How did you hook up with Jeff Cloud and Velvet Blue Music?
That was purely through Lance who is also part of my label, they basically team up to put the record out. Lance had developed a relationship with Jeff Cloud… I think Lance was probably into Velvet Blue Bands in his college days and that’s how he got to know Jeff. I got to know Lance because he was booking bands here in the Dallas/Fort worth area. Since I started playing out about ‘98 or ‘99 I got to meet Lance around 2003. When I was finishing Promenade, or was in the process of finishing it, he booked me for a one off and we developed a rapport. He continued to book me, not exclusively, but he did quite a few gigs for me. So we were talking about the record (On Promenade) because I was trying to put it out there and let other labels know about it, and Lance was talking to me about the possibility of Jeff Cloud putting it out. That was fine with me, I said “yeah, great, let’s do this.” Initially he mentioned putting it out as an E.P., but I went ahead and finished it on my own budget and then they were interested in putting it out as a full length.
Speaking of On Promenade, the song “How Can the Lark (My Dear Theo)”… is that from the book “Dear Theo” which was about Van Gogh?
I didn’t read the book, but I had another song on the record, “Should‘ve Known” , and I kind of put them together. They were both part of a bigger whole as “Should’ve Known” was basically a Van Gogh themed song. I was basically doing research online for ideas for that song and I started reading these letters between Van Gogh and his brother Theo. They were so cool, and I read that phrase and thought it was particularly beautiful and gripping, so I tried to weave a song around that phrase and capture that correspondence regarding the idea that there is this kind of zeal and excitement at the beginning of your adult life… that phrase captured a whole lot.
Are you familiar with Bill Mallonee’s song “Skin”?
Yeah, yeah, I’m glad you went there because I was gonna mention that in my remarks a minute ago… so the first song is actually inspired by that song “Skin” which is probably one of Bill’s all time greatest songs, and that says allot because Bill’s a strong songwriter. “Skin” is a great, great song that’s lived with me in a big way ever since I heard it.
So I used the powerful idea of that song and then incorporated it with a distant relative of Vincent who dies in Germany from an Islamic extremist. This Van Gogh relative who was in his early twenties was an independent filmmaker and he made a documentary about the abuse of women in that culture, and basically a militant Islamist knifed (I think it was a knifing) him on a city street in the broad daylight. It was a big thing in the news because of the audacity and the heinousness of it. So I was relating that back to that idea from Bill Mallonee‘s song “Skin”. Van Gogh wanted to say things that people didn’t have ears for and it got him in trouble, and in my mind it was kind of a sequel to “Skin”. It has a very different feel, but that where the first song came from. So, my first one “Should’ve Known” is like the sequel to “Skin” and that led to “How Can The Lark” after reading those letters.
You have any plans to travel outside of Texas anytime in the future?
I would love to, I just can’t afford to at this point. I hope someday that changes and I hope it’s someday soon. I have a family that I’m the breadwinner for and we have allot of kids… we actually just had our fourth child. If I was single and free in that sense I would easily be able to get out there and start touring on what I already have, but now I will have to wait for some more momentum to build. What I can’t control
is the success, I can just control the supply side and hopefully put strong music out as long as I can. That just means I have to pace myself for health’s sake and for my families health sake, so this is really a long term game for me.
As far as The Shawl record, was it difficult for you to write music to the scriptures… was it difficult to put the scriptures difficult to put into the structure of a song?
It was kind of daunting but that was the whole idea of that record, it stood or fell on the whole idea of being able to pull that off. It’s not like I got in there and was surprised by that, that was really the whole challenge. That project was what that was about, make it work and not try to force the Psalms into folk or pop chord structures. I took my time, went in and tried to find contiguous chunks of verses that, for one, weren’t so famous that they had already been trampled over. I wanted to get some Psalms that were in the dark, hidden corners, not the Psalms that were the obvious choices everyone has gone to their whole life.
The other thing was that I wanted it to pop off the page at me. I wanted it to resonate with me for whatever reason. I wanted passages that had a musicality that I could work in some sort of chord structure that felt musical, and that was mostly a process of trial and error. I would go through and try to find a good chunk that would work and that I could pour over. I did that until I got about nine of them. There were a couple more that we didn’t include for various reasons, but we culled down what we thought were the best.
Did you record them in an old church? What was the setting for the recording?
It’s an old building, it was a university for awhile and then it ended up being an elementary school for awhile back in the 50’s. It was built in the late 1860’s early 1870’s and was a college or university. It’s in this town called Tehuacana which is the highest point between Houston and Dallas, they thought it was going to be the county seat. It was easily protected because of it’s elevation and it’s named after the Tehuacana tribe who were the ones that sought it out. They were a peaceful farming tribe and it was good, safe territory and a place to farm for them. The people who settled there I guess thought it was the place to be and they built this huge building there. This stone mason came over from England, but the funding ran out about halfway to the end of finishing the building, so it was a labor of love, this stone mason doing much of the work by himself with a small team of volunteers. It’s this gorgeous building that’s fairly run down at this point, and it just stands out there in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere. It’s owned by this guy who is kind of like this modern day C.S. Lewis, he’s a theology professor and he lets people come and use the space. I knew the place was there and I wanted to go somewhere special and do this record, I wanted to find the feel of something that was like a cathedral, and that was the closest thing I could find here in Texas. So it wasn’t a church, but there was this cross hanging up that was put there by an artist that was actually getting married there that weekend, so that kind of made it look more like a church in all the pictures.
In your music, what is it that influences you, and what influences do you bring into the music both lyrically and musically?
There are certainly some touchstones there. To answer your question simply, I like a lot of different artists. I am very into the early, early American music which would be folk, blues and country before it was called folk, blues and country. Back then it was all just early American music, and I really like that stuff. There’s a heavy influence of those roots in everything I do, I can’t get away from that it seems. Lyrically there’s allot of the South…my Mom’s from Mobile which is the deep South, my Dad’s from Arkansas, I grew up in Texas and I love the South. I grew up going to a Baptist church, the way Flannery O’Connor puts it is the “Christ haunted South.” There’s that whole southern gothic element to most everything I do it seems like as well, and that plays a heavy influential role with themes and lyrics. Finally, I love the whole idea of the punk aesthetic of giving the middle finger to the man. I can’t stand the whole pop radio these days and so I gravitate to anything that just feels raw. I feel there’s an element of rawness to what I put on tape. I want to hear people making music not machines, ya know?
How do you think the digital age has hurt or helped music?
It’s like the white man coming from Europe and it’s like Wal-Mart coming to the small towns, it’s going to happen, you can’t stop it. We can talk about how we like the warmer sounds of analog or not, but it’s coming and the face of the earth is changing and that’s just the history of this planet that were a part of no matter how much we like it. If Wal-Mart didn’t come in and kick out the independent drug stores then Costco would, and if Costco didn’t then someone else would you know, it’s coming. With the digital stuff, we can’t stop that so it has really changed the face of the recording business and the music business. The record label model of business was very corrupt and not regulated well, so in a lot of ways this is a nice revolution because it is a sort of revolution, and something needs to happen to shake things up. As the radio industry is vertically integrated with the major labels and the parent organizations… the play lists have gotten smaller and more narrow.
This may be going off your question a little bit, but I think more opportunities have opened up like TV shows and commercials being more music based. They’re doing it in a way to not just exploit the music, but to really use the music in a revered sense. I think the artists are able to put their music in those places in the market and not feel their music was exploited or used in a bad way. I guess there are a lot of opportunities in the marketplace, it’s kind of like the internet really, it’s given artists like me the opportunity to get heard by a much wider audience… that’s kind of the obvious answer but I think for the smaller artist it has opened up more opportunities to get heard by more people.
So I guess it has its pro’s and its con’s?
Yeah, well there is definitely a whole downside in the fact that people view music as cheap and free, or that it should be free. The album has lost its significance because it’s just tracks now. Those are downsides, but again it’s changing, we can’t control that we just have to reinvent how we market ourselves and find new ways to do it and get that artistic value.
Currently are you working on anything new?
Yeah, we’re working on a new record, it’s the follow up to On Promenade which means it’s not a Psalms record or anything like that. I’m trying to make it new and different, but it won’t be a hard left turn or anything. I do think it’s a progression and a pleasing one hopefully for the listeners.
Are you sticking with Velvet Blue for this release?
Oh yeah, absolutely. They’ve hit the ground running with this one. We’re going to start pre-promoting here soon. If I can get them a little bit of artwork to stick out there, and get at least one finished song to try to put on some local radio, we’ll get going. They’re excited about it. At each stage, every time I put out something new, they step up with more confidence and they want to do more. I’m very fond of Lance and the work he’s done for me… and the same for Jeff Cloud. We trust each other and we work well. It’s a very simple relationship and so we’re going to put it out… you know we’re all looking for the next opportunity, the next step up, so if they can get me picked up by somebody bigger that’s a win-win. It’s not like they’re trying to keep me in their corner, we’re all trying to go as far as we can. We’re trying to get this thing out.
Is it in the beginning stages or where are you with it?
I would say it’s in the final stages. There are two tracks we haven’t begun yet, but maybe just a couple more recording sessions and time to start thinking about the artwork and order of the songs and everything else. (Ed. Note: Since this interview, the record has been completed, look for ordering details at the bottom of the page)
Is there a working title on it?
Yeah, I kind of finalized the title in the last month; it’s going to be called O Ye Devastator.
Do you consider your music to be “Christian” music? If not, how did your audience react to a record that was scripturally based?
Well, to the first part of that question – in a sense I do in that it comes from my heart which is a Christian heart, and you can’t separate the artifact from the artist. In the sense of when you call something Christian music, most people interpret that because of the Christian music industry. In that sense it’s very distant from that and not Christian music at all. Calling it Christian music in today’s pop culture means that you’re playing to Christian radio and I’m very much not. I don’t have a problem with that, but I’m not a part of that and that’s not where I want my music to go.
To the second part of your question, in regards to the Psalms record… it seems to have penetrated very deeply to those that have heard it. It has been really encouraging and exciting, almost miraculous to see. We’ve had other musicians come up and talk about just how important that record is to them, and these are kids that I look at and think that I have a fraction of the talent that they do as musicians. So for something that you’ve done to impact high caliber artists in such a deep way, I think there’s some importance to that.
You know when you make a record, you really don’t know… it’s hard to tell how much you really like it for a while. You make it and you stick it out there, but yeah, The Shawl seems to have this kind of power to it and I’m proud of that, excited by that, and blown away by that. At the same time it’s not widely circulated because it’s such an odd thing that the market for it is automatically reduced. We knew that though and it was a labor of love. We put it out not knowing how people would respond. We knew we couldn’t push it in the same way that we could a normal record, but sure enough I’ve even been impressed by the way the local community has picked up on it. The Dallas Observer really likes it based off what they’ve written. The music editor just picked The Righteous Will Rejoice for his #19 song for 2009. So it seems to have a little bit of life of its own and I just hope that it will get out there allot more. It’s a slow burn record but I hope allot of people will be exposed to it.
What’s in your iPod/CD player/turntable right now?
Let’s see, well I bought some Pavement recently… I’ve been giving myself some head space lately. When I’m in certain phases of writing or recording I step back and listen to my own record too just to try and figure out what we need to do to it… Band of Horses I listen to a ton in the spring and summer, I love their record Cease to Begin, it’s so gorgeous and hooky. Bon Iver has an EP called Blood Bank, and a full length called For Emma, Forever Ago. The EP has two songs that I really love and the other two are much more experimental and interesting. The full length he did before that and is much more homemade and very cool, it really broke big for him. That’s a cool recent find for me, he’s not going to be new to music fans, but he’s a new one for me.
To order Doug’s new release, go to Velvet Blue Music’s website: www.velvetbluemusic.com please note, these are pre-orders and according to the website, “THIS WILL NOT SHIP UNTIL 05/04 – All pre-orders will come with a free copy of the new VBM 10 song sampler CD!”
Leave a Reply