Woodshed Entertainment Collective

On the official Ralph MacDonald website, MacDonald describes his tenth release, ”Mixty Motions,” his first since 2003, as “a danceable mix of infectious Caribbean grooves and smooth Jazz sensibilities…“ 

Elaborating on this in an interview with When Steel Talks, MacDonald explains that this work is a mixture of “Pop, rock, calypso, latin - it’s got all the different things, places, I’ve experienced in my life…”

The eleven-track recording begins with Rhythm of the Drum.  The music was composed by MacDonald’s eldest son Anthony under the working title “Freedom.”  Nicholas Ashford and Valerie Simpson of Solid Gold fame penned the lyrics and delivered them for the CD.

The title track is next up.  It is the first of seven instrumentals on this date that includes . 

My Space, a calypso, is the fourth cut on the track list.  The audience for the 2007 Lincoln Jazz Center’s Father’s Day Concert would have already heard this one live.  But according to WST, the take that would make the CD is mellower than the live version.

There is more calypso to be had right after My Space.  You Need More Calypso, a tribute to Trinidad, has some remarkable history behind it.  It was previously recorded for a record company project that never came out of the can.  Not being able to obtain the rights to the song, MacDonald re-recorded it with compatriots Greenidge, trumpeter, Etienne Charles and vocalist Roger George. 

Track six was designed as a Bridge of musical styles (funk, fusion, European, Jazz etc.) and instruments (strings and steeldrums).  It started out as a collaboration between the father and his youngest son Atiba to explore diverse musical influences.

The guitar of Dave Spinozza gives Man Dance a latin tinge infused with the signature sounds of Steely Dan and Carlos Santana.

Julian is named for saxophonist “Cannonball” Adderley whose first name bears the song’s title.

Black Samba was inspired by a trip that MacDonald made to Brazil, the home to the style that has come to be accepted as a solid branch of the Jazz idiom.

Atiba returns to the picture for the penultimate track on Mixty Motions.  He co-wrote Mayaro Drive, lined as it were with coconut trees, with Ralph as a representation of life in this Trinidadian village where the leader met wife Grace.

Lord, Don’t Stop The Carnival was written as an instrumental by Ralph’s father Patrick MacDonald who went by the calypso title The Great Macbeth.  It became a bona fide Trinidadian folk song.  Ralph has now resurrected the song with the lyrics that he put to it initially for one-time employer Harry Belafonte.  On Mixty Motions, it closes a recording much in the same way that the instrumental closed the dances of the elder MacDonald’s orchestra - a fitting tribute.