Macon Magazine

June/July 2024 | maconmagazine.com 41 I t's a fair, but understandably loaded, question for TORRES, the critically-acclaimed, Brooklyn- based alt-rocker known offstage as Mackenzie Scott, who is gearing up to return to Macon for her first hometown performance to play the 2024 Bragg Jam Concert Crawl in July. On her latest album, "What an enormous room," she sings of a "name of your own, a forever home." Since leaving Central Georgia after high school, Scott has certainly made a name for herself doing what she loves while also creating a "forever home" with the one she loves best. But the road to the peace of the here and now for Scott wasn't always so smoothly paved – nor were there always clear directions for which way to go, musically or personally. And when that road suddenly twists and takes you back to your roots for a huge show, it can bring about a mix of emotions. "I'm really grateful to be invited, honestly. I didn't expect it," Scott told Macon Magazine. "When I lived in Macon, I was a fully closeted lesbian who still professed all of these ridiculous, dogmatic points of view that were really buried inside of me. I hadn't emerged yet. So, getting to come back to my hometown and do my thing, the thing that I feel like I was born to do in that space with no shame attached to it, and actually some excitement instead, will feel good." Macon is absolutely woven into all of Scott's "fibers," as she put it, and that means musically, C a n y o u g o h o m e a g a i n? STORY BY SAM STEPHENS PHOTOS BY JESSICA WHITLEY The Macon native contemplates her roots and the road to authenticity ahead of her hometown concert too. The singer's deeply introspective, raw lyrics reverberate like a flawed, yet powerful stream of consciousness. They're visceral, confessional, and risky, sometimes set against the backdrop of driving power pop and electronic elements while at other times sparse and open. Her music is positively haunting, oscillating between heartbreaking and heartwarming, but is always genuine, bold, and vulnerable. She'll be the first to admit that her albums offer a birds-eye view of a human being attempting to release themselves from the grip of their upbringing in so many ways, and that's okay with her. "It's also very much a part of me that I cling to at the same time," she allowed. "I have a very complicated relationship with my hometown." It's a relationship best summarized as equal parts beauty and pain, deeply complex with notes of gratitude and self-awareness. Scott's intricate feelings about her early years are fundamental to who she is now – yet, her Macon story is less about the backward motion of blame and more about the forward motion of forgiveness, within and without. "I think there was a lot that I probably projected on the town that had nothing to do with where I was [physically] and everything to do with where I was internally, and some of it was the rigidity, the dogma, the conservative Christian fundamentalist sort of weight that is living in the American South." Such is the journey of loving, learning, and

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