by Donte Kirby
(credit Josh Anderson)
“I don’t even like to think about a year from now. I could be in the northwest, could be in Nashville, could be in New York, could be broke as a skunk living with my parents in Georgia. But, hopefully, I’ll be making music. It’s the only thing I know how to do. It’s my passion.”
Mackenzie Scott uses the stage name TORRES as her alter ego. The name belonged to her grandfather. “TORRES is very much me but it’s my artist persona that one extra push.”
Her self-titled album TORRES was released in January. When people listens to her album she wants “to connect, whatever that means…making someone feel less alone…the love I’m able to spread with what I’ve been given.”
“I was a child of the 90s. I grew up with Britney Spears and The Backstreet Boys, on the hooks and melodies. As far as an artist, I don’t hear any of them in my music but I do have a bit of a country twang,” she says.
When Scott was young and growing up in Macon, Georgia, she had a lot of hobbies. She played the flute in middle school band and also played basketball. With a huge passion for drama and theater, before Scott decided to pursue music she had dreams of being on Broadway.
“This dichotomy, my creative self, my music self. My creative self overpowered my academic self. One day I was just sitting in my bedroom writing songs on my acoustic guitar, just sort of a switch flipped. [I wanted to] go to school for that, song writing. Decided on it that day.”
Scott went to Nashville, Tennessee to attend Belmont University. She describes her start at school and experiences with the Nashville music scene as being “sort of a recluse for a while. Then I went to open mic nights and the Nashville rounds shaped who I am literally.”
“Sometimes I’ll feel like I played my best show and it was just one person and the next, the room is full and I feel like I played a sub par set,” elaborated Scott on a recent US tour that helped her grow as an artist and performer.
Since the tour, Scott has “[Learned] to move on and just pat myself on the back. There are nights when the stars align and you have a full room and you play the perfect set. [I] learn how to put on my game face.”
She knows it’s not easy, though. “There were points on the last leg of the U.S tour where I was falling asleep in the green room. It’s not easy at all, it’s a grind to put that much of yourself out there night in and night out. Lugging your gear out of the venue at two or three in the morning, sleeping on couches and floors, a bed if you’re lucky.”
Scott also knows that even though touring isn’t easy for anyone, it’s more than worth it for the fans and the feeling you receive as a performer. To Scott, a live show is a great feeling. “[I] amplify the studio album every time I put on a show. Everything is turned up a notch, a little more flair.”
Torres is going to embark on another U.S tour in September with the indie band Okkervil River. Most recently, she has moved to The Big Apple. “I outgrew Nashville a little bit for this stage in my life. I love Nashville but I needed a kick in my pants. I didn’t want life to get to0 easy.”
The move to New York was possibly a way to get the creative juices for her next project flowing, which right now is in its infancy.“I’m most inspired when I’m in a little bit of turmoil,” she explains. “I was 16 when I started writing [TORRES]. I’m 22 now. I’m hoping this next record is an accurate reflection of a young adult.”
