MEM is TEN: Mak Ro

2023

By the time we put on our first show as Mak Ro in 2023, we’d been in the studio making music for four years. It was time to figure out how to translate this to live.

We’d both played in bands before, but this was going to be different because it was our identity as Mak Ro. The challenge was that our songs are made with the 2 of us in studio, but there’s this layered, full sound. How do we bring this sonic landscape to life that we’ve built in the studio?

For us every time we tried to play with a band we didn’t feel like it was a true representation of how we show our music. We were nervous about how people were going to respond to our live set up, but it felt natural and intuitive and we got to be ourselves. And then – we found out about Music Export Memphis. The timing was so right – this is something that could amplify what we’ve built.

That year we applied to be part of Ambassador Access and got selected to be one of the cohort artists. It’s a year-long intensive and you go on a group tour sort of halfway through – this was our first time ever playing outside of Memphis and we played a 1,500 capacity venue in Arkansas – it was the loudest we’d ever heard our music! That gig gave us so much more confidence that our music could translate to these stages, and Ambassador Access as a whole was a crash course in touring and live. It demystified the traveling and touring process, and really we realized: we can do it.

And really important for us, through that Ambassador Access experience, particularly the tour, we realized that traditional touring doesn’t really work for us. But we found what does! As we sometimes say, we feel like our music is like soup – there’s a lot dishes it can go in, but a bowl makes the most sense. We gotta find the bowls in those different cities.

Getting a taste of that traditional approach to touring, we’d always thought it was the thing to do. But what we actually learned was there’s no one way to do this. We get that this is how artists usually do it but – how would Mak Ro do it? We didn’t even realize we were soup! And we needed bowls!

As part of our Ambassador Access experience we also got to do a collaborative set at Tambourine Bash that year with our cohort-mates Tangela and Ariel Reign. That opportunity connected us to so many artists, started friendships that we hold dear to this day. It was a dream of ours to play at the Shell, so seeing Mak Ro on a scale like that – it solidified that yeah, we can do this anywhere.  Madison Square Garden one day! But really, that night was special. In that moment we felt like, we’re definitely part of Memphis music, as different as we were.

2024

That June we had the opportunity to travel to Toronto with Music Export Memphis to showcase at NXNE. It was a crazy experience: international travel with all this equipment, flying and not driving, this was a big unknown. A huge thing that came out of that was we realized it wasn’t as scary! It got us to a point of thinking about how we build our mobile rig. We’re lucky that it feels good to play this music as just the two of us, and that makes it easy to travel, but Eric really cracked the engineering it takes to do the stuff we do and be able to travel, literally, internationally.

It also turned into a lab for marketing our music. Leading up to the festival, we were investing in social ads, really just throwing things at the wall and hoping it would stick. Everything is a stepping stone to the next thing – what we learned in the year prior through Ambassador Access, the assets, the tools, we were able to use all of that and actually bring people in the door. It gave us a platform to test our theories – in our live show, and in marketing, too. We were so shocked that people knew us in Toronto!

The first day we were there, picking up our badges for the festival, someone was like, “Oh my god, Mak Ro! I volunteered here just so I could see you guys play!” The ads had worked, and we got to see it pay off in real time. We had the biggest crowd of the night, people in the audience knew all the words to our songs – we booked another show that night, and we built a relationship with the festival – they invited us back for an official showcase at NXNE 2026.

It absolutely catapulted our growth.

In 2024 we also got to showcase with Music Export Memphis at NOLA MusiCon, which was our first time ever in New Orleans. It was cool just to plug in to their culture, and utilize what we’d learned in Toronto. Our set up works really well in certain venues and that was one. The stage had a screen so we could do visuals. It was a moment of like – this is the exact right venue for us. This venue works for our storytelling.

We’ve learned from all these MEM opportunities where our music works well. Dive bars work so well for an indie band but for us it’s not a great fit. The museums, the art spaces, that’s what we need. We’ve really learned what we need to look for in a venue to present our music. And of course, NOLA MusiCon was an industry event, too, and being in those spaces always opens up other opportunities. The connections and relationships that came out of that will have an impact for years.

 

2025

In 2025 we had an incredible opportunity to play SXSW at the Mempho Presents Memphis day/night party at The Mohawk, facilitated by Music Export Memphis. That was wild. We knew about SXSW as fans, so when MEM asked us, we were just thankful. The biggest thing we learned through that was how major festivals truly operate. Timing, logistics, every tiny thing – they don’t play around. The level of professionalism was elevated.

From a marketing perspective, we also learned that some cities are going to be harder for us to market to than others. Austin wasn’t as cost effective as Toronto, but we still managed to find some of our core people who did end up coming. The Bar-Kays were headlining and they shouted us out, which was amazing.

Austin was a really cool city to be able to see so much live music, and it helped validate what we were doing just seeing other artists do things I’ve never seen before. It made me realize there’s no one way to do live music and it inspired me to lean more into what we do. And of course, being aligned with the SXSW brand, with Mempho Presents, it builds so much credibility.

Later that year we got a Merch Fund grant to fund a run of tee shirts, and had the chance to play Tambourine Bash again – that was so cool. It was the fifth anniversary of the event being at the Shell, and so MEM invited back artists who’d played the event in the past and put them with new collaborators. The timing was good, because it forced us out of thinking we always have to play our music the same way. Playing with Ryan Peel and MadameFraankie made us realize we’ve established our identity enough and we can go dabble in a band setting and our identity holds up and cuts through.

We got back into the studio in 2025, too, and started writing new music. The doors that have been opened up for us through MEM, the rooms, it would be so hard to get those doors open without MEM. That’s how our identity as artists came to be is through those experiences and through those shows.We’re always going to be able to bring Memphis: this show is like this because we did it here first.