Billboard Country Rookie of the Month Adam Mac Brings Queer Joy & Country Glamour to ‘Southern Spectacle’: ‘I Want My Community to Feel Seen’

Adam Mac and his husband Lee Pfund’s love story began with a serendipitous encounter at Nashville club Play during CMA Fest in Nashville in 2017.

“We hung out and then went our separate ways and forgot to exchange phone numbers,” Mac, 35, recalls. “Then he went on a hunt on social media to find me and we’ve been inseparable ever since.”

They got married in June in Sedona, Arizona, exchanging vows in an intimate ceremony Mac describes as “magical and beautiful, just so perfect. It was truly a universe thing, for sure.”

Their couple’s romance serves as a muse for “Last Rodeo,” one of the songs on Mac’s multi-faceted third studio album, Southern Spectacle, which released Oct. 24.

Growing up in tiny Russellville, Kentucky, just over an hour north of Nashville, Mac soaked in the country music sounds of artists including Garth Brooks and Shania Twain, but also pop icons such as Elton John. He also harbored dreams of singing country music.

Mac moved to Nashville at age 22, and came out as gay shortly thereafter. But for several years, he says he recorded songs that refrained from fully expressing his queer identity through his music.

In 2019, he released a self-titled EP, and while Mac says he loved the songs on that project, he reflects, “Even looking at it now, I can see in that EP, I was still playing the game. I was not using he/him pronouns in love songs. I was watering it down because I felt like that’s the only way I could get invited into the ‘cool club.’ Then, the whole world shut down [in the 2020 pandemic] and I didn’t write a single song that whole year. I was just creatively congested. Coming out of that, I was just like, ‘F—k it, I’m not playing this game anymore.’ They’re not going to want me any way I show up, so why don’t I just write the music I want to write?”

In 2023, he released his creative breakthrough, the flirtatious dancefloor anthem “Disco Cowboy,” with the song’s video staying at the pinnacle of CMT’s 12-Pack Countdown for four weeks. He followed with a 16-song album by the same title.

His dozen-song Southern Spectacle builds on that momentum, fusing rural imagery and Kentucky twang with glittering, club-ready grooves, a blend he calls “Funky Tonk.” Southern Spectacle marks a full immersion of Mac’s country music roots and queer identity.

“There are many overlapping similarities in the genre. Honky-tonk music has such a groove to it, that it almost naturally lends itself to bringing a horn section or blending fiddles and the horns, or the banjo and the horns,” Mac says, adding, “I wanted to make the music I wish I had heard when I was a child.”

Elsewhere on the album, “All Dollars, No Sense” is a jubilant track that sonically pays homage to artists such as John, while “Don’t Want This Smoke” delivers a pointed rebuttal to online bullies. Jason Mater produced Southern Spectacle, with additional production from Sean Trainor, Warren Riker and HALLIE. The album was recorded over two days at Black River Studios in Nashville.  

Mac, Billboard’s November Country Rookie of the Month, shared insights about the anthems proliferating his new album, the transformative impact of “Disco Cowboy” in 2023, and about forthcoming collaborations with two of his closest musical allies.

“Disco Cowboy” was a turning point for you, artistically. What inspired that song?

I spent the whole pandemic listening to disco music, with Donna Summer on repeat and I’ve always loved Michael Jackson and Elton and Prince, but I’d never fully stepped into that. When we wrote “Disco Cowboy,” it felt like I truly found my sound.

That same year, you chose to not perform at a music festival in your home state after part of the festival’s board expressed concerns about the performance “promoting homosexuality.” What was that experience like for you and how did that further embolden you to make the music you are making now?

I chose myself and stood up for myself in something I believed in, and said no to something I was excited to do, because of the situation surrounding it. I chose my team’s safety and my own safety. Then, immediately, it snowballed into the biggest outpouring of love — and landed me opening for Maren Morris [on Morris’ The Lunatics Tour stop in Chicago]. That really shifted things for me. I get chills thinking about it, because that is the example that we can magnify and show the world this small a– town in Kentucky showing up so loudly, supporting a queer country artist that looks like me.

On your new album, “Last Rodeo” takes inspiration from your love story. What was writing that like?

It was one of the last three songs I wrote on the album earlier this year. I knew I wanted to write my vows into a wedding song. I wanted it to feel very Western-coded. I wrote it with Sonia Leigh and Jason Mater and they have been such champions. I 100% know I’m safe in the room with them and they help pull the best out of me. I really think of them as kind of my core.

Chris Housman, who is also an openly gay country artist, joins you on “The Outside.” How did that collab come about?

He is truly my rock. I think about how it could be so easy for two queer artists to feel like they are competing for the same opportunities, to have almost like a rivalry, but it is so the opposite. I’m so thankful to have Chris, who is going through literally all of the same things at almost the same time and we’re at a similar place. It has been so good to have him as a friend and a collaborator. We have written some of my favorite songs together — “My Body, The Temple” on my last album, and “Up and Down” on his current album.

Our co-writer, Nell Maynard, had just been to an event where it was everybody socializing and rubbing shoulders and she just felt so on the outside, not invited to the “cool kids” table. I knew Chris had to be on this song, because it’s a message that both of us believe in so strongly and that we think the world needs to hear. It’s not downing anybody, it’s just speaking our truth and finding the power in being where you are, and wherever you are is where you need to be.

You’ve also teased forming a new trio, The Cowgays, with Housman and Brooke Eden. What music are the three of you working on?

We’re diving into our favorite country sounds from the ‘90s, but updating it from a queer perspective — like we need a queer “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” kind of song. It’s so fun. I’ve never written like that for a group with three parts and all of the things, so it’s fun. They are part of my inner circle of friends, so to be able to do this with them is like, ‘Pinch me. What is my life?’”

The album’s final song, “Golden Boy,” is an affecting track that looks at not being fully accepted. That seems like one of the most vulnerable songs on this album.

I think that’s the song I’m most anxious about, because I truly have never been so vulnerable. When I wrote that song, I thought it was just going to be my little therapy song that I wrote for me. It’s really about my dad. I have an older brother, he’s three years older than me, and he’s ex-military, grew up hunting and fishing. All the things my dad loved to do, my brother [also] loved to do.

They took me hunting one time and I remember when I was a kid, I was yelling to scare the deer away so they wouldn’t get shot — my dad was like, “You’re not coming with us again.” So, I think for me, that song was just my way of coming to peace that that’s not the relationship I had with my dad, and he doesn’t necessarily love or accept all of this.

It was healing to tell myself, “I can be my own kind of golden boy.” I can plant a new family tree and build my own life, and shine and sparkle in all the ways [my father] never accepted. But everyone’s who has heard it has felt like, especially queer people who have straight siblings, I think that’s the kind of nuances we haven’t heard from a perspective of a child who has straight siblings. I’m shining, a golden boy, but never felt like the golden boy.

What do you hope fans take away from this project?

Joy. I think joy is so infused in who I am as a person, and I want that infused into my music as well. The world feels like it’s on fire right now, and I want to put joy and happiness, and for 45 minutes of your day, go on a journey that teleports you from reality. The last song I wrote [for the album] was “Daydream.” The world is hard and I hope people can find joy and dance.

And I want my community to feel seen. I am queer and I’m from the South and I grew up in a tiny a– town where I felt like I had to hide my entire life. I want this music to inspire people in small towns to see there is a path forward and you can shine just as bright in those small places. And honestly, it’s more important that you do in those places.

Who would be your dream collaboration?

Obviously, it would be awesome for an icon like Elton John, but when thinking about who I really want to write a song with, it’s Miley Cyrus. She’s from Tennessee, she’s Dolly [Parton]’s godchild and I don’t feel like she’s ever fully dove into a country sound in her raspy voice. I feel like the textures in our voices and the range, we could come up with the coolest country song.