Steve Mackay

Steve MacKay is a tenor saxophone player, best known for his participation on The Stooges' influential second album Fun House. MacKay was familiar to The Stooges from his work in Detroit's avant-rock pioneers Carnal Kitchen. He was recruited by lead singer Iggy Pop a mere two days before the Stooges left Detroit for Los Angeles to record the album, after having sat in with the band several times.

His distinctive and powerful soloing style draws heavily from instro rock and drag music in equal proportion to the experimental free jazz approaches of Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler. This was a marriage that was far from common at this time, between two styles whose proponents had little appreciation for each others work; and MacKay's voice on the middle-period Stooges recordings and tours is an undeniable precedent to early-80s jazz beasts like John Zorn.

MacKay toured with the group throughout 1970 and 1971 but parted company with the Stooges after the band's brief first breakup in 1971.

For the next ten years, MacKay would play with a wild cross-section of underground music icons: Violent Femmes,Snakefinger, Commander Cody, Andre Williams, and a handful of other efforts continued into the late 1980s. As the 90s approached, MacKay's profile gradually lowered as he took up residence near San Francisco and began work as an electrician.

As it happened, the wide perception in music history was that Steve MacKay was dead. As of the year 2000, Stooges biography pages on websites for MTV, VH1, and Rolling Stone Magazine included an item indicating that MacKay had died in the 1970s. The origin of this story is unknown, but it was a small record label and noise collective called Radon that disproved the rumor by contacting MacKay and arranging to release his first solo recordings.

Radon released the "Death City" single in 1999, and MacKay began to perform and record regularly with a revolving line-up of musicians associated with Radon. The first full-scale tour of The Steve MacKay Ensemble was mounted in July of 2003; with a percussion-heavy lineup featuring bassist Marlon Kasberg (Liquorball), drummer Sam Lohman (Nimrod, 36), multi-instrumentalist Travis McAlister (Nequaquam Vacuum), found object percussionist Noah Mickens (Nequaquam Vacuum), and drummer and band leader Scott Nydegger (Sikhara).

MacKay rejoined The Stooges in 2003 when they played their first show in 29 years at the Coachella Festival, and he has performed with them ever since. He appears on Stooges tracks on the Iggy Pop collab album "Skull Ring" and the live album "Telluric Chaos", and participates in nearly all live performances.

Steve MacKay has also appeared at recent live shows by Violent Femmes, with whom he has played off and on since appearing on their albums "The Blind Leading the Naked" and "Hallowed Ground".

While MacKay's profile continues to climb in the mainstream, Radon has released the Smegma - Steve MacKay collaboration CD "30 Years of Service" in 2005, and the full-length Steve MacKay CD "Michigan and Arcturus" in 2006. His solo discography also includes a self-rleleased collection of solo and group demos from the 1980s called "En Voyage"; and such compilations as Popular Electronic Uzak, You've Got Your Orders 3, and Multiball Magazine Issue 2. The Steve MacKay Ensemble has continued to perform live and on radio, and will embark on a tour of the U.S. and Europe in Spring of 2006.