Macy Dot

Macy Dot is 22, out of Austin, and finished a songwriting degree at Belmont last December.

SALTYmf watched Dot the night before at the Fernandina Beach songwriters festival, where Troubadour Blue brought her up for a song and the sound system quit in the middle of it. She waited it out, picked the song back up and finished. Brad Banyas told her that was the reason he wanted her on the SALTYmf GOAT Podcast, not the singing. Her family had travelled to the festival with her and Brad had already met them by the time the two of them sat down.

Dot recorded a batch of her own songs in Rockport, Texas, and is still deciding what to do with the project. The sessions were cut live with everybody playing in the room at once, with Wurlitzer and Rhodes and organ on the tracks, which she describes as magical. She had worked before with people who produce commercial country well, and had been drifting in that direction by default. Before this one she asked herself a different question: what does she actually put on in the car. The answer was Allen Stone and Marcus King, so that is the way she leaned it. Her stated goals are the Grand Ole Opry and arenas and songs people know all the words to. She made her Bluebird debut last January.

What keeps her steady is other people's timelines. On the bus from the airport to the hotel she sat listening to writers two and three decades further along, including one named Rob whose card was declined at Walmart and whose song went to radio not long afterward. She has started going live on TikTok, an app she does not like and has occasionally prayed would be gone when she woke up. She does it anyway, because it feels like being in the same room.