26 Mackenzie Wilmoth: singer-songwriter

Mackenzie Wilmoth is a songwriter, singer, and musician. Her musical journey began at just 12 years old when she received a guitar for Christmas, sparking a passion that led to her self-taught prowess in both playing and songwriting. 

Her debut single "know your name" in May 2016 set the stage for an impressive trajectory. In 2021, she released her first album "nonfiction," showcasing her talent for crafting songs that delve into a spectrum of human experiences, from toxic relationships to the euphoria of first love. 

In the face of adversity, Mackenzie's indomitable spirit shone through as she battled and triumphed over a rare form of sarcoma, emerging cancer-free in September 2022. 

Her music, marked by intricate storytelling and a captivating authenticity, invites listeners into a world of relatable emotions. Mackenzie continues to create music that resonates deeply with her audience, offering glimpses of her latest work through her social channels. Her journey is an inspiring testament to resilience, and her music is a mesmerizing window into the depths of the human experience.

 In September 2024, Mackenzie headlined a benefit concert, “Elevate the State: Amplifying Pediatric Cancer Research,” at Manchester Music Hall in Lexington, with proceeds going to the nonprofit organization Elevate Childhood Cancer Research and Advocacy. Donations are always gratefully accepted (elevatechildhoodcancer.org) to fund pediatric cancer research. 

https://mackenziewilmoth.com/

https://www.instagram.com/mackenziewilmoth_hq/

https://www.tiktok.com/@mackenziewilmoth

Kathie’s note: I met Mackenzie through her publicist, Debra Locker, whom I’ve known for years. Debra said she had a singer/songwriter for my podcast and I said yay and we got connected and Mackenzie and I instantly clicked. I love Gen Z.

Writers Rotation intro/outro recorded at Dynamix Productions in Lexington, Kentucky.

Transcript

Mackenzie [00:00:00]:
I'm Mackenzie Wilmoth . I'm a songwriter, and writing is my lifeline.

INTRO:
Hi. Welcome to the writer's rotation podcast. I'm your host, Kathie Stamps. I love words and writing and people and talking. So I'm talking to people who write all kinds of things in different professions. It's a writer's rotation.

Kathie Stamps [00:00:22]:
Mackenzie! How you doing?

Mackenzie Wilmoth:
Thank you so much for having me and wanting to, you know, talk about, you know, writing processes. I think this is so important, just learning how different people write and read and learn and create. I have always thought that that's something super important. So thank you for bringing a way for people to share their goodness with the world.

Kathie [00:00:44]:
It is fascinating, because we're all doing the same thing, but we're doing it so differently. Which is It's really interesting.

Mackenzie:
Interesting and amazing at the same time. It's so cool to see people's different processes and how they, you know, come up with things and then how they, you know, expel it on paper or pen or phone or however people prefer however people prefer to write.

Kathie [00:01:06]:
So what's new in music?

Mackenzie:
Oh, gosh. There's just so much happening, but also, like, not a lot happening in the world of writing things. I've been in a little bit of a slump recently, which is interesting because a lot of stuff has been going on, yet my brain is not braining in the way that it needs to for me to actually get those ideas on paper.

Kathie:
It's percolating.

Mackenzie:
Yeah. It's like marinating. It's been marinating for a little too long, and I'm like, are we done yet? Like, can we actually be productive with this?

Kathie:
The spigot will turn on, and it'll just you're gonna be, Stop it!

Mackenzie:
Yeah, hit the ground running.

Kathie [00:01:44]:
I love that you named, wait, how many albums do you have out now?

Mackenzie:
Just one. I have one album out.

Kathie:
Okay. And I love that you named it nonfiction, and you spelled it correctly.

Mackenzie:
Oh, thank you.

Kathie:
No hyphen.

Mackenzie:
I get my, like, sense of grammar and literature from my mother. She is like will be physically ill if someone uses the wrong form of, like, there, their, or they’re, your, you’re, and yours.

Kathie:
Well, yeah.

Mackenzie:
I mean, like, rightfully so, and I'm the same way. And that idea was actually from one of my friends because I was struggling to come up with a name for the album because I released that when I was 18 when I was in high school. So right when I was finishing up my senior year, and I was like, I don't know what to name the album. It's like, you know, some of these things are about, you know, situations that I didn't go through. I wrote them about, like, a movie or a TV show, and some of them I read about other people, and some of them were my stories. And she was like, well, what about you call it, like, something like nonfiction? Because all the stories are real to you. And I was like, you are a genius. So I have my old friend Maggie to thank for that amazing idea, and I love the name. I just feel like it really encapsulates everything about it perfectly, and it's very special to me.

Kathie [00:02:58]:
Do you have a favorite key when you write?

Mackenzie:
I love the key of B major. And also the key of C-sharp.

Kathie:
C-sharp has all the sharps!

Mackenzie:
It does. It has all the sharps. When I took AP music theory in high school, we were, it was when we were learning about, like, the circle of fifths, and we all had to pick, like, a favorite key after we were learning about it. And I went, I love the key of C-sharp, and my teacher was like, why did you have to pick the one with all the sharps in it?

Kathie:
The hardest one.

Mackenzie:
I was like, because it sounds pretty. That's why. It's very, like, I don't know, dramatic, a little bit theatrical at times. I'm a power ballad girl, so anything that's very dramatic or emotion provoking is something that I'm very I'm very into.

Kathie [00:03:48]:
Love it. My favorite music theory trivia is when you pick a scale, any scale, if you play it backward, it's joy to the world.

Mackenzie:
Oh my gosh. You're totally right. I'm definitely gonna have to go do that on my piano. After this, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna have to mess around mess around with this for a bit.

Kathie [00:04:12]:
Wait. Who wrote that? George Friedrich Handel.

Mackenzie:
Oh, that makes sense. Of course, it's Handel. I mean, he wrote the Messiah, which has the Hallelujah Chorus.

Kathie:
Yes. I bet you his mama said, “George, go practice your scales. Okay. Now play them up, play them down.”

Mackenzie:
And he went, “Wait a minute. This could be something!”

Kathie:
That could be a song. Yeah. He must have been must have been cool with that whole Messiah thing.

Mackenzie:
Oh, yeah. We had to sing a couple movements from that in high school. We did the Hallelujah Chorus every year. It's something. I mean, it's beautiful, but it's difficult.

Kathie [00:04:48]:
For sure. Your benefit concert. Have you done this before?

Mackenzie:
I've never done a benefit concert before, and this is also, like, the biggest gig I've ever had. So it's getting to do a benefit concert for something that means a lot to me and also playing the biggest venue that I've played so far in my career.

Kathie:
And how did it come about? What's the story?

Mackenzie:
So when I was 18, a little over 18 and a half, I had just graduated high school, I was in Nashville with my sister. She's a softball player. So we were down in Nashville for a softball competition, and I'd been feeling pretty sick for about a week. I just assumed I ate something bad, and I've always had stomach issues, so I wasn't super surprised. And we're down there, and it starts getting worse and worse. And I'm not eating, and I'm sleeping all day, and it's a really bad pain. And I'm like, I think I need to go to the emergency room. So they take me.

Mackenzie:
We think it's appendicitis. They do a scan. The doctor on call comes back in after the scans are done, and he's like, hey. The on call surgeon wants to talk to you about something we saw on your scans. And I'm thinking, okay. That's probably not good. And so he comes in, and he's like, yeah. So we're doing your scans. We're thinking that it's appendicitis, and we find this volleyball sized mass over here in your abdomen, which obviously we don't want anything like that in there. We don't want that there. And so he's like, we're gonna go in. Our goal is to remove it. I didn't find this out until later, of course, but upon going in to remove it, he found that it was a solid mass.

Kathie [00:06:29]:
Oh, wow.

Mackenzie:
And so he said that he took a step back. He called an oncologist colleague, and he was like, hey. I'm doing a surgery. This just happened. What do I do? And his colleague was like, you need to just biopsy it, close it back up, send it off for testing. So I didn't find this out until a couple days later. He comes back up to talk with us, and he said, best case scenario, lymphoma. Worst case scenario, sarcoma. And I was sitting there, with my dad, was there with me, and my mom was actually in Tokyo at the time working for the Olympics. And so she's on the phone while we're having this conversation, and I said, wait. Like, cancer? Because I didn't realize that lymphoma and sarcoma were types of cancer. And so they send it off for that testing, comes back as a sarcoma, but then trying to diagnose the subtype of sarcoma, was the most difficult thing because there's so many different types. There's rhabdomyosarcoma. There's Ewing sarcoma. There's a bunch of different categories, and each one kind of whatever it ends up being depends on what treatment plan they set you on because all of them are treated differently. We come back up to Indianapolis.

Mackenzie:
I start seeing an oncologist at Riley Children's Hospital, which I went to Riley for a lot of stuff as a kid. I had a pulmonologist there, had eye surgery there, all kinds of things. So I was super familiar with them, and I was like, that's where I want to be. They figure out that it's this rare form of sarcoma called desmoid fibromatosis, which is a locally aggressive nonmetastatic tumor that attacks whatever organs it has kind of attached itself to. So it's a vascular tumor, meaning that it latches on to a vein or an organ. And we realized or found out from one of the scans that it had perforated my bowel and had formed an abscess. The abscess ruptured, and that was what was causing my symptoms back in Nashville. And so they admitted me to the hospital.

Mackenzie:
And while we were in the hospital, my mom got connected with a mother whose son had attended the same college that my mom had, and she said, hey. My son also just recently got diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma. Maybe we can talk through this together. And this woman's name is Robyn, Robyn Spoon. And so her and my mom were talking about a lot of things and just, you know, what their kids were going through because Justin was going through radiation and chemo. I had a very invasive, very grueling 8-hour abdominal surgery to have the tumor resected, dealing with, you know, healing from that in the hospital. And so they just talked a lot when we were going through the beginning stages of our cancer journey. And so my mom stayed in contact with Robyn, and I have been cancer free since September of 2022.

Kathie [00:09:30]:
Oh, good.

Mackenzie:
They haven't seen any growth or anything since then. With these tumors, they can for some people, they never come back. For some people, they come back in a few months. Some people, they don't come back for 15, 20 years. They don't know why some people's come back and why some people's don't or the rate at which they come back. That's something they're still doing a lot of studies on because it's such a rare type. Well But my mom was keeping up with Robyn. And in, March of last year, Justin ended up passing away, which, you know, was a really sad and unfortunate thing.

Mackenzie:
But Robyn had started this nonprofit called Elevate Childhood Cancer Research and Advocacy, which strives to create a better environment and better treatment world for those going through pediatric cancer, whether that's sarcoma, a brain tumor, leukemia, kidney cancer, anything under the sun. And they are striving to fund better cancer care and more pediatric cancer research because pediatric cancer is the most underfunded of all cancer branches. And the drugs that they are using to treat kids, I believe she said that the one that they used to treat Justin was last FDA approved in 1959.

Kathie [00:10:51]:
Wow.

Mackenzie:
Which she told us that’s the year when Alaska became a state. And I think the most recent chemo drug, she said, was FDA approved in 1986, and then she gave us the context of that being that was when the Berlin Wall came down. So it really puts into perspective how old and outdated these treatments are. And so they're raising money for more research in order to find better treatments for these kids. And their whole mantra is let kids be kids. Let them enjoy their lives.

Mackenzie:
Don't put all of this pressure on them needing to survive or fight or don't put all of that weight on their shoulders. And so I have been following their nonprofit with my mom, and my mom and I were talking, and she was like, hey. How would you like to do, like, a benefit concert with Elevate? And I was like, that's a great idea because I've been wanting to get into some local charities and fight for things that I'm really passionate about, and pediatric cancer is one of them. And I am just so happy that I'm able to use what I enjoy doing and what really kept me alive in the hospital and use it to raise awareness and money for those going through similar situations to what I did.

Kathie:
Good for you.

Mackenzie:
Because no kid should have to suffer through that ever.

Kathie [00:12:20]:
Yes. So that sounds like it was about the same time as your first album?

Mackenzie:
It was definitely a rough year. I graduated high school in May. Album came out end of June, and then the cancer stuff started the beginning of July. So it was just kind of like a boom-boom-boom kind of thing. The rest of that year was definitely a little bit rough. I had also been dealing with some stuff in my personal life. I'd gone through a really bad breakup right before my senior year ended, so that threw even more chaos into the mix.

Mackenzie:
But it was just taking a lot of time to reflect, and I did a lot of writing, not just music, but a lot of journal entries and a lot of poetry. I was just writing constantly. It was the outlet that really kind of helped me to make sense of everything. I would definitely say that 2021 was probably the hardest year of my life, just really rough. But 2022, things started getting a lot better. It's been on the up since then, thankfully.

Kathie:
Good, good, good. Yeah, journaling is for real.

Mackenzie:
Oh, yeah.

Kathie [00:13:25]:
So your songwriting process, is it the same? Is it different every time? Sometimes guitar, sometimes piano, sometimes no instruments?

Mackenzie:
Yeah. It really just depends on the song. Sometimes the lyrics come first, and I'll write the lyrics down, and then the music comes later. Sometimes I get an idea for, like, a chorus hook, like, a musical hook, and I'll go record that and just be like, hey. This is an idea I got. These are the chords. This is the key it's in, and then I'll just start either playing the chords on my guitar or on the piano, usually whatever is closest. Sometimes it might be, like, a melody that I get while I'm driving.

Mackenzie:
Like, I'll just start humming and thinking of lyrics. I'm like, oh, wait. That's good. So I'll pick up my phone and record it into my voice notes and then turn that into something later. I've also noticed that I write better when it's really, really late at night. I'd say anywhere from, like, 11 o'clock at night to around, like, 3 in the morning. I'm not sure why, but I've always tend to get, like, my riding spurts really late at night. And sometimes, I found that water really helps to, like, get my creative juices flowing, whether that's, like, taking a longer shower or sitting outside on the balcony if I'm on, like, a beach vacation or my dad has a pool. So some nights, I'll go out there at, like, 10 o'clock and just sit with my journal and just start writing. It's really all over the play it's all over the place.

Kathie [00:14:57]:
Very cool. Okay. I would describe your sound as pop metal. Yes. Your voice is beautiful.

Mackenzie:
Thank you.

Kathie:
It's very clear. It's very sweet. And then you've got this. I'm like, oh, where did where did Ozzy come from? I really like that.

Mackenzie:
That is like a huge compliment to me, like, seriously, because I love pop music and I love metal music. That means the world to me.

Kathie:
It's a fabulous combo. I love it. Were you a reader as a child, reading and writing?

Mackenzie:
I was. Writing, for sure. I would sometimes, like, make up my own stories. Sometimes it would be writing them down. Other times, it would be, like, the most, like, soap opera Barbie story known to man. But I did read a decent amount when I was a kid. I used to always love doing those summer reading programs with the local library. That was one of my favorite things to do in the summer. I would go to the library with my grandma every week, and I remember when I got, like, my library card and my little library bag.

Mackenzie
And I'd walk in with, like, my little pink bag, and I'd grab my books, and I'd check them out. I was a big fiction reader. I love anything fantasy or princesses or romance, anything like that.

Kathie [00:16:14]:
What about today?

Mackenzie:
Still kind of in that same wheelhouse. I really like mystery, and then also reading a lot of classics. Like, The Great Gatsby is probably one of my favorite books ever. I had to read that my junior year of high school, and I I cried a lot. When finishing the book, it really touched me. I also really like reading a lot of poetry. I'm a big Edgar Allan Poe fan. Big on Shakespeare, F. Scott Fitzgerald, of course, Jane Austen. I mean, she's not as much poetry, but, I mean, like, duh.

Mackenzie:
And one of my favorite modern books, I'm not sure if you've heard of it, it's called We Were Liars, by E. Lockhart. It's got a little bit of romance, but the main genre's, like, mystery. It's very intense, and I've probably read that book at least 5 or 6 times. I read it for the first time right at the beginning of the pandemic. I read a lot during the pandemic. After I finished reading it the first time, I immediately started it back over and read it again.

Kathie:
Cool. I will put that on my TBR.

Mackenzie:
There's also a prequel, which I've only read that one once. I need to read it again.

Kathie [00:17:27]:
Do you read books, Kindle, audiobooks?

Mackenzie:
I am an old-school paperback. Or hard copy book. I feel like I can't focus with a with a Kindle or an ebook. I have a harder time focusing. Audiobooks, I have, like, 15 million voices going on in my head due to ADHD. So it's like I have the audiobook talking, but then it's like I hear, like, 10 other people talking at the same time. And there's also just, like, a sort of feeling you get when you're physically holding on to a book and having it in your hands. And I I'm also one of those weird people that likes the smell of books. So I love the way that, like, books smell, and it's just having that physical copy in your hands, having it be tangible.

Kathie [00:18:16]:
Oh, yeah. Where were you born? Where'd you grow up? Where do you live?

Mackenzie:
So I consider myself a Kentuckiana native. I was born in Indiana in 2002, which was really long time ago.

Kathie:
Dude, that was a week ago Tuesday.

Mackenzie:
2013, 2014 was when I moved to Lexington with my mom. I ended up moving back to Indiana, June of this year, because I got a new job at a hospital. And that is why I call myself a Kentuckiana girl.

Kathie:
What do you do at the hospital?

Mackenzie:
I work as a pharmacy technician, so pediatric pharmacy tech stuff. So that way I could give back and start working with kids. So I do a lot of labor and delivery, for the moms, high risk pregnancy, and I also work with a lot of the NICU babies. So we make everything for them and everything that they'll need. That's kinda my, you know, pays the bills, but still something I enjoy job.

Kathie [00:19:16]:
Do you follow Katie, the Gen Z pharmacist on TikTok?

Mackenzie:
I do not, but now I feel like I need to.

Kathie:
Kati Forbes.

Mackenzie:
I… am… following her right now.

Kathie [00:19:32]:
Cool. Well, I have enjoyed this so much.

Mackenzie:
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. 

Kathie:
Stay in touch. 

Mackenzie:
Yes, absolutely. 

Kathie:
See you. Bye.

OUTRO [00:19:41]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of writer's rotation. Like and subscribe for more. And remember, writing is a marketable skill. Smiling is a remarkable skill.