John McDonald’s upcoming 2021 CD Islandology fits into the genre of 'Gulf and Western' Tropical Rock spawned by Jimmy Buffett and popularized in recent decades by ‘country beach’ artists Kenny Chesney and Zac Brown Band. However, McDonald adopts the portmanteau ‘Floribbean’ to capture his sound.
He discovered Floribbean cuisine in Miami: “I loved this food! It hit me later that my band mates and I kind of emulate these chefs in South Florida who mix and match spices, flavors, and rubs from all over the Caribbean, tapping Jamaican, Afro-Cuban, Central and South American influences."
When McDonald and multi-instrumentalist Dale Cinski quarantined to record the songs for Islandology in drummer Kevin Kornicki’s Merritt Island FL studio during the Pandemic, they intuitively tapped into their mutual passion for tropically rooted music, adding steel drums, island-based rhythms and multiple layers of percussion. "Along with rock, we spontaneously blended grooves from Africa with Latin, calypso and reggae time signatures” McDonald explains.
Listeners will hear tribal drums (Just Enough Madness), reggae (Code Rum), calypso (Islandology, Just Chime In), bosa nova (Rooftop Island), cajun (Countdown to Sundown) and some Hawaiian (Ukulele Luau Dreams).
Islandology was produced by award-winning Music Row veteran Rick Beresford and mixed and mastered by Grammy-nominated audio engineer Eric Torres in The Couch Room, Nashville, TN.