Doug MacLeod – Raw Blues 2
Sledgehammer Records
9 Tracks – 44 minutes
Blues Blast writer Anita Schlank provided an in-depth interview with Doug MacLeod in the June 6, 2024, issue of Blues Blast Magazine. I will not try to recap her information but will just provide some basic information about Doug. Doug was born in New York City on April 21, 1946. His family moved to St. Louis when Doug was a teenager. He had a difficult childhood as he initially had a bad stutter but overcame that obstacle by learning to play the guitar and to sing. In the St. Louis blues clubs, he learned from master performers like Albert King, Little Milton and Ike Turner. He initially played bass for several bands in St. Louis. After enlisting in the Navy and being stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, he shifted to guitar and played in blues clubs there and further learned from his mentor, Ernie Banks. He developed a unique acoustic and slide guitar technique.
After leaving the military, he studied at the Berklee College of Music and then moved to California. He gained experience playing with Big Joe Turner, Lowell Fulson, Big Mama Thornton and many others. He released his first album in 1984 and has released over twenty albums since. With exception of 2019, Doug has been nominated for the Blues Foundation’s Acoustic Artists of the Year every year from 2008 to 2024 and has won the award four times and has also won the Best Acoustic Album of the year twice. Doug is presently nominated for the 2024 Blues Blast Awards for Acoustic Album of the Year and Acoustic Guitarist.
In concert, Doug is a master storyteller reveling his audience with humorous anecdotes from his life and lead-ins to his songs. In 2023, Doug released Raw Blues 1, a seven song EP that highlighted his songwriting, his vocal prowess, and his dynamic slide and acoustic guitar work. Raw Blues 2 continues to deliver on that focus.
The album opens with Doug determining that the woman was a “Fine Looking Sugar”, “like some kind of movie star” and “my mind was on a little romancin'”, “but I got nervous and did not know what to do” as he gives his acoustic guitar a workout. On “Keep On Moving” he advises that “you got to keep on believing even if there is no reason”. He speaks of his travels in “Just Like a Minstrel”, and notes ” I never made much money”. His slide guitar comes to the front on this song.
He explains that he wrote “Horse with No Rider” while sitting on the porch with George “Harmonica” Smith, who told him about this legend in Mississippi about a village that that was never certain whether their people would come home at night. “Goin’ Down Country” features some fine fingerpicking guitar as he cites that ” I was born in the city, but country is where I belong”. While sitting by the river, he is longing for his woman in “My Good Girl Blues” but a “friend told him that she had done found someone new”.
“One Good Woman” he says is a story about the first woman that teaches a man how to make love properly. On the “Long Time Road”, he declares he “is all by myself” and “looking at time I’ve yet to know”. He concludes with “All I Had Was the Blues” as he lets his slide guitar shine and offers the advice that “life ain’t nothing but what you choose”.
Doug provides a master class of how to play the acoustic guitar amidst his story telling and certainly demonstrates why he is a constant nominee for the acoustic blues awards.
