onurblues: Doug MacLeod - The Utrecht Sessions (2008)

May 22, 2022

Doug MacLeod - The Utrecht Sessions (2008)

"Never play a note you don't believe"
His name sounds like one of an antique Scottish Highlander but he rather looks like an old seaman with a tanned face carved by the sun, salt and winds of the ocean. Born in 1946 in New York, he grew up in St. Louis where he started to play guitar. Affected by a bad stutter, probably caused by child abuse, he discovered that singing helped him to overcome his handicap. So he started to sing too. He later joined the Navy, stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. On one of his off-duty time, he met a one-eyed country bluesman from Toano (Virginia) named Ernest Banks who taught him two principles that guided his life as a musician : "Never play a note you don't believe" and "Never write or sing about what you don't know about."

With George "Harmonica" Smith

Once discharged from the Navy, he moved to Los Angeles, where he met his second mentor and close friend George "Harmonica" Smith, and played with legendary bluesmen Big Joe Turner, Pee Wee Crayton, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Lowell Fulson, Big Mama Thornton... He later relocated in Memphis where he now resides.

An extremely talented song-writer, or more properly a master story-teller in the original tradition of the blues, MacLeod has written over 300 original songs so far, among which many have been covered by numerous blues greats (Albert King, Albert Collins, Son Seals, Tabby Thomas, Joe Louis Walker, Coco Montoya, James Armstrong, Chris Thomas King, Billy Lee Riley…), and has put out an impressive discography of some forty studio & live albums since his first one in 1984. He also won a no less impressive list of music awards. As if it wasn't enough, he also co-wrote with Debra B. Schiff a mystery novel, "Murder At The Crossroads: A Blues Mystery", which came out in March 2022.

With this album uniquely composed of original songs, and recorded in Holland, a country he seems to cherish, MacLeod continues to take us back to the inter-war era of country blues when the songsters used to sing tales mixing symbolic stories and real life experiences. These twelve tracks are all magnificent and MacLeod's chiseled lyrics are full of popular rural poetry.

Two closely linked themes,  the flying of time and death, stand out  in tracks like "Horse With No Rider", the sorrowful "This Old River" with its "Midnight Special" gospel twist, the "The Long Black Train" boogie (a new version of the song released on his very first album "No Road Back Home"), the dark "The Demon's Moan", "Long Time Road" or the soul complaint "I Respectfully Decline".
The torments of love, a classic blues topic, also appear in the stomping "The Addition To Blues", the excellent out-standing folk "That Ain't Right", the swinging "Coming Your Brand New Day" and the heavily strummed "What You Got (Ain't Necessarily What You Own)". "Sheep Of A Different Color" is a protest-song in the 1960s style, while "Where You'll Find Me" has a biblical twist a la Dylan.

His very rhythmical and highly skilled acoustic steel guitar finger-picking and slide style and his stomping foot (a full percussive instrument), are discreetly backed by an upright bass (Jasper Mortier) and additional percussion (Arthur Bont, particularly excellent on the opening track where he puts out an Indian tabla or African talking drum-like sound). MacLeod's voice forged by years of performing around the world sounds very much like that of an authentic black bluesman from the Mississippi Delta or the East Coast Piedmont region.
A real jewel of an album, trust me. 
Oh… yes, I was about to forget this ! The man gives each of his guitars a name : "Spook", "Buckwheat", "Mule" and "Dubb" (his Resonator guitars), "Little Bit" (his Gibson), "Biscuit" (a Taylor 712), "Moon", "Scrapper"... ! ■

Doug MacLeod's site : https://doug-macleod.com

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