Steve MacKay

Twelve Foot Ninja

Steve MacKay is a Melbourne based guitarist/producer/songwriter with an impressive and diverse track record. He successfully straddles the juxtaposed worlds of alternative rock and pop as a producer and writer as well as being one of Australia’s biggest individual exporters of guitar tuition products.

Steve has found his guitar playing in high demand from all genres. He was hired by UK based producer Eliot Kennedy (Celine Dion, Brian Adams, Spice Girls, Take That, Atomic Kitten) to play on Delta Goodrem’s debut album, ‘Innocent Eyes’ (highest selling album for a female artist in Australian music history) and he subsequently toured with her on her promotional tours throughout the U.K, Europe, South America, Scandinavia and the U.S. Along the way he was fortunate to rub shoulders with the likes of John Mayer, Beyonce Knowles, Craig David and System of a Down.

Steve has been a session musician for various artists including Abby Dobson, Christine Anu, Brian Cadd, Brian McFadden, Robert Mills, Shannon Noel, Mark Owen and on the Disney Television series, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. He has performed numerous TV shows including the Allan Border Medal, Rove Live (with Kelly Clarkson and Delta Goodrem), The Panel, Channel [V] with Delta Goodrem which he was MD for (appeared on Delta’s first DVD which was the highest selling music DVD in Australian music history), The ARIA awards, MTV Music Awards, The Footy Show Grand Final and he played the national anthem with opera singer Peter Brocklehurst center court at the Australian Open to a televised audience of 2 billion viewers. He has also appeared on various TV shows in Europe and North America such as Top of the Pops, Star Search, Viva Interactive, Pulse TV and Canada AM.

Steve has written and produced for mainstream artists Christine Anu (‘Talk About Love’ co-write), Delta Goodrem (‘Beautiful Madness’ co-write and producer), Brian McFadden (‘Hollow No More’ co-write).

All of this was before his 23rd birthday. He then wrote and featured in a guitar instructional book published by Hinkler Books entitled ‘Simply Guitar’ which has now sold over 1 million copies worldwide and is due to release a follow up late 2010.

Steve now focuses on his true love, his original band, Twelve Foot Ninja. Completely opposite to all of his previous endeavors, Twelve Foot Ninja is a combination of Dub, Progressive Metal, Acoustic, Latin and Electronic music mixed with comic books and animation about a Ninja’s mission to restore balance to an apocalyptic world.

Steve cites his musical journey so far as something akin to Forest Gump. With limited affinity for commercial pop music, he muses how he did so much work in that arena. “It just sort of happened and I felt like a wolf in sheep's clothing the whole time, like a spy gathering intelligence to take back to my home planet”.