Do we like Chris Mac?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A decent, quietly good record with one band-level stain, though the public record on him personally is fairly thin.
Chris Mac grew up in Darwin, where he has said he felt like the only person at school who wanted a music career. He worked in bands, taught music at a high school, then moved to Southland. A colleague told him Six60 needed a bass player, and he joined in 2009.
His one proper public stoush was in 2022. Australian Sky News host Rowan Dean attacked Six60's tour poster for being almost entirely in te reo Māori, and made several factual errors doing it. Mac, an Aussie himself, said on a podcast he was “mortified”, and argued “To be inclusive is to use more languages.” The band answered with a Māori-language song and cheeky discounted tickets, and Dean didn't apologise.
On the harm check, there's honestly not much to find. Nothing turned up from him on trans people, women, vaccines or the climate, in either direction. The only mark is a band one: in 2021 Lotto pulled a Six60 scratchie after the Problem Gambling Foundation and fans objected, and Six60 said profits would go to charity. That was a band decision, not his words.
A 2019 Christchurch benefit for the mosque attack victims also drew social media grumbles when the band played “Vibes”, a song with lyrics about guns. The concert's co-promoter stood by them “100 per cent”. No band statement turned up, so call it a bit of a misread of the room rather than a scandal.
The good stuff is the quiet kind. Mac has mentored finalists in the Smokefree Rockquest, the country's biggest original music contest for young people, for almost a decade. He helps them produce their songs in the studio. He told Woman's Day “We're no different to these kids.”
The band as a whole has put money where its mouth is too. In 2020 Six60 donated memorabilia to be auctioned, with all proceeds going to the Raukatauri Music Therapy Centre. Mac isn't named in that release, so it's a band credit rather than a personal one.