Mcdonald Motown 2

Wide Open marks Michael McDonald’s first set of original material in 17 years. McDonald wrote Wide Open over several years and recorded the tracks at his Nashville studio with drummer Shannon Forrest (Faith Hill, Blake Shelton, Tim McGraw, Toto) and a crew of the city's session players and features collaborations with guitarist-singer Warren Haynes (Allman Brothers Band, Gov't Mule), guitarist Robben Ford, bassist Marcus Miller and saxophonist Branford Marsalis.

Some places retain a quiet magic. This magic doesn’t announce itself, but you do feel it nonetheless. It’s in the air and among the denizens as if they’re keeping a secret they can’t wait to share—but hold onto tightly nonetheless. You can count Muscle Shoals, Alabama among those mythical places…

When he came to popular attention in the late 1960s, Joe Cocker reinvigorated and to a certain extent reinvented the art of interpretive singing at a time when it seemed to have been put in the shade permanently by the rise of singing songwriters led by Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Just when it seemed that no one but the songwriters themselves had the right to sing their songs, Cocker came along giving a gruff, pleading rendition of the Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends" that stood in stark contrast to Ringo Starr's happy-go-lucky version. But on his many albums, Cocker usually made sure to balance his carefully selected covers of well-known material with previously unknown tunes so that he was able to originate some material.