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Meet David Mack, founder and lead organizer of Truckee Pride Week. A multi-talented artist and DJ, David brings creativity, passion, and a strong sense of community to everything he does, and we're lucky to have him as part of Truckee's cultural landscape.
TCD: Truckee has such a unique creative energy—how does the mountain environment and local community influence your sound and artistic style? Mack: People in Truckee are very energetic and fun loving, they like to dance and party (and often then get up early and get out in the mountains). Meeting that zest and energy through my music drives a lot of what I do. Furthermore, being a small town, I always feel drawn to pushing our genre boundaries, playing things that feel fresh and different. Creatively, a lot of my thinking happens out walking and running in the forest. The silence and seclusion gives me space to play things in my head and find new ideas.
TCD: Can you walk us through your creative process when building a set list or producing a track? Where do you typically find inspiration? Mack: Both have slightly different, complementary processes. For building a set, it’s always driven by an upcoming event. I really enjoy going deep on thinking about audience, experience, design and music. Often I also work on incorporating live dance performances as part of the set, and often I’m also designing the space and lighting (I used to work in theatre and lighting!). From there I try to envision the feeling we want to create, and find a vision for the music direction. After finding that foundation vision, I make a huge long-list of tracks that fit into it. I usually do this over weeks when out and about, discovering new music, exploring the internet and talking to people. Once this is done, the next phase is musical-jigsaw-puzzle. I find it best to work linearly - start at a track that feels like the right place (often something a bit more gentle and familiar) and then track-by-track work towards a destination. Each track needs to musically fit the previous, and I’ll spend a bunch of time on the decks exploring how to best blend and transition them. For producing a track (which I’m much newer to) it always goes best when I have a particular story to tell with it. Often this means starting with writing lyrics or finding existing vocals I want to work with. From there it’s a continuous cycle of experimenting simultaneously with the overall structure, different synthesizers, different melodies and baselines until it feels like it’s gelling together. Finally, there’s a bunch of mastering effort listening to it on a bigger sound system and trying to polish the details.
TCD: As both an artist and a DJ, how do you balance personal expression with reading and responding to a live audience? Mack: I think as a DJ it’s always tempting to go too far on the personal expression possibly at the cost of the audience’s needs. If the audience don’t enjoy themselves, then you failed. However, reading the audience is a dark art. For instance, during vigorous dancing it’s normal for people to get exhausted, then a big group leave to get a drink/air/break, then come back ready to rage further - seeing people leave is scary and can make you want to suddenly u-turn. It takes time for people to warm up, and there’s a delicate balance of leading them versus leaving them. If you’re playing a heavy genre, people might not yet be ready for it. Usually at a party there’s a big variety in musical tastes, and it’s rare you can satisfy everyone. In light of all this, I try to balance flexibility and vision. Often you have an idea of the crowd, the time, and what they might respond well to. As I outlined earlier, I enjoy making really curated set-lists, but those are just a jumping off point, a first draft of the night. I might spend a lot longer on certain songs, I might jump way deeper in the set sooner, I might jump into some other sets and genre buckets depending on what seems to resonate. I like thinking of music in “blocks” where you have little groups of 5 or so songs that go really well together. Then you can build in blocks rather than songs, which lets you focus more on being present and enjoying mixing the flow.
TCD: What has been a defining moment in your journey as a DJ/artist so far, and how has it shaped where you are today? Mack: Playing for the first time in front of people, dressed as a vampire in my kitchen (photos attached) - playing live in a room is such a different beast from playing alone. And it’s really scary to do it live for the first time! Real rooms are noisy, chaotic, the people need and want things you probably never thought of and the bass is so much louder!
TCD: What can the Truckee community look forward to next from you, any upcoming performances, collaborations, or projects we should keep an eye on? Mack: Queer Prom (Sat. June 6) is going to be massive —I’ve created a big “Prom Opening Ceremony” as part of the set with multiple surprise dance performances, and my friend Mille is going to sing live a song we made together. I’ve a lot of other projects brewing - I’m trying to create more Open Decks nights in Truckee where anyone can come up and play, to foster the local DJ community and provide exposure for new artists. I’ve on ongoing “Queer Slut Techno” project of tracks I’ve been building with friends and will take to various upcoming parties. I’m also putting together a boiler-room style big Halloween party (it’s come a long way since my kitchen and outgrown all our previous venues) with a lot of performances and dark edgy vibes.
TCD:How do you feel Pride Month has been embraced by our local community? What is your hope for the future of this endeavor? Mack: We’re extremely fortunate for the outpouring of support Tahoe has given Pride. Across America rural towns are tough places for Queer people - they make up 10% of the population yet half of all queer youth in rural towns report their communities being “somewhat or very unaccepting” of them and that drives much higher rates of anxiety, depression and suicide than urban and non-queer populations. Our local behavioral health studies show the same trends here. Truckee Pride wants to make Truckee and Tahoe a great place for queer people to call home, and by extension a more fun, loving and welcoming community for all.
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