you all meet and when and where did the band form?

[Kira Mac] We’ve got Joe and Alex on guitar, Bret on the bass and the baby of the band Max on drums. Me and Joe met at Uni in Manchester in 2015. We both went to BIMM (formerly the British and Irish Modern Music Institute), he was on the drum course, and I was on the vocal course. We did some songs
together for assessments and the end of term show and then I couldn’t get rid of him, ha-ha!

Next to join was Bret. He messaged to ask if we needed a sax player and we didn’t but he said he played bass which we did need, so he was instantly in. He’s fuming about the fact he’s the only one who had to send a video audition, but little did we know Alex and Bret come as a package deal, so Alex came
down to jam and stuck too. Then we had some temporary drummers, but no one really stuck, then we found Max and had him join. He was the last piece to the line-up, and now this is it forever!

[Anne] How would you describe your musical style and how do you stand out from other bands within the genre?

[Kira Mac] I think the fact that it is a male dominated industry, no one can deny that. The fact that we have a female vocal which naturally sounds completely different to male vocals, it automatically sets us apart, but also, I think as a collective we have a lot of different influences and styles that we like to
incorporate, from Glam Rock to ‘90s Grunge and Metal, to Country Blues Soul kind of vibes. It creates a unique sound from the foundation when we start writing.

[Anne] Tell us how your career began, what impact music had on you growing up and your biggest musical influences along the way?

[Kira Mac] We’ve been doing this forever, all of us have been playing forever. It’s basically all we can remember, doing music with a side job to fund it, ha-ha. Alex is the only one with a real job, the rest of us always got by because music is what we wanted to do. I think all our parents played Rock and had good
tastes in music when we were growing up and pairing that with our own findings as we’ve grown up has morphed us into the musicians we are today. Stevie Nicks is a massive influence for me. Joe is mad into Metallica. Bret is100% Lemmy’s biggest fan and Alex likes all guitarists ever! Max is the baby, so
his biggest influence comes from the likes of Linkin Park and that kind of vibe.

[Anne] Your debut album ‘Chaos Is Calling’ is due to drop this Autumn! What is the release date and what are the songs on it about? Does it have a theme running through it?

[Kira Mac] It is indeed! We’re so, so, so excited for everyone to hear it – it’s out on the 18 th of November!
It’s kind of a shed to be honest, the songs are all about very different things; they range from being heavy, hard-hitting experiences we’ve had personally or as a collective, to being really light and fun, about having a good time and us just wanting to play shows and be rockstars, ha-ha. You can pre-order at: https://officialmerchandise.store/collections/kira-mac

[Anne] Tell us all about your latest single!

[Kira Mac] So, the latest single is called ‘Mississippi Swinging’. Joe comes up with the skeleton of the songs normally, and one day he came into practice in Manchester with the riff, he said, “What do we think of this?” and as soon as he started playing the chorus riff, he gave me the first line “Mississippi
swinging got a whiskey sipping honey on my left hand” and I had it. It’s mad because sometimes it can take us a year to be happy with a song, but with this one, we literally wrote it in one 3-hour practice.

I’d been on a trip to play in Nashville before lockdown and my best friend Eve said, “I’ll only come if you go past New Orleans on the way from Orlando”, which, as anyone who knows America knows, Orlando to Nashville is a straight line and New Orleans is 1,000 miles west, ha-ha, but we went and made a
road-trip out of it. We did six states in 11 days, three and a half thousand miles and it was wild, so I’d got a good starting point. The first verse is places that we went to and something relating to that.

Apart from the California creeping reference, our friend Pat lives in LA now and he’d flown out to meet us in New Orleans so he could come to Nashville with us. The “Tennessee twisting hoping and wishing it don’t follow me out” was a reference to the first time I went to Nashville. I was at a weird place in my life, I
was growing up and going through probably some of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through and revisiting Nashville this time I hoped to put those problems I’d had the last time I’d been there to bed, and I did.

The rest just kind of wrote itself, it’s honestly the quickest song we wrote on the album by far, and one of my personal favourites.

[Anne] You’ve got a UK tour coming up in November followed by a run of dates supporting The Sweet in December. Who will be supporting you at your shows and where are you most looking forward to playing?

[Kira Mac] We are indeed, and we are so excited to get out and play some shows!!!

We’ve got a different support act at every show. We have Richy Neill & The Reinforcements in Edinburgh, Crowley are with us In Newcastle, Grimsby has Felix Rabbit playing too, Apriori and Dan Byrne (ex-Revival Black) are with us in Blackpool and then we have Dan on the road with us for Stoke, Birmingham, and Crumlin too! For Birmingham we also have Empyre, Loz Campbell in Bradford, Circus 66 in Oxford, and The Karma Effect in London.

We’re excited to play all the shows honestly, it’s our first ever tour, and we’ve never played more than half of the places so were definitely excited to just get out and meet everyone!

[Anne] What has been the highlight of 2022 for you so far?

[Kira Mac] I don’t think we could choose one, ha-ha! For a brand-new band to come out the gate and have the response and support we have has been insane. People think that it’s happened overnight, but we’ve been at this for 11 years.

Playing Steelhouse Festival was a massive landmark, especially with the rush to create a slot for us there, and then Planet Rock A-listing all four singles has just blown our minds. Everything has been mega.

[Anne] What do you have in the diary for 2023?

[Kira Mac] We can’t say too much yet! But we have a lot of irons in the fire and are cooking up a storm so watch the socials to find out!

[Anne] Which band or artist would you like to be as big as and what will it take to get to where you ultimately want to be?

[Kira Mac] I think if we get the Nickelback, Evanescence kind of success that would be amazing. But to be up there with Black Stone Cherry or Halestorm, people we’ve looked up to, would be next level.

CURRENT LINEUP
Kira Mac- Vocals
Joe Worrall – Guitar
Alex Novakovic – Guitar
Bret Barnes – Bass
Max Rhead – Drums

ALBUM LINEUP
Kira Mac – Vocals
Joe Worrall – Guitar/Drums
Alex Novakovic – Guitar
Bret Barnes – Bass
Cal Casey – Drums

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To learn more about Kira Mac, check out the website

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Stream music:  Spotify / Apple Music 

Purchase: Amazon

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