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A Musical Life: Christopher Ryan Mackie

Ian Stewart

Chris Mackie is a lifelong musician who performs as a member of Deathblack Flowers, as a solo artist under the names Christopher Flores and Gilded Heart. He is a former member of the band This Great October and also recorded with the band Sonna. A rarities collection from that group is expected in the near future.

“I’ve been playing music since I was 10. My whole life has been dedicated to producing this art. It’s been about the love of it, it’s been about wanting to do it because I felt compelled to do it. I had that need, that desire, the motivation to always make [music], regardless of outcome.

I think the most beneficial response that I’ve ever got to anything I’ve ever done is that emotion, is people telling me that I made them feel a certain way. For just a split second. That idea that it can change a person’s day or minute or however long your song of however long your performance is. But they have a changed perspective because you were able to do that. With just a simple set of notes. Notes that have been played before. I’m not reinventing the wheel here.

You get hooked on it and you get internal gratification from producing this. For some people it’s football or baseball or acting. They’re doing because they have sense of gratification internally and they don’t need anything else other than that to sustain them. I wish that for everybody.”

Jedd Beaudoin is host/producer of the nationally syndicated program Strange Currency. He has also served as an arts reporter, a producer of A Musical Life and a founding member of the KMUW Movie Club. As a music journalist, his work has appeared in Pop Matters, Vox, No Depression and Keyboard Magazine.