Frank MacKay

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The Guardian - Arts - Entertainment
Doug Gallant
Published on February 5, 2011

Another great project for Frank MacKay
Doug Gallant

As frontman for legendary East Coast soul/R&B act The Lincolns in the 1960s, Frank MacKay earned a reputation as a powerhouse vocalist who could deliver the hits of Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett, James Brown and a host of other artists with all the gusto they deserved.

When that phase of his career wound down he continued to build his reputation with Soma, a hand-picked band that featured some of Atlantic Canada’s premiere players, drawn from the ranks of the Central Nervous System, The Novatones, The Stitch In Tyme and his old band, The Lincolns.

With Soma, MacKay recorded three top 10 records and shared the stage with some of the top acts of the era, such as Chicago, Rod Stewart, Santana and Sly and The Family Stone.

He then embarked on a long and productive career in theatre, appearing in musicals like 18 Wheels, The Mind Bogles, Les Miserables, Cats, Stan Rogers: A Matter of Heart and Rock and Roll, a show written specifically for him by award-winning playwright and composer John Gray, who had played with MacKay in The Lincolns.

Rock and Roll was eventually made into a movie, The King of Friday Night, with MacKay recreating the role of Donnie Parker. That role earned him an ACTRA nomination.

Making records, however, was still MacKay’s first love and early in the last decade he returned to the studio to make his first solo record in 15 years, Christmas Is, which has since become part of the Christmas tradition for many East Coast families, my own included.

He has done a number of records since then — all worth tracking down if you can find them, but none have grabbed me in quite the same way as his latest project, It Takes All Kinds to Make a World.

This 12-song set sees MacKay revisit several of the soul classics he performed with The Lincolns all those years ago.

Recorded last year in Halifax, It Takes All Kinds to Make a World features wickedly good covers of classics like Aretha Franklin’s Since You’ve Been Gone, Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves a Woman, Sam & Dave’s I Thank You and Al Green’s Take Me to the River, as well as some MacKay co-writes.

MacKay, who I had the distinct pleasure to see with both The Lincolns and Soma, still packs a whallop at the microphone. And it’s not just the power of his voice that makes him such a formidable singer or the range he has or the kind of control he has over that voice. It’s the amount of emotion he’s capable of injecting into these big, fat notes. Vocally, MacKay is as impressive now as he ever was and that’s no small feat.

Former Toronto Star columnist Peter Goddard once described his voice as being so powerful “it could cut through a platinum slab.”

MacKay continues to be the total package.

Helping him deliver that package on this set is a roster of East Coast stalwarts that includes guitarists Alan Macumber and George Antoniak, bass players Pat Riley and Bruce Dixon, keyboard player Ross Billard and drummer Tubs MacAvoy.

He gets added punch from a fine three-piece horn section.

There’s also some great backing vocals from Pam Marsh, Helene Bolduc Bezanson, Melanie Donnelly and the boys in the band.

MacKay, who often performs with his horn-driven R&B All Stars, describes the kind of songs featured here as “the best music this side of yesterday.”

I can’t argue with that.

Choice cuts here include Since You’ve Been Gone, When A Man Loves A Woman, Heaven is My Home, Take Me to the River and the title track, It Takes All Kinds to Make a World. - The Guardian Newspaper