Actor, business owner adds music to list of accomplishments with release of debut EP
By Luke Brogden
Dale Mackey likes attention.
The local actor, owner of Dale’s Fried Pies and co-owner of The Central Collective will be able to add “solo artist” to her repertoire on March 19 when she releases “Vanity Project,” her debut EP produced by her friend Adeem Bingham (Adeem the Artist). Mackey says she realizes that owning up to her extroversion may be socially fraught.
“Why is that so wrong?” she laughs. “It’s kind of culturally unacceptable to ask for attention. [But] I’ve always been someone who really wants to get attention.”
Mackey has been attracting more and more of it over the past couple of years, especially, as she’s been a key figure in spearheading a vibrant creative scene at The Central Collective, a mixed-use space located at 923 N. Central St. It’s one that’s propelled by a fun and whimsical nature that she and her photographer husband Shawn Poynter – along with friends like Bingham, his painter wife Hannah and designer/photographer Jody Collins, among others – have cultivated through staging an eclectic series of events.
In between work orders for her famously delicious pies and shoots for Poynter’s photography business, the couple hosts art events like: Bingham’s “Sound and Silence” singer-songwriter gigs; Bingham and Collins’ Knoxvolliday event, a tribute show featuring an all-star cast of local performers that also served as a fundraiser for beloved East Knoxville institution The Love Kitchen; First Friday art shows; and, most recently, The Love Bazaar, a Valentine’s Day gift-themed showcase for local artists, artisans and makers. In fact, one of Mackey’s first live music performances came in a brief appearance onstage with Bingham and Poynter at her business’s recent anniversary event.
Mackey’s very active Instagram accounts – her personal handle, the one for her pie business and the one for The Central Collective – are further proof of her eclecticism and effusive ebullience. But perhaps the most notable among her contributions to Knoxville culture is Good Sport Night, a weekly series in which guests sign up, sight unseen, for life-affirming surprise experiences both at The Central Collective and all around town. For one of these events, ticket buyers found upon arriving that they’d be taking part as guests in a real wedding.
It’s in that spirit, Mackey says, that she calls “Vanity Project” contributors like Poynter, Bingham and guest-vocalist friends Megan Dooley and Lance Dyzak The Good Sport Band.
“It’s been fun … and it’s not hurting anyone,” she laughs. “Some of it is actually just silly. … Honestly, the lyrical content of the album isn’t very vulnerable … but just the act of making it is vulnerable.”
At this point, the nuance to Mackey’s self-professed interest in attention-getting emerges. Putting herself out there in colorful outfits on Instagram posts is one thing, but involving herself as a newcomer in what she considers to be a serious medium inspires just a little trepidation – particularly considering that she counts as friends multiple local artists whose efforts and ideas she respects.
“It’s like, I haven’t done that … and why do we need someone else?” Mackey says self-deprecatingly. “But I am going to put something out there to listen to.”
Initially, though, Mackey couched her musical aspirations in humor, pretending that when she was sending Bingham songs with ukulele accompaniment, it was just to elicit a laugh.
“Dale is really self-effacing,” Bingham says. “The context was that she was sending me these ‘silly’ songs … that were really quite good.”
The confidence in the material that their shared pals displayed was all it took to renew Mackey’s extroverted fervor.
“A lot of people in our friend group were encouraging it, a show and a party … and that was really scary to you,” Bingham says to Mackey, who acknowledges her original discomfort with the idea.
“‘Oh God, this is actually going to come out?!’” she says of her first thoughts about exposing herself in such a bare manner. “And then my reaction was, ‘Alright, yeah! We’re going to do it!’”
The songs on “Vanity Project” reflect Mackey’s influences growing up listening to indie, pop and anti-folk around the turn of the millennium. (“I feel like my musical taste stopped when I was in, like, eighth grade,” she says.) They recall artists like Kimya Dawson, her group The Moldy Peaches and a handful of other acts who emerged in a period of music that rebelled against the earnest self-seriousness of most indie-rock and folk that had been created to that point. Instead, these artists were employing clever, tongue-in-check lyricism to reference everything from the profane to the mundane in a playful sing-song style.
“The whole genre has this really … it’s approachable and playful and whimsical,” Bingham muses. He says anti-folk is the opposite of “folk that dips into intellectualism, which can be like, ‘Yuck!’”
For the sound of the EP, there is often ukulele or acoustic guitar and Mackey’s warm yet light voice, which vacillates from plaintive to wry to pleasantly frayed at the edges, suggesting she often has smoked, hollered or otherwise had a good time in her past. The songs are overlaid with steady electronic drums, simple yet frolicking basslines, layered lead parts and occasional background vocals from Bingham and the other Good Sport singers. The result is a pleasant, smooth listen, and it marks the welcome introduction of a charming, disarming new voice on the Knoxville music scene.
A unique journey led Mackey to this moment. The Chicago native spent her post-college years in Whitesburg, Kentucky, working for nonprofit media, arts and education center Appalshop as a radio DJ for a regional call-in show for inmates of nearby correctional facilities. She taught creative-writing workshops in those facilities, too, while also getting her feet wet in the musical world by forming local cover act The Superfuls.
Around this same time, Mackey connected with Poynter, a freelance Knoxville photographer hired by the same employers. Their shared love of silliness and fun blossomed into a lasting connection that eventually saw the pair move to Knoxville, where Mackey continued to pursue creative interests.
After a stint at Community Television of Knoxville, Mackey started Dale’s Fried Pies in the basement of Dazzo’s Pizzeria on Gay Street and began acting occasionally in local theater productions. Eventually, when looking for a space for their businesses, Mackey and Poynter started The Central Collective, embarking upon another creative odyssey and establishing themselves as an essential power couple in a city chock full of makers.
“I was not really planning on staying,” Mackey says about her time in the Scruffy City, “but [I] kinda fell in love with it.”
Mackey, along with Bingham, Poynter and others, will debut “Vanity Project” online and live for the first time at The Central Collective on March 19. Plans call for an interactive experience, complete with a talent show in which audience members are the competitors. Mackey promises that it will be “very spectacle-oriented.” Not long after, she can be found onstage acting in the River & Rail Theatre Company’s production of “Sweat,” running from April 22 to May 3.
