Colorado native Mark McKinnon has worn many hats: songwriter, journalist, presidential political advisor, television consultant, and nonprofit cofounder—as well as his signature white cowboy hat.
Currently, he’s cocreator, cohost, and producer for The Circus: Inside the Wildest Political Show on Earth, a nonpartisan, behind-the-scenes look at the present U.S. political climate. What started as solely an election-year feature has exceeded even its producers’ expectations, now trapezing through a third season and making waves as the first real-time documentary of its kind.
We caught Mark before his JFK→LAX flight for an exclusive Spotify interview. But with a jack-of-all-trades, you don’t just talk politics—you connect the dots between songwriting, speeches, and storytelling.
Q: You’re best known for your work in politics, but before that, you were a songwriter in Nashville with Kris Kristofferson. How did you make the switch?
I ran away from home to Nashville when I was in the middle of high school. Kris Kristofferson was very generous and let me live in his apartment for about three years. It was when he was taking on a lot of films, so he wasn’t around a lot. It was a wonderful chapter in my life. The only problem was that I was not a very good songwriter. One of the toughest decisions I ever made was to sort of admit that I sucked.
I ended up in Austin playing music and had to come to grips with the fact that on the road I was on, if I was lucky, I was gonna be the second act at the Austin Holiday Inn when I was 50. And I just thought, ‘Maybe I should try something different.’
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