Solstice picks up where the debut Mike MacKenzie album Natural Causes left off three years prior. Taking the necessary time to refine the song selection, fine-tune his songwriting and deliberate on the best personnel to enlist, MacKenzie presents Solstice as a more cohesive outing and his best material to date. A defining attribute is dynamic, adventurous music that never leaves the listener in one place for too long. The album is designed to flow and breathe, create cascading textures and employ differing song structures, all the while never losing the raw vibe of classic rock and roll. Solstice includes odes to southern rock, progressive and jazz-steeped excursions and a bluesy flavour that runs through most everything. Some of the goals for the album were maintaining this diversity while not making it too scattered, using the talents of several players effectively to achieve a uniformity, and of course capture some catchy riffing and tasty improvisation. The personnel involved in the creation of Solstice includes MacKenzie on vocals, electric/acoustic/bass guitars as well as production and songwriting. Also featured are some of Calgary's finest: Steve Fletcher (keyboards), James Wise (drums & percussion), Brady Mason (drums), Jeff Oman (drums), Thomas Hart (bass), Erik Smistad (bass), Spencer Cheyne (mixing & mastering) and Josh Gwilliam (engineering).