Photo by Tom Whelan
Mac McRoy is purveyor of “homegrown music”:
Local songwriter featured on Song of the Mountains
Singer-songwriter Mac McRoy is no stranger in eastern North Carolina, having been born and raised in the Blounts Creek area and living in New Bern since 1997. He currently plays in his own band, Mac McRoy and Southpoint, but also a duo with his wife, Mac and Mary McRoy, and with the bluegrass band the Twin Rivers Troubadours. He has played frequently at Fountain General Store and in Washington for BCTMA events.
His love for music started at a young age due to his mother’s influence, and being around friends of the family who played. But he had a problem: he was left-handed.
“Back then, I didn’t even know, or no one really knew, that you could buy a left handed instrument,” McRoy said. “So I would try to play the right handed guitars and instruments, but it just never really felt right and I never could get it to work for me.”
So while he sang in church, he put down the instruments until about 1999 when he got his first left-handed guitar that he could “actually do something with.”
It wasn’t long before he was singing and writing songs with it. Now he plays not only guitar but banjo, mandolin, bass–a lot of stringed instruments.
As if three bands weren’t enough, McRoy said another one is brewing, which will include a friend, Fred Bisel, described by McRoy as a “really, really good banjo picker” who recently moved back from Charleston. They’re thinking of calling the band “Flatwood Mac and Bisel.”
Mac & Mary McRoy at the Turnage Theater, photo by Tom Whelan
Anyone who has heard McRoy perform knows he gravitates to bluegrass, including gospel music. McRoy said that folks have their own notion of what bluegrass may be, but he believes bluegrass is “homegrown music,” and it’s “music you could play in front of anyone.”
“It’s a mountain style that, for some reason, I was born with,” he said. “I didn’t develop it. When other folks talk about me, they talk about how I have a mountain sound and it’s just the way that God made me, you know? I can’t really play any other kind of music.”
McRoy explained that while he doesn’t have a lot of music training and doesn’t read notes, he reads and studies about music and knows what he thinks is important: embracing your own individual vocal style.
“Nine different people can play a trombone and you’re not going to be able to tell much difference other than it sounds like a trombone,” he said. “But you take nine different people that sing, you see, their accent, their style of their vocals is going to individualize them. And then you’re going to be able to pick out a George Jones, for example, or Randy Travis. You pick their vocals out because you hear the way their voice sounds. And that’s what individualizes us.”
His advice is straightforward: “I’ve always been told to do what you do best, and you can’t really go wrong. And don’t fight it. Don’t try to do something you can’t do.”
Earlier this year, McRoy had some excitement when an original song of his caught the attention of Tim White, host of “Song of the Mountains, a bluegrass/roots based music show that airs on PBS, recorded live in Marion, Virginia.
“I’d never met Tim,” McRoy explained. “I’d only heard of him and seen him on the Song of the Mountains on the TV. But I love writing songs and songs just kind of come to me sometimes. I’ll be messing with the guitar and some chords. And next thing you know, there’s a song there. And a song come to me: ‘Singing Songs of the Mountains.’
McRoy said that it can be over $100 per song to document a song properly with copyrights, which he can’t afford, so to cover himself he’ll write the song down, sign and date it, but then he’ll record it on his phone and post it on either Facebook or Youtube. That way he has a date stamp. This process led to Tim White seeing him perform the song on Facebook: “Tim sent me a message and said, ‘Hey, I would really like for you to perform this song on our show.’ And I’m like, ‘Absolutely.’ And so he set it up and we went out to Marion, Virginia, and I just did that one song.”
The live show recording was done on March 1st, but he doesn’t know when it will air on PBS in this area. McRoy’s own recording of the song can be found on Youtube.
As a songwriter, McRoy said most of the time the melody comes first, before lyrics.
“Every morning I get up, when my feet hit the floor, I thank the Lord for another day,” he said. ”And I’ll get in there in my music room and I’ll grab one of my guitars, and I’ll just start noodling around with some chords because I love the way the guitar sounds. It’s therapy for me. It helps me start my day.”
He said recently it was raining outside, with a bad storm brewing, and he wrote a song, “Jesus Will See Me through the Storm.” Another day he was thinking about his dad, who had an old pickup truck that was Carolina blue and white with a hotrod motor in it. That led to writing “My Dad’s Old Pickup Truck,” which McRoy considers one of his better songs.
Mac McRoy & Southpoint photo by Tom Whelan
Mac McRoy and Southpoint also perform in area churches. In between songs, McRoy said that he talks about the songs he has written: “I’ll explain to those folks what was on my mind, and what inspired the song and how that song is relative in our lives. And I give the Lord the credit. In fact, there’s a song that I wrote that says, ‘I only hold the pen and the paper and the master just guides my hand along.’ I try to connect with people in a real way, and we’re all God’s people. It doesn’t matter what denomination we are.”
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Originally published in the Daily Reflector October 14, 2025.
