There’s a tribute act, or several, for just about every classic-rock band from Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd — obviously — on down to Great White and Godsmack.
So far, they are much less common in the hip-hop world, where there’s a prominent Biggie act, maybe a Tupac and not much else.
Enter Come Back To Earth: A Tribute to Mac Miller, a live-band Mac tribute from Rochester, N.Y., named after the lead track from Miller’s “Swimming” album. An alternative to the many DJ-ed Mac Miller celebrations that have been going on for six years, Come Back to Earth makes its Pittsburgh debut at Thunderbird Music Hall Sunday, two days after the release of the new posthumous album “Balloonerism” and on what would have been Mac’s 33rd birthday.
“I see people doing these Mac Miller nights,” says founder and MC Noah Fense, “but they're just like DJs going up and playing his music, which is cool — you can meet other Mac Miller fans — but it's not as emotional as this.”
Come Back to Earth evolved purely from fandom and love for the music of the Pittsburgh rapper, whose death in September 2018 at 26 from an accidental drug overdose that occurred just ahead of his Swimming Tour, shocked his fans and left them grieving to this day.
“I've been a huge Mac Miller fan, my favorite artist, my whole life,” Fense says. “I'm 31, so he was just a little bit older than me, but he was kind of like the soundtrack to my whole life — 9th grade on, for the rest of my life. So when he passed, it affected me deeply. I mean, I felt like I lost somebody I knew. I was crying multiple times a day for like a week straight.”
Being a rapper himself, Fense decided to channel that energy into some positive by rallying his band, Pine Needle Soul, to perform a Mac Miller tribute that November in Rochester.
“We just did $5 tickets,” he says. “I didn't want this to be about any money or anything. It was just a tribute. I wasn't expecting it to be what it was like. We had people flying in from all over the country. We did it at a little 350-cap venue and we had a line all the way down the street.
“Half of the crowd was, like, crying and hugging each other and laughing. It was one of the most emotional experiences in my life. Everyone was just saying how healing it was.”
After that one-off, Pine Needle Soul went back to making its own music, but kept getting messages asking when they were going to do it again. In the summer of 2019, they were booked to do the tribute at the Disc Jam Festival in Stephentown, N.Y.
“It's a smaller festival,” Fense says. “We got booked to play at noon in a tent. You know how those noon tent sets go in festivals. There's usually nobody there, but I went around the whole festival putting up Mac Miller tribute flyers, and we had like 500 people. The tent was so full that people were surrounding the tent.”
Then the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and Pine Needle Soul fizzled out, with the various members moving on to their own solo projects. The rapper resisted requests to rekindle the project with his new Noah Fense Band.
“People were like, ‘You guys should tour this.’ And I was like, ‘That's not why I'm doing it. If I'm gonna do it, I want it to be special every time. I don't want to be like another cover band just getting booked in shows. I want it to be a curated experience and not just some tribute act.’ First of all, it's the first and only Mac Miller tribute, but it's one of the first ever hip-hop band tributes, because that's like a new thing.”
He ended up reviving the tribute in September 2023 at Photo City Music Hall in Rochester and then in January 2024 at Buffalo Iron Works to celebrate Mac’s birthday. Both sold out, prompting the attention of booking agents. In July, they played the Secret Dreams festival in Thornville, Ohio.
“This was like a full-circle moment,” Fense says. “We were booked at noon on Saturday. Only difference is, 4,000 people showed up. It’s an electronic music festival, a lot of bass music and stuff. We were one of the only bands, but what I noticed is that Mac is in every single scene. Whether it's the jam scene, the hip-hop scene, the electronic scene, EDM, country, they all love Mac. Everybody loves Mac.”
One Reddit poster wrote of the event: “I was skeptical as well, but caught their festival set at Secret Dreams. I was blown away at how magical the set was. The vibe in the crowd was immaculate. When they played ‘2009,’ it had me crying.”
“So odd to see something reserved for old rock bands be applied to a young rapper,” added another poster. “First instinct tells me nah but if it’s spreading joy who am I to say anything.”
At last, Come Back to Earth will perform, on a momentous day, in Mac Miller’s hometown.
“We've been wanting to,” Fense says. “I mean, we get comments all the time like, ‘Come to Pittsburgh!’ And sometimes people are mad, like, ‘Why the [expletive] are you going to all these other places and not coming to Pittsburgh where he's from?’ But we just wanted to make sure that when we come, it's going to be one of our best events that we've ever put together, and our best set. We just want to really be on point because we know we're gonna be judged super hard in Pittsburgh.”
“It was hard to get this thing off the ground, because people who see it love it. But at first we were definitely getting some flack online from some people saying like, ‘Oh, you guys are just trying to make money off Mac,’ especially because there's not really any tribute acts in the hip-hop scene. So, it's like a new space.”
As for his approach to being onstage, spitting Mac’s words, he says, “I'm just so honored and humbled to be able to do it. But when I'm up there, I just connect with his music so much. I feel like I'm saying my own lyrics in a way. Like, I feel them. They mean something to me as if I wrote them, so I feel very authentic.
“I don't feel like I'm ever trying to act like Mac. The only time I'm ever trying to resemble him is in my cadences and in my tone when I'm rapping and singing. But a lot of people come up to me and they're like, ‘Dude, you sound just like him.’ Usually what people say is that they had decent expectations but we kind of blew it out of the water. I don't say that to be cocky. We just really care a lot about what we're doing and make sure that every note and every lyric is on point.”
The evening will begin at 8 p.m. with a “Balloonerism” listening party. Tickets are $20/$25; thunderbirdmusichall.com.
First Published: January 14, 2025, 10:30 a.m.
Updated: January 14, 2025, 4:48 p.m.