Peggy Ott's Blues Review
Interview with Doug MacLeod
7/14/2001 - at the Kalamazoo Blues Festival
While volunteering for the WMBS at the Kalamazoo Blues Festival, I had the opportunity to interview singer, songwriter, and pickin' and slide guitarist extrordinaire, Doug MacLeod. We had to fit the interview in between the acoustic set Saturday afternoon and the guitar workshop he led later in they day. Doug is a great storyteller, and he has many stories to share, many going back to his beginnings in the blues as a teen in St. Louis. His guitar workshop was so well received it went into overtime. What had been scheduled as a one hour workshop lasted a good two hours, with a mesmerized audience. Doug then stayed on for Don Cadwell's harmonica workshop, playing a few licks with the other attendees on the free Blue Steel harps that were distributed.
This summer MacLeod is splitting his time between touring and playing clubs in his home state of California. Before his fantastic performance in Kalamazoo, he toured throughout the midwest, including St. Louis, Memphis (for the Handy Awards week), Kansas City, Wichita, and Columbia. He'll spend the month of November touring Europe.
Doug has nine albums under his belt, including four with his own band (1984-1991), one with John "Juke" Logan (1999), and four more recent acoustic albums on AudioQuest (1994-2000). His most recent release is Whose Truth, Whose Lies. His career goes back a long way, and includes playing with with such blues greats as Pee Wee Crayton, Lowell Fudson, Big Mama Thornton, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, and Big Joe Turner. He appears on many albums and his songs have been recorded by the likes of Albert King, Albert Collins, Son Seals, Joe Louis Walker, and Coco Montoya, among many others.
When asked, "Why are the Blues for you?", Doug told me that he had a terrible stutter when he was a child. He first played bass in an R&B band in St. Louis as a teen, about ages 15-16. It was a good way to meet girls, he said, but it didn't help his stutter at all ". Then I picked up a guitar and I started to sing, and I didn't stutter."
Some other notable quotes from Doug, picked up from his old-time mentor: "for acoustic blues guys, your left hand's your brain, your right hand's personality", and "never play a note you don't believe".
Doug's web site is www.dougmacleod.com.
