Today we’d like to introduce you to Mac And Bee.
Hi Mac and Bee, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Mac: We’re GenXers, we met in the mid 90s at a live music shows and have been together ever since.
Bee: We’re also both native Austin-ites, born and raised. We’ve been playing music on the scene since we were kids. But like most people we started singing and dancing in the mirror and that became playing festivals and iconic stages around Texas.
Mac: Out journey has been a sometimes precarious balance between instinct and intellect, attraction and conflict, creation and chaos.
Bee: And those are the forces that take the shape of natural harmony and balance. It’s the same duality that inspired our name!
Mac: Venus Loves Mars serves as the cornerstone to our ethos. “We do all our thinking below the belt!” Bee: Ya the only time we are purposefully vague is when asked “what do yall sound like?”
Mac: We tend rely on literal translations like: Songs for road trips, house parties, holding hands, dancing under starry nights, telling stories and wrastlin’ grizzly bears!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Bee: We’re lifelong students. We navigate with curiosity as our compass. It took a while, but once we finally ditched our fear of being cringey or getting rejected – that pesky need for external validation went away, and we started seeing every challenge or obstacle as a frontier to explore or a lesson to be learned.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Mac: We make and perform music for those who still believe in true love. And like true love it takes many forms. Sometimes it’s garage psych rock….sometimes folksy Americana, sometimes vintage soul backbeats .
Bee: I recently began using this description: “Sounds like if Patti Smith and Steve Earle fell in love and started the White Stripes in Austin Tx.
Mac: Most musicians will tell you: “Keeping a great band together – is one of the hardest parts” – and is often crucial to success, we’ve established (over the past 30 years) that we aren’t gonna breakup and fadeaway.
Bee: Ya! We rely on each other in ways most bands don’t or can’t – we know we have that part figured out.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Mac: When we look at our lives together thru a lense of grace, patience and tenacity – we find a sense of self-reliance and confidence that feeds the creative engine
Bee: That encourages us to dive headlong, laughing with eyes closed into the deepest waters. Which is where we’re headed at the moment! We’ve previously made records in studios with engineers and producers – we’re recording our next album right now – and we’re doing it ourselves in our own studio.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://venuslovesmars.bandcamp.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vlm4ever/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearevenuslovesmars
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL579ostTKJiR0SaVggJyJvjdp0HGZ-8dJ&si=MZ3lTh6sI_UjcnW8
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/venuslovesmars
Image Credits
Hatty Bloom McAnally
