Last year, while walking through her neighborhood and begrudgingly making mental notes about what social media content she’d post that week, Richmond-based Americana bandleader Mackenzie Roark had an epiphany: “What if I just radically decided to just delete it?”

“You would never dare,” she remembers thinking. “You’ve spent such a long time. You’re almost at 3,000 followers. Don’t give up now.”

In defiance of those misgivings — and the conventional wisdom on growing a fanbase these days — Roark hit delete. A little more than a year later, she has renewed purpose, an increasingly collaborative relationship with her backing band, the Hotpants, a new album titled “Ghost of Rock and Roll” coming out on Friday, June 6 and a release show happening at Get Tight Lounge that evening. What she doesn’t have? Regrets.

“Everyone I talked to, I’m like, ‘Just get off of it. It’ll honestly change your life.’”

That willingness to shift gears has shown up at several key moments for Roark. She was raised in Chesterfield and went to Richmond Christian School, part of an upbringing in the evangelical Christian sphere, but she’s since embraced an agnostic mindset. She went to James Madison University, finished her undergraduate degree online, then headed to Ireland to pursue a poetry-focused master’s degree in creative writing at the University of Limerick. Once there, however, she discovered she “absolutely hated” reading poems aloud to her cohort. She went to the head of her program, novelist Joseph O’Connor, brother to Sinéad O’Connor, and got the go-ahead to switch gears and focus on songwriting.

“Getting feedback on my songwriting from people who were analyzing it — giving a literary analysis of my songs — was a good foundation for me.”

Heating up in Richmond

Roark’s departure from social media may have been sudden, or “slightly manic,” as she put it in a recent blog post, but her distaste for that ecosystem was simmering at the same time that her efforts with the Hotpants were heating up.

She’s been building a name for herself in Richmond’s music scene for about a decade, with two previous albums in her discography: an EP released in 2016 and her Vocal Rest Records debut full-length, “Rollin’ High, Feelin’ Low” from 2022— both highly accomplished and assured, evidence of star-worthy vocal abilities. Singing with other Vocal Rest acts like Devil’s Coattails and Brady Heck helped Roark grow into bigger stages, and she’s built on that momentum by playing high-profile shows of her own at festivals like Friday Cheers, the Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion and FloydFest.

As effective as Instagram can be at getting the word out about new music and upcoming performances, Roark was never comfortable with the platform. The pressure to produce content. Follower count as a measure of success. The dreaded selfie for the algorithm. “I’ve always been so resistant,” she says. “Self-promotion has always been really hard for me … You’re selling yourself as a product in a way, and I’ve never liked that. I’ve always wanted to just sell the music. But those two things are so intertwined, especially now.”

Roark depicts this drifting sense of purpose with a frank question in the chorus of the new album’s title track: “You gotta serve someone eventually / Who’s it gonna be / God or the man or the ghost of rock ’n’ roll?”

Leaving Instagram has cleared the way for the musician to engage with audiences more organically. At last year’s FloydFest, which closely followed Roark’s social exit, she set out to win the “On-the-Rise” competition, which honors the Virginia festival’s top emerging artist each year. In lieu of a digital push, Roark went with flyers, buttons and word-of-mouth campaigning. “It felt like running for student government in high school,” she says. “It made the festival so much more fun. If we were just on Instagram, like ‘Vote for us,’ it would not have been the same. We really had to be present with it.”

The campaign proved successful, and Mackenzie Roark and the Hotpants will return to FloydFest in July to perform four sets over five days as “On-the-Rise” incumbents. “Winning was so empowering. I’m like, ‘Man, we can do this.’”

Roark and her bandmates will also play the Red Wing Roots Music Festival in Mount Solon, Virginia, as well as Floyd, Virginia’s Small Town Summer concert series. Other 2025 stops include Bristol, Virginia Beach and Greensboro, North Carolina.

“It’s taken a while to work up to be able to be offered those gigs,” Roark notes.

Leaning into the band

At the same time that her audience has been growing, so has the sound of her music. She’s been seeking out a fuller, more rocking style than captured on previous releases, and she went into the “Ghost of Rock and Roll” recording process with the goal of featuring her Hotpants compatriots.

“It was important to me for this release to be a band release and not just a Mackenzie Roark release,” she explains. “I’ve done the solo thing for a while, and that’s fun, but it’s solitary in a way… It’s more fun when there’s people in it together, like ‘We’re all working towards this.’ And my band, specifically, is so great because everyone’s known each other for a long time.”

Guitarist Billy Bacci, bassist Matt Moran and drummer Drew Barnocky also play together in Richmond-based rock group Paint On It, which formed in 2019. Violinist Caroline Vain is exceptionally well connected in the local scene, thanks to her involvement with standout groups like Deau Eyes and Villages. The newest addition is Leigh Pinner, who sang backup on the new album, and who Roark enlisted officially so the band could have a member focusing solely on harmony. Presenting songs with fuller arrangements provides both musical and social fulfillment for Roark. “We’ve really gelled as friends over the past couple of years,” Roark says. “Hanging out as a group and everyone’s significant others — we’ve become this Hotpants crew.”

“Ghost of Rock and Roll” is a sonic document of that solidarity, one with a bigger sound made possible, in part, by the setting in which it was recorded. While Roark enjoyed the collaboration, expertise and efficiency she’d found recording in the home studio setting, the bandleader was looking to scale up, and Red Amp Audio had just what she was looking for.

“It was really cool to be in the space,” Roark says. “The isolation booths and the big room, and there’s the control room with the giant board and everything’s happening. It really put us in that head space of ‘We’re making a great album right now.’”

Recording took place in November 2024 at the downtown studio, which has hosted sessions for local legends like Carbon Leaf and James “Saxsmo” Gates. Roark says she hoped to capture a “retro, throwback sound with a modern twist,” a reflection of her band’s shared love for music recorded in the 1970s. Opening track “Take My Money” sets that tone right away with crunchy guitar tones and a generous sense of swagger. The instruments they found at Red Amp — as well as the knowledge of its gear-hoarding owner, Jody Boyd — helped them hit that mark.

A powerful sonic partnership

Just as crucial were Billy Bacci’s contributions. Bacci was already familiar with Red Amp’s amenities; he’s engineered there since 2022. As a result, recording at Red Amp made for a best-of-both-worlds experience: a larger, more well-appointed facility and the ability to save on costs by having Bacci provide production support. It also meant he could he could dial in guitar tones to his heart’s content. “He put a lot of care and consideration into every guitar that was used,” Roark says. “Every guitar part, the amps that were used, just everything.”

Roark is especially effusive about the personal investment Bacci has shown as part of the Hotpants.

“Billy has taken on a lot of ownership with this project, which is awesome and kind of a relief for me, because I trust him so much,” she says. “He’s so talented musically — putting sounds together and figuring out cool parts and all the intricacies of fleshing out a song… This album would not be what it is without him.”

The writing session in which “Hot American Red Blood” took shape is one example. Bacci came up with an ascending guitar part that lends the song added distinctiveness, but he worried after the session that he’d overstepped. “Maybe I’m overdoing it with some of these riffs,” he remembers thinking. “Or maybe it’s not the right part. But I remember immediately [Roark] was like, ‘No, that’s good. Keep it.’ That was a moment when I felt like I could contribute.”

That’s another aspect of band life that Roark has been enjoying of late. While some of the songs on “Ghost of Rock and Roll” predate the Hotpants, more of them were built collectively, with Roark bringing in chords and lyrics and then reveling in the directions her compositions took once her bandmates joined in. There’s plenty of great bass work from Matt Moran, like his nimble doubling of the guitar line in “Hot American Red Blood.” Then there are the interactive lead parts from Billy Bacci and Caroline Vain, like the back-and-forth guitar and violin in “Killin’ Time” that form a compelling duet of their own. Roark says her bandmates have played “a really major role in the formation of these songs and the instrumentation and the energy. Everyone is able to add ideas and add their special touch.”

“She’s a great writer for a band,” Bacci affirms. “She has a very strong vision of the song from the start, but she knows how to work with us and bring out the strengths in all of us.”

Making space for songwriting

“Cigarettes and TV Dinners,” an ode to despondency and devil-may-care decision making, dates back the furthest, having been written in 2017 and released as a single in 2019, when Roark was playing with her old band, Pistol Sister. The rest were written since the release of “Rollin’ High, Feelin’ Low.”

Turning her attention away from social media has afforded Roark more headspace for songwriting, the early stages of which often happen during her ritual practice of walking to a nearby park, running laps and then walking home. No phone. No distractions. Just openness to the universe.

“I do that as many days as I possibly can,” she says. “It brings me joy. It brings me peace. I move my body. I’m out in nature. It’s a beautiful park… I always come up with good ideas during these times because I’m detached from distractions of things I need to do. I’m just in the moment.”

She’s also been reconnecting with nature by working twice a week at the Northside location of Shalom Farms — planting kale, harvesting lettuce, getting her hands dirty. “It’s such a beautiful tradeoff,” she says. “I work for three hours on the farm, the next day I work three hours at the market and then I get to have produce.”

“I have noticed a change in my brain chemistry from before, when I wasn’t doing that and I wasn’t spending as much time outside,” Roark notes. “It just feels very natural.”

The release show for “Ghost of Rock and Roll” will also be al fresco, thanks to the casual backyard setup at Get Tight Lounge. She has two sets planned in addition to Dylan Barrows’ opening one: the new album played in full, then a guest-fueled run of covers that will include an ad-hoc, all-female “Lady Hotpants” mini-set.

Merch promisees to be another highlight: vinyl and CD copies of “Ghost of Rock and Roll,” a special cassette with demos of album tracks, guitar picks, buttons, screen-printed shirts and even a new jewelry line from Roark herself. And yes, there will be hot pants.

“That was part of our prize for winning ‘On-the-Rise’ [at FloydFest],” Roark says. “Press Press Merch in Roanoke gave us a merch credit [and] made us some cool ’70s running shorts that say ‘Hotpants’ across the butt.”

Cheeky? Sure. But the bountiful merch harvest awaiting fans at Get Tight Lounge doubles as a meaningful manifestation of the growth Roark and company are enjoying, and of the payoff that can come from trusting your gut when it’s time to make a change.

“I’m always looking for the next turning point,” she says. “This year and the release of this album are a turning point.”

“Ghost of Rock and Roll” is out Friday, June 6. To hear and purchase the album, visit mackenzieroarkandthehotpants.bandcamp.com. Mackenzie Roark and the Hotpants will perform at Get Tight Lounge on Friday, June 6. Dylan Barrows will open. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $12.12 and can be purchased at gettightrva.com.