This is not your ordinary story. For more than 40 years, singer-songwriter, producer, and artivist Todd Mack has voyaged the road less traveled. A remote island in Fiji, a bomb shelter in southern Israel, the Taichung Jazz Festival, an olive grove in the West Bank, and the famed Hong Kong Foreign Correspondent’s Club are just a few of the extraordinary places Mack has found himself making music over the past four decades.
His professional journey began in 1989 with his self-titled debut release, followed by a decade of full-time touring and six subsequent albums through 2011. Early in his career Mack befriended Daniel Pearl, the Wall St. Journal reporter abducted and murdered by extremists in Pakistan shortly after 9-11. A superbly talented musician, Danny and Todd formed the Atlanta bands Cosmic Gypsies and Saucy Jack in the early 90s and remained close until Pearl’s tragic murder, an event that would have a profound impact on Mack’s life, music, and career. Compelled to take action to combat and prevent the hate that took his friend’s life, Mack founded Music in Common in 2005, a nonprofit organization that curates experiences for people across social divides to find common ground through music and facilitated conversation. To date, Music in Common has directly served more than 10,000 people in over 400 communities worldwide, bringing together Israelis and Palestinians; Black and white Americans; Jews, Christians, and Muslims; immigrant, refugee, and American-born youth; and liberals and conservatives, among others.
Upon relocating from Atlanta to the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts in 1999, Mack opened the Off the Beat-n-Track recording studio where he produced dozens of albums by indie artists as well as the nationally syndicated Off the Beat-n-Track Radio Show. Mack returned to Atlanta in 2018 and currently splits his time between the city and the central coast of California when he is not on the road. He has just celebrated his 20th anniversary as the director of Music in Common. On October 10, 2025 – what should have been his friend Danny’s 62nd birthday – Mack will release his eighth album, I’m Gonna Love You No Matter What, his first in 14 years.
I’m Gonna Love You No Matter What taps into some familiar themes of Mack’s writing - love, loss, joy, and sorrow. “Life is beautiful and hard all at once”, he offers. “And I think this album captures that.”
I’m Gonna Love You No Matter What is bookended by a pair of numbers deeply personal to Mack. With a lush Americana arrangement reminiscent of the Band’s “Evangeline“, “Angel Above” cuts to the bone with the raw pain of losing a loved one to unexpected and premature death, while the jangly, hook laden “You Are There”, a tribute to Pearl, finds comfort in the joy of knowing they live on within you.
The 14-year gap since 2011’s The Thirteenth Step was not by choice. Mack’s unwavering belief in the power of music to change the world and his commitment to Music in Common has left him little time to record and release his own music. But he has maintained his diligent daily practice of writing, and I’m Gonna Love You No Matter What marks a triumphant return for the veteran singer-songwriter with some of his strongest material to date.
Described as “wonderfully original and ever so eclectic” by Maverick, the Ithaca Journal writes “Todd Mack performs folk music with the edge of sandpaper. Powerful strumming and rough-hewn vocals make him a must hear”. Mack’s organic sound shines through like never before on Gonna Love You thanks in no small part to producer Rob Vermeulen, who co-produced the record with Mack. The two holed up at Vermeulen’s studio, Robbo Music, in the sleepy town of Morro Bay on California’s central coast far from noise and distraction, allowing Mack to fully focus. “My life has been so insanely busy that for the past four years I have not been in one place for more than six weeks at a time”, reflects Mack. “Whenever I was in California, Rob and I would cram in as much work together as we could and then he’d keep chipping away at the songs on his own while I was gone.”
I’m Gonna Love You No Matter What serves up 11 story-driven originals featuring 18 musicians from the Central Coast and around the country. Deeply rooted in an Americana | Roots-Rock sound, the album blasts out plenty of the genre-bending Mack is known for. “Reckless” hits hard with crunchy electric guitars and dueling solos, while songs like “Ain’t Enough” and “Dreams” offer up arena-sized ballads reminiscent of the 70s. “On a Line” and “Undone” are Neil Young / Son Volt-Esque, both musically driving and lyrically provocative. The midpoint of the album is marked by the rootsy, country-tinged “River Carry Me”, included as a tribute to the 20thanniversary of Hurricane Katrina and accentuated by Hannah Lynn Cohen’s (Zach Bryan) heart-piercing fiddle solo. Based on actual events and the most genuine, human, and compassionate local news reporting Mack has ever witnessed, “River Carry Me” retells the tragic story of an old man whose wife was swept away by the storm, leaving him and their grandkids on their own.
Mack will be on a month-long tour with Music in Common when his new album drops, and he will be integrating some of the songs from the record into the set list to give audiences a taste of the new material. He is already hard at work on the follow-up record and has vowed to himself that the 14-year wait between releases was an anomaly never to be repeated.