Mark Mackay is a country music star in the making, but his background as a ski rep makes him the perfect new business episode. His road to Nashville included stints with Rossignol, Dynastar, and Atomic, all by the time he was 20. He was the head sales rep in California when Atomic started exploding, he had a dream job, he was young, and he left it all for the lucrative world of medical sales. Soon after, he had a life-changing epiphany on a paddleboard and, within an hour, quit his job, broke his lease, and went all in on being a country music star, and so far, it’s been working.

Dana Dane is legendary storytelling rapper from Brooklyn who helped influence me in my formative years. A chance zoom call with Dane connected us and once that happened, I made it my goal to get him on the podcast. In the month leading up to recording, so much was happening with race in this country and the podcast talks about Dana’s life and times and how race seemed to play into them.

In 1987, the (West) Seattle music scene and Easy Street Records were both in their infancy.  Both the scene and the store showed a DIY ethos that is still apparent today.  The global culture that was created by the scene was cultivated locally by the store.  There were a lot of players in Seattle, Matt Vaughan was and still is a very important one…He would never say that but he says a lot on the podcast.