Skip “Little Axe” McDonald: One Man-One Night... One Life In Music

Matthew A. Donahue's Biography:
Matthew A. Donahue is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and visual artist, musician, writer and educator in the field of Popular Culture.
His 2003 film debut, the documentary The Hines Farm Blues Club, on which he served as co-producer, co-writer and co-director as well as music consultant. The Hines Farm documentary was a collaborative effort with WBGU-PBS television and aired nationally in the United States. For this film Donahue, along with his co-producer Marlene Harris-Taylor, received a Telly Award and an Award for Excellence from the Women in Communication group. The film also garnered a nomination for an Emmy by the Midwest Chapter of the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Since that time, Donahue has worked on numerous other popular culture documentaries, serving in various capacities as producer, director, writer and music consultant. The documentaries stem from his specializations within popular culture research and his study of cultural movements in addition to his personal artistic crafts.
His 2009 and 2010 documentaries titled Taking It to the Streets: An Art Car Experience and Car Power: Another Art Car Experience, respectively, highlighted the history and influence of American art car culture. The films also showcase Donahue's own love of art cars and his own art car creations including the Record Car, Car Power and the Jackson Pollocktik. These automobile folk-art documentaries have been featured at many art car related events, festivals and exhibitions over the past decade.
Other films include the fan-based documentary Motorhead Matters. This documentary highlighted the history, cultural influence and fan connection to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal group Motorhead. The film was awarded the Grand Prize Winner of the Motorhead Superfan Contest in North America. Other work includes music videos and live concert video performances related to his own music projects.
His last documentary, 2019's The Amsterdam T-Shirt Project, was shot on location in the souvenir t-shirt capital of the world, Amsterdam, Netherlands. This documentary highlighted a selection of Amsterdam's artistic and eccentric t-shirt shop owners, creators, designers, and screen shops. It was nominated in the best documentary category for the Citizine Travel Video Alliance as well as the International Short Films category at the OKO International Ethnographic Film Festival.

His latest documentary, 2024's Skip “Little Axe” McDonald: One Man-One Night…One Life in Music was made with his longtime collaborator Joshua Lightle. The film explores the life and music of legendary musician Skip “Little Axe” McDonald. McDonald is in his sixth decade of actively performing, writing and recording. He made his name a session guitar player and arranger for the founding rap recording label Sugarhill Records. Sugarhill Records, headed by Joe and Sylvia Robinson, was, at the time, the only African American owned record label and was the worldwide leader for rap record sales. McDonald played on many Gold and Platinum records on what became, the very first internationally successful rap record label.
Top-selling record releases included work by world-changing artists such as The Sugarhill Gang (Rappers Delight, Apache, 8th Wonder) and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (The Message, White Lines). He recorded with other well-known acts including James Brown and Afrika Bambaataa (Unity album), The Sequence, Force MDs and dozens of others. Interestingly, many of these Sugarhill Records recording sessions were tracked by then Sugarhill in-house staff engineer and future-superstar mixer-producer, Chris Lord-Alge.
In the mid-1980s Skip went on to work with legendary producer Adrian Sherwood and his On-U Sound record label in London, England. Together they collaborated on albums with legends by Lee "Scratch" Perry, Horace Andy, African Head Charge, Bim Sherman, New Age Steppers, Tackhead, Doug Wimbish (Living Colour), Keith LeBlanc, Audio Active, Mark Stewart, Dub Syndicate and The Slits. McDonald and Sherwood's collaborations are found throughout the On-U Sound recording catalogue.
Skip also did work with such esteemed artists as Ron Wood (Rolling Stones), Sinead O'Connor, Living Colour, ABC, Lou Rawls, Donna Summer, Harry Beckett, Bernard Fowler, MAD 45, Jeb Loy Nichols, The Process and many other groundbreaking artists. Starting with 1994's The Wolf That House Built he began working as Little Axe, and he broke ground by crossing over rap/hip hop with blues music. McDonald is credited with nearly 400 album credits on the All Music Guide and continues to record to this day. Recent album releases include: Sherwood’s Pay It All Back, Volume 8(2022), Horace Andy’s Midnight Rockers and Midnight Scorchers(2023), Dennis Bovell’s The Dubmaster(2023) and African Head Charge’s A Trip To Bolgatanga(2023). 2024 will also see the release of Mad 45 & Little Axe’s follow-up record to Tree of Life(2018), titled Under the Sun(2024). Under the Sun will be Skip’s 10th album release under his Little Axe moniker.
The performances from this documentary, …One Life in Music, are featured on the solo-performance live album by Little Axe titled One Man-One Night:
https://www.discogs.com/release/9729795-Little-Axe-One-Man-One-Night
Director Matthew Donahue is also a Teaching Professor for the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. He holds a Masters and PhD in American Culture Studies with a specialization in popular culture from Bowling Green State University and a Masters of Library and Information Science with a specialization in popular culture materials from Kent State University.
His artwork has been featured at art festivals, exhibitions and museums throughout the United States. As a musician, Donahue has worked in a variety of genres including punk, punk-funk, heavy metal, trip-hop and other popular music styles. Additionally, he has worked on music reissue recordings for Time-Life and the Smithsonian. For nearly a decade Donahue worked as a Supervisor for the Bill Schurk Sound Recordings Archive at Bowling Green State University. The BGSU music library’s recording archive is the largest public-accessible library in the United States for vinyl recordings.
Dr. Donahue has been interviewed on popular culture topics for podcasts, magazines and newspapers around the world. He has presented on popular culture topics at international conferences. As a specialist he has served as a Media Consultant for the National Endowment of the Humanities, a project scholar for the America's Music Project (sponsored by the National Endowment of the Humanities) and the Tribeca Film Institute and also is a regular judge for the regional Emmys (sponsored by National Academy of Television and Arts and Sciences) for documentary film categories. His published writings focus on various topics of popular culture.
For more information on his creative and academic pursuits, visit his website at www.md1210.com.
Joshua Lightle's Biography:
For nearly two decades, Cinematographer, Camera Operator and Editor Joshua Lightle has been working on ground-breaking documentaries, short films, and music videos.
In 2005, Lightle began his career at his alma mater, Bowling Green State University, in Bowling Green, Ohio, where he staged, shot and edited educational and promotional videos for the prestigious institution.
He joined Root Inc., a part of Accenture, in 2010, where he creates instructional and inspirational films for dozens of Global 2000 organizations –some of which have won both Telly Awards and Brandon Hall Awards.
While at Bowling Green State University, Joshua Lightle and Matthew A. Donahue began collaborating on various short films, music videos and documentaries...often described as “art for art’s sake” projects. Films include Car Power: Another Art Car Experience, Motorhead Matters, The Amsterdam T-Shirt Project and Skip “Little Axe” McDonald: One-Man-One Night…One Life in Music.
In addition to shooting and editing film, Josh has chaired the Tree City Film Festival (Sylvania, OH) for nearly a decade. His work has included award-winning films as judged by a panel of Hollywood professionals. Additionally, Josh was the host of The Story Machine 9000 –a podcast dedicated to storytelling and script writing. Lightle has also authored many other creative projects in a variety of artistic mediums.