Both Dave and Mac grew up in relative privilege in Toronto, Canada. Both men are the sons of hard-working white Canadian families who were not initially economically-privileged, but whose parents worked diligently to get ahead. Today, the two members of Sacred Machines acknowledge that they have had a serious ‘leg up’ in life due to their racial privilege, economic advantages, and access to good schools.
Dave’s father ultimately became a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ontario, while Mac’s father became a founder of TV Ontario, and its first Program Director and General Manager. Dave’s interest in the creation of music that addresses issues of social justice is in no small part a tribute to his father’s lifelong devotion to justice, particularly justice for the underdog and for the mentally disabled. Mac’s interest in teaching came from his father, and Mac’s passion for Psychoanalytic studies was inspired by his mother, a psychotherapist and social worker who worked for many years with the Family Service Association.
Though Dave and Mac were raised in contexts of white privilege, at a very early age, both became fascinated with African-American rhythm and blues music, and this focus on backbeat and syncopation became an obsession in their respective lives. Though their current music is based on deep-psychological lyrical analyses located in traditional “rock” contexts, the syncopation of R&B is at the heart of the music of Sacred Machines.
Both musicians are also avid writers and notably, fans of science-fiction. Though admirers of Clarke, Bradbury, Heinlein and others, both Dave and Mac, as teenagers, independently admired Kurt Vonnegut, and placed him in the highest esteem. The psychogenesis of the name “Sacred Machines” comes from the duo’s deep admiration for Vonnegut (1973).
“The idea that Vonnegut is trying to purge from his mind is a secular interpretation of reality, which he inherited from his great-grandfather Clemens Vonnegut, a freethinker and atheist whom Vonnegut greatly admired. In his autobiographical collage, Palm Sunday, Vonnegut characterizes his “ancestral religion,” freethought, as a rejection of supernatural revelation and religious teaching for rational thought and scientific knowledge. Pride for his family’s irreligion “is the most evident thing in my writing, I think” (1984, p. 195). This admission clarifies his intellectual orientation at the beginning of Breakfast of Champions, where he explains, “The suspicion I express in this book [is] that human beings are robots, are machines.” He formed this conviction in his childhood, when he observed a man suffering from syphilis stagger across the street “as though he had a small motor which was idling inside.” His mother’s suicide by a drug overdose when he was a young adult convinces him that human beings are “huge, rubbery test tubes . . . with chemical reactions seething inside. (1973, p. 3).”” (Privett, 2020)
Dave and Mac met when both men worked as musicians and session producers for a prominent Canadian music law firm (Miller & Associates) which took an active interest in the preproduction of its clients’ music. Mac was asked to build a Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) studio as part of the firm’s chambers, a pioneering experiment (1985) which resulted in Dave and Mac meeting and working with a number of renowned Canadian music stars (eg. Shania Twain).
In 1987, Dave and Mac formed ‘Borderline’, the early manifestation of the Sacred Machines duo. Together, the musicians wrote and recorded nine pieces, the same songs which are now included on “Hide n’ Seek” (1988/2020).
- Read about Dave and Mac’s musical journeys: The Musicians (2020)
In the 90s, as Dave worked with many different high-profile Canadian rock, R&B, and country artists, Mac returned to university to complete his graduate studies and begin post-doctoral work both in Psychoanalysis and in Global Education, a discipline rooted in peace education, anti-racist education, feminist studies, and environmental justice.
Exactly thirty years (2018) after Borderline (1988), Dave and Mac met once again, and re-launched the duo. Realizing that there were now a few bands named “Borderline” (including a Toronto act that was still active), Dave re-named the duo “Sacred Machines,” a reference to the work of Kurt Vonnegut. The two musicians are very proud of Sacred Machines, and of their ability to have recorded not only the original nine songs in a new, high-resolution context (Hide n’ Seek), but also an additional nine new songs (Zero Footprint).
As their Mission Statement asserts (see Our Mission), Sacred Machines have dedicated their songwriting oeuvre to writing about important issues: political corruption, moral hypocrisy, racial equality, spiritual freedom, child development, women’s rights, and social justice.
Sources
- Privett, Josh. (2020). Kurt Vonnegut, the Lapsed Secularist. Georgia State University: The Daily Vonnegut.
- Vonnegut, Kurt. ([1973] 1999). Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday. 1973. New York: Dial.
- Vonnegut, Kurt. (1984). Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage. New York: Laurel.
- Vonnegut, Kurt. (1974). Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons. New York: Dell.
