Illinois Entertainer June 2026 | Página 8

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Michael

MM: Well, I’ m the youngest, and so my brother and sister kind of went off to college when I was still decently young, and I remember my parents got me a guitar for Christmas when I was probably in 7th grade, and I think it was kind of a thing where they knew I was
the guitar. It was fun.
IE: What is it about the Midwest that gives you life-lasting values? MM: I think for me, I just never was expecting to have all the opportunities that I’ ve been given. There wasn’ t much of a music scene in Cincinnati, and even with the small music scene that there is, I never felt like truly a part of it. So I always just kind of viewed it as a thing of,“ Oh, I don’ t stand a chance against the bands from L. A. and New York.” So maybe I had a chip on my shoulder, but I also felt just kind of like this imposter syndrome, like a regular old dude from Cincinnati isn’ t going to crack through in the music industry. I think the reality of it was, I did have more of a chip on my shoulder, because I wanted to try to get out a little bit and
Michael Macagi
gonna be lonely without having siblings around. And so they figured I could try to learn something new to keep me occupied. And my family – even though no one played any instruments – everyone was pretty musical. My mom just loved old music and introduced me to a lot of really cool singer-songwriters. So I think when I finally learned how to play guitar and learned how it all works, I kind of fell in love with the whole thing— I fell in love with songwriting, fell in love with learning how to play
see what I had compared to those other people. So there are a lot of things like that that I take from being from the Midwest.
IE: Can you name some of the advantages that clicked for you, in chronological order? MM: Yeah. And it happened pretty quick. I was in a band with some high school buddies for a long time, called The Heavy Hours. And we tried our hardest, ground it out, and played a lot of shows. But we played a lot of shows where we just saw tables and chairs in the venues—
just empty rooms, essentially. And that project just naturally faded away – some of the guys wanted to get married, some were having kids, so it just kind of naturally ended. And then I was the single guy in the band, and I still wanted to try a little bit. So I just released a couple of songs under my own name. And I wasn’ t good at – or didn’ t know anything about – social media, but a song had this weird little rocket ship moment on social media, and it just kind of opened up all these doors. The song got exposed to millions of people in an overnight span when I’ d just released a little snippet of it on Instagram and TikTok. But it had this moment where people started using it for their own videos- it just got
all this momentum, and people were asking me to release it. And the song wasn’ t even done yet – That was the funny part. I had to go back to the studio, and the name of the song was“ Scared to Start.” So I ended up releasing that song, and that opened the door for me to get signed by Warner Records, and then I got to play shows and go on tour and open up for people. I got to open up for The Lumineers, who I’ d looked up to since I was 16 years old. And all of these opportunities that I truly, truly never thought I’ d get to experience kind of all happened within a span of six months.
IE: And didn’ t a Lumineer actually help you
8 illinoisentertainer. com june 2026