BluesWax Sittin' In With Doug MacLeod
By Don Wilcock

"I don't see myself as a writer," says singer-songwriter and Blues Revue columnist Doug MacLeod. Actually, he's written more than 350 songs that have been recorded by everyone from Albert King and Son Seals for Joe Louis Walker and Chris Thomas King. "I remember one time I met Joe Pass, the Jazz guitar player. Back in the days I was flirtin' with Jazz, but I've always been a Country Blues guy at heart, and I was sittin' with him and he told me he thought of himself as a craftsman, and I couldn't believe it. I said, 'You thought of yourself as a craftsman?' He said, 'Yup, all I'm doing is honing a craft.' Maybe I sort of see myself that way as a writer. The old man I learned from [Ernest Banks] said, 'Say the truth, boy.' He said, 'Just say the truth!' And that's all I do." Doug MacLeod is all about universal truths. If there's a difference between black and white songwriters, you couldn't prove it by Doug. His art - or craft - is universal. In some cases black and white Blues writers may be as different as men and women, but good songwriters get in touch with their souls, which is a universal process that crosses those racial, gender, and cultural differences. MacLeod is case number one. Doug and I met on the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise and I was immediately taken with his ability to move fluently between songs and stories. I was unfamiliar with his extensive recording catalog and asked him to send me some of his CDs. He said he only wanted to talk about The Utrecht Sessions, his most recent release. What hidden stories they turned out to reveal.

Don Wilcock for BluesWax (= BW): Part of what's remarkable about you is that you're able to put facts and myths together in such a way they become more real than either the fact or the myth that they came from.
Doug McLeod (= DM): Ha, ha! Wow! I really don't know what you're talking about. Okay, I'm gonna trust you with that one!

BW: Anyway, there's a comfort zone about you. That's what I was getting at in my review of your CD The Utrecht Sessions in Blues Revue. Your music is very comfortable and at the same time very real. The first song on the album is "Horse with No Rider." In the liner notes you say, "I wrote this song. Is it true? Does it matter?"
DM: Uh huh.

BW: That seems to be a theme that runs through the best Blues, and I've gotten into discussions with a lot of artists on this. Is the myth more important than the reality? Obvious case in point, did Robert Johnson sell his soul to the devil or did he screw that club owner's wife and the club owner poisoned him to death?
DM: Uh hm. "He said, 'Just say the truth!' And that's all I do."

BW: And that's the reality and does it matter? What did you learn from George Harmonica Smith, who told you the story of this song, to help you understand that myth and the importance of myth in Blues?
DM: George and I had an agreement that we were going to be friends and one time I lied to him about a gig and I took a gig 'cause it was paying me more, and George had found out and he asked me about it, and I lied to him, and then George said to me, "Doug, I know you took that other gig." And I still denied it and he said, "I know you did," and I felt really small because he was truly just like a father to me. You know, he was born on my natural father's birthday and me and my natural father never got along. So, George became a father to me and he said to me these words. He said, "How can we be friends if one of us lies to each other?" And I said, "Oh, George, I feel bad." He said, "Well, look, I forgive you, but from now on, Doug, you and I don't lie with each other." Now, I still hold that with my son. My son ever since he could speak, we had a thing called "our honor" that you asked me a question and if I say, "Our honor," you have to speak the truth, and that's why my son and I have a real good relationship just like George and I did. So, when you add this up with that song, when he got done telling me that story, is it...of course it's a myth. Of course, it is. There is no way that a horse with no rider is gonna come into a town and pick up somebody. That's just myth stuff, but from that myth you get a real sense of how precious life is and how fragile life is, and there may be omens you see throughout your life. In the song, it talks about when the moon hangs low, a harvest moon, and we all see signs that say life is precious, short, fragile, but when you look at it that way, it doesn't matter if the song is about myth because is it directing you in a not so mundane way to the truth?

BW: There is so much truth in myth as there is in reality and the Blues has always been the best example of that, and I think that's the thing that Blues people understand that most of society doesn't get. You'd have to listen to it a long time to get that message and that seems to be one of the hardest things for young Blues artists. They don't see it. It seems to take years for that message to get through.
DM: I think so, too. Then, again, a guy like me, I mean, I'm old enough that I had to work with the old guys. If I was gonna get it, there wasn't CDs or books or anything like that actually to speak of. If you wanted to get the Blues or learn the music, you had to go where the Bluesmen were, you know, and that meant you had to go to their neighborhoods and you had to go to their club and so on.

BW: In "This Old River" you talk about being inspired by Marie Gaines, that she told you, "I'm not afraid of leaving. I just don't want to go yet." Then, you sing, "Is faith something you believe in?/You have a hard time knowing it." What does that line mean to you?
DM: Well, I mean, if you believe in God...let's say you believe in God. God doesn't show up in any skin. There's no way you can touch him. There is no way you touch that. So, ah-ha, once you touch something, you say, "Okay, I know it's there," but if you can't touch it, then it has to be something that involves faith. I kinda learned that from George, too. Yeah, there was so many things I learned from those guys. Don, I never saw this music as let's get drunk and party stuff. I mean that stuff was going on because we tried to sell alcohol and stuff. There was a lot of depths to what these guys were doing and talking with them afterwards and getting a handle on life and that's all that song is about. It's about if you come to that river, which we all gonna do, if you come to that river and you have faith, what I understand is if you have faith you're gonna be able to cross. Another line in it says, "Don't care about your religion/You're gonna hear an honest prayer." Now, I believe that. I believe that with all my heart. I believe that religion is something that's manmade. I believe prayer goes directly to the source. So, I thought I'd put it in a song. I thought it might be important for folks to hear.

BW: Yeah, well, it touches me and another thing I heard in your lyrics and I think of people like John Hammond and Rory Block who've been in Blues 40 years, almost 50 years.
DM: Uh huh.

BW: And have trouble writing Blues lyrics. I think some people don't understand how very difficult it is to get very complex thoughts into simple lyrics. I think one of the hardest things to do as a writer I try to do the same thing when I'm writing pieces for the magazine and that is it looks simple and you understand, but it's not that simple. In the next song, for instance, "The Addition to Blues," you say, "She said I ain't talkin' instead of/What I'm talking is in addition to."
DM: That's right. "She said I ain't talkin' instead of/I'm talkin' in addition to." Yeah.

BW: I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on in those few words. Somebody could write a whole damn novel about that and not get as much across as you got.
DM: [Laughs] I guess my writing's gettin' better.

BW: And then you say, "What you leave out is more important than what you put in." That's great!
DM: Yeah, that's just kinda how I learned things, you know, coming up.

BW: But isn't that part of a great song, too, is to ask as many questions as you answer and to create thoughts in people's minds that can go off in three or four or five or 15 or 50 directions? I could play that tape in my head and give you 50 different scenarios on that.
DM: I think, years ago when I was in high school, and I'm not much of an educational fellow, but I'll tell you something. I remember a lady telling me about Mark Twain in high school and she said, "If you read Huckleberry Finn," she said, "You read it once, you'll get one message from it. You read it the second time you'll get another one. You read it a third time you'll get another one." She said, "That's what made Mark Twain a great writer," and being from the same area - that's where I went to high school - I thought it meant quite a bit. Maybe that stuck with me. When a teacher says something to you that stays; I'll never forget her saying that.

BW: So, how many women have asked you did you fuck that girl? (The song leaves it open as to whether he accepted her invitation.)
DM: Well, you know something. I've never had it directed to me in quite that way.

BW: [Laughs]
DM: But quite honestly, like I said in the song, if I'd wanted you to know, I'd have put it in the song.

BW: Right, right, but you're also concerned enough that you wrote in the liner notes you wanted all the women to make sure that they read that last verse before they come after you.
DM: You're right. You want to hear something funny? I been on the road here, I started off in Kansas City and then I went to St. Louis, and I gotta tell ya something, Don. I had two women come up to me and talk about the song and I was nervous about it because of the politically incorrect stuff. Both of those women said to me, "That's a great line," said I'm gonna use that." ["Come on to my house/ Something I want to give you/I ain't talking instead of/What I'm talking is in addition to."] I said, "Are you skunkin' me?" They said, "No, no." Both of 'em, two women in two different cities! So, it's like I say, sometimes the politically incorrect is to involving this and that, and missing out what's really going on on the street.

BW: Yeah, I don't think we understand how women think at all.
DM: I agree. I agree. Plus, I think they were born with sonar that you and I will never have because how come they know when we've been cheating, but we don't know when they're cheating? You know what I mean? It ain't right!

BW: I'm not even going to touch that one! You're out there all alone on the end of that string, man.
DM: Oh, yeah. Well, there ya go. Well, it ain't the first time.

BW: Moving right along...
DM: Please, let's go to the next one. Hurry up!

BW: Is "Long Black Train" autobiographical? "A young man who stutters got his ticket in his hand."
DM: Yes.

BW: That he chose to ride shows the power of the man?
DM: Yes, it is.

BW: How difficult was it to overcome stuttering and face the public?
DM: It's one of the hardest things I ever did in my life.

BW: How did you do it?
DM: Well, I think this might be the first time this has ever come out. The stutter was so bad, I couldn't say two words without stuttering, and this gets me. I'm getting a little choked up, 'cause no one's ever asked me about that before.

BW: I promised you this wasn't going to be easy.
DM: I know, but it looks like you're a man of your word, damn you.

BW: No, this is helpful to both of us. I hope you understand that. I love you, man, and I'm going to go deep here.
DM: Okay, that's fine.

BW: I aDMire you. You're in safe hands, believe me.
DM: Thank you. The stutter, as far as we can understand now, comes from the abuse I had when I was a boy, and, uh, it was sexual and physical, so the ... I closed up inside, see, and I don't even remember the first eight years of my life, which was spent in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I didn't find out about that until my mother was in her seventies, 'cause I don't remember any of it. I thought I was born and raised in New York City, but I wasn't. And that's a whole other story about my family, which is ... that's for another volume, but the stutter apparently came from holding things in that happened to me because they abused me. And I couldn't meet girls, you know. I couldn't meet girls. I was really scared. There were many times because of that, that you feel you want to leave the planet. There's nothing here for you. There's no way you're gonna get happy. You start to really feel sorry for yourself, see, and one day, I don't remember exactly the day, but I was a bass player starting and one day I picked up a guitar and I tried to sing, and this voice that you're listening to now came out. I don't know what my voice was before then. I just remember that it stuttered and then I decided ... I mean, I didn't fix the stutter right away, but I felt I saw the light. I saw a path through the woods that if I took this path, I'd be able to make it, and so I tried and then I realized how much courage it took. You know, the telephone is probably the scariest thing in the world for someone who stutters. I don't know why that is. But now I'm talking to you on the phone. I did radio for five years. It's amazing, and it shows the power of ... not me, necessarily, but it shows the power of the human spirit.

BW: You say it in your lyrics. I see it throughout this album. You rally around being brave and going out and doing whatever it is you have to do. And I think that's what life is about.
DM: Thank you, Don. I think you've got a really good handle on that.

BW: If you stay on that train, it's a good ride. If you get off that train, you might miss that beautiful horizon around the corner with the sun coming up.
DM: There you go. There you go.

BW: And going on to the next song, "The Demon Moan."
DM: Oh, Jesus, yeah!

BW: "I wanted to give up living, but I was too angry to die."
DM: I've seen some reviews of the album that are coming from England and so on, and around the world, and people get their own message from it, which is entirely what it's supposed to be, but that song is about abuse. That song is about when someone abuses you sexually and you hear them moan with enjoyment. See, when you're young, there's no way you can defend yourself against it, and, in the end, if you don't come up in a real nurturing, loving family, you think this is how it's supposed to be.

BW: You don't understand why you're not enjoying it as much as they are.
DM: Exactly.

BW: Yeah, I went with a woman who was abused by her stepfather, so I know exactly what you're talking about.
DM: And it screws you up. So when you get into relationships, you carry that along because that's all you know. And that's what "The Demon's Moan" is about, and that's when it said, "I was much too angry to die," because at that time, once I realized it, sometime around when I was 15 -- I guess when puberty hits -- you realize, "Shit, something happened and something really bad happened," and if it's traumatic enough ... you know being around combat guys, if it's traumatic enough, you block it out.

BW: Oh, I'm good at that.
DM: You have to be, man, but that's what happened to me. I blocked it out. Eight years of my life I can just remember a bamboo fishing pole and my brother and I, like the beginning of The Andy Griffith Show, just walking down to the lake to go fishing. That's all I remember of my eight years in Raleigh, North Carolina. That's all I remember of it, and that anger ... and this is what makes the Blues important to me. That anger that I had, that rage, and I mean, I took that rage out. I took that rage out. I was an angry, violent young man, and when I ran into the black people that were playing the Blues I saw how much they enjoyed life with the simple things. They were poor, but they would love music. They would dance, and when they made love, they made love like ... I said, "Wow." The first time I made love with a woman like that was unbelievable to me. I'd never had an experience like that. And how much joy and how much sensual stuff was going on, and I realized, I said to myself, "If these people can be happy, well, then, I can be happy." You know what I mean? They came up through prejudice and slavery. For me, it's bad, but it's not like a whole race. So I said, "I wonder if these people will take me in?" And they did. I was really fortunate. That's how I got a real handle on things, which is also the sense of humor. That's the thing that balances it. If you can learn to laugh at yourself and laugh at this life, you can survive it a whole lot easier.

BW: In the next song, "Long Time Road," you sing, "Ghosts I left behind haunt someone else."
DM: Yes, yeah.

BW: I think what you're saying there is that it's cathartic to put your pain into words and let those words have the life and then you move on to something else.
DM: Wow, I never thought of it that way. That's even more deep than what I was getting to. Don, a funny thing is, I don't know how deep the stuff is until someone else tells me. And I don't mean to sound false about this.

BW: No, I understand.
DM: What I learned from these guys was just [to] sing the truth. That's all I write about. I say, "Is this true," and to the best of my knowledge, that is true. Then I write it, and it seems to carry different meanings to different people, and I guess that's what good writing does. And that's all I want to do is just be on this planet long enough to speak the truth until I'm done speaking it. Just the truth as I see it, not like it's the gospel truth, but just the truth from where Doug MacLeod stands, and Doug MacLeod's view of this world and what he's chronicling.

BW: Let's move on to the next song, then: "I Respectfully Decline," where you don't want to look back. ("And you, you had a crush on me/The rebel boy who stood apart/After all these years you ask me the same question/Have I ever shared my heart?") You don't want to go back to reunions. So let me ask my first nasty question of the interview. Do Bluesmen run from responsibility?
DM: Do what?

BW: Do Bluesmen run from responsibility?
DM: This one don't! I've got a wife. I've raised a kid. My son's 23 years old, and he's doing well. I have a wife of 29 years. Yeah, this man does not run from responsibility.

BW: All right. Now, listening to the lyrics of your songs, one would not guess that that's your heritage, that you have a wife you've been married to that long and have a child. That's interesting.
DM: Yup. Well, see, I mean the life I had before was fertile enough ground to write songs to my death. [Laughs.]

BW: So, how hard is it to explain to your wife the origin of some of these songs?
DM: You know, I mean, some of these songs come from the relationship that we had. Staying together for 29 years is not because everything is perfect, it's being able to grow together and forgive and move on. I mean, we're all humans, we're all going to make mistakes. So, I think the greatest thing that...maybe the greatest thing I've ever done is that my son is seeing what love is between two people that really love each other and that work through things the way everybody has to. I mean nobody has Beaver Cleaver time. Nobody does, man. Everybody gotta work through it because it's just the nature of life. You're growing. You're changing. There are different influences around you.

BW: "That Ain't Right," what did your wife think of that one?
DM: Well, let me tell you the truth about something. When we did this album, right?

BW: Yeah?
DM: When we did this album, that song, I think the recording session was two days long, and it was like the old school. They just put me in a room with two mikes for the guitar, one mike for the voice, and no headphone, just like Robert Johnson recorded back in the 1930s. So, this song was done at the very end of the first day. I was tired, but I don't know, I just decided I was gonna do it as a throwaway or something, you know. So, the next day we go down and my wife was with me, Patti Joy, and she comes down and we're listening to the playback to where they were adjusting the tone, adjusting the board for the new session. The song they were playing back of course was the last song we did from the day [before]. I just dismissed it and then when I came back in after I set up the guitar, she said, "That's a little jewel." I said, "Get out!" She said, "No, I think you ought to hear this." So, we all played it back and we said, "God damn, that's a good song." It's still on. It was the one...there were two that didn't go on the record and that one would have been one of them, but, no, it's on because of her. Of course, that song is another one that goes against politically correct, but there's a deepness to this, I think. A little more depth than just the joke of it where the guy says, "Now, I've got a woman on the side/I'm getting what I've been denied." You can laugh about that. You can get mad about that. It doesn't matter as long as it upsets you enough that you look at it and you say, "If you have somebody and you love somebody, why don't you treat 'em right?"

BW: There was a message in there for me and my wife and that was that I should be giving her the time. If she loves me enough to want my time, then I should be attentive.
DM: Oh, well see! There you go! So there's a song that does something. And I think sometimes people...the word "myopic," when you're just looking at small things, yes, OK. They say, "OK, this is my life!" And let's say all they do...so, let's say there's a person that said, "Oh, that song is tellin' a man he should cheat on his woman if she cheats on him," get a hold of it. That's a myopic view. That's all, a very myopic view of that song.

BW: Yes!
DM: That song is really about everybody treatin' the one you love right.

BW: Well, I think that's why so many educated white people have trouble writing their own Blues is it takes a long time for us to figure out that the great Blues lyrics are not the simple revelations of uneducated, poor, rural black men.
DM: Robert Johnson was an intelligent human being. His lyrics, "When you got a good friend, should stay right by your side." You can ruminate on that for a long time.

BW: Yes!
DM: And you listen to Brownie McGee: "Walk on, walk on." If you just take the time to listen to what these artists were saying you'll find - it's sort of like when I was over in England and I met this professor. I played in Cambridge or Oxford. I can't remember. They'll kill me. You gotta know the difference between these two!

BW: Oh, yeah, that's like Yale and Harvard.
DM: Yeah, but I fucked up here. I don't remember. Somebody told me, he said, "That's what poetry is." I said, "Poetry?" He said, "Yeah, to say a lot in a little bit," and I think that's what great Blues artists did.

BW: Absolutely! And that's what you're doing.
DM: Well, I feel flattered by that.

BW: Good! You can feel flattered by it and also motivated to keep doing what you're doing.
DM: You know what? I feel so fortunate, Don. I'm gonna tell ya, I feel so fortunate that I can speak, that I can write, that I can sing, that I can play, but mainly I think what's going on...I think my wife said it best, "Here, you got a guy who stuttered until he was 13, or something like that, and then he finally gets a voice, and he can sing." And now she says, "Now, there's no shutting him up." I'm gonna speak! I'm gonna speak as long as I can.

BW: "Coming Your Brand New Day." That's what I was talking about earlier about the best stuff happening right next to the worst stuff.
DM: Yeah!

BW: You gotta stay alert.
DM: Yeah, yeah.

BW: Yeah, and I feel that way, too. Every day I wake up I say, "Damn, I'm not in a coffin. This is good."
DM: Like I say, if you wake up in the same bed you went to sleep in the night before, you got another shot at it.

BW: That's right!
DM: That's the way I see it.

BW: Yeah, me too. I agree with you.
DM: And I like that song, that song I been playin' that for a while, and I play it live and, gosh, you know where I played that? I played that in Serbia, and it was right after the embassy thing happened. I was over there a month or so ago, a couple of months ago, and of course my wife was concerned about it. Truthfully, I was concerned, too. And I found those people to be so loving and warm and knowledgeable about Blues. I mean they know Blues! I say, in American, "How many of you ever heard the name Tampa Red?" And there's a smattering of people, maybe one or two folks who raise their hand. In Serbia it's like at least half the crowd; out of 200 people at least half know and I go, "My goodness gracious," and they know. To them it's like amazing culture and I remember there's someone came up to me and said, "You know, this is a good song for us." I said, "It is?" He said, "Yes, because we have our brand new day coming." I said, "Yes, you do. Yes, you do." You know, so you see it kinda crosses over the borders of countries and culture. This music speaks to the basic feelings we all have. Makes no difference. We're all the same, Don, deep inside. But that's not what you asked me. Is that good enough for that song?

BW: Yeah, that's good enough. That's great. I don't want to work you too hard. "Sheep of A Different Color." In light of what happened most recently in the primaries, how relevant is that song today versus when you wrote it? ("The left stay left, the right stay right/The common ground of common sense, lost all in their fight.")
DM: It's still relevant.

BW: "What You Got Ain't Necessarily What You Own." What did the wife think about that one? ("Well, you out chasing skirts, you think your woman she's safe at home/Yes, you out running streets, you think your woman she's safe at home/I got some news for you buddy, what you ain't got ain't necessarily what you own.")
DM: She knows it's true. She knows it's true. I've got a strong wife, I'm gonna tell you something.

BW: You'd have to, someone that could handle your being away that much.
DM: Yeah, she is a strong, strong woman. She don't put up with any bullshit. She's a great gal and I love her to death. And that's how it's gotta be 'cause she just know these songs coming. The other thing about being able to write songs now, sometimes I can get propositioned, but that doesn't mean I go and do it. You understand?

BW: Right!
DM: But being a writer, that means I can say, "Oh, what is this feeling I got?" And then later on that feeling comes out. I write a song. That doesn't mean I'm gonna hurt my family.

BW: And the last song, "Where You'll Find Me," there's a message in there, too. "Sometimes beginnings, they're born from an end."
DM: [Exhales hard.] Yup!

BW: There again, getting back to this theme I see running through this entire album of the good things, you have to recognize the good things among the bad.
DM: Don, I'll tell you the truth, I don't know what the hell that song means! "I went to the desert, so I could see the sky/I had lost my sight, and I did not know why/I couldn't tell the truth for looking at a lie/My sight was restored when my friend said good-bye."

BW: Yeah, you say that in the liner notes.
DM: I don't know, I can honestly tell you that song came to me...I wrote that song in 15 minutes.

BW: Can you remember the process? What came first?
DM: It just came.

BW: Word for word?
DM: Yeah, I changed maybe a word or two, but not anywhere near the important words. It was an amazing thing. I've heard songwriters say that a song is a gift from above. You know what I mean?

BW: One of the proofs God exists happens in these interviews because I have probably interviewed 100 artists who've told me the exact same story that you just told me.
DM: Is that right?

BW: Yes, at least a hundred! And in many cases those songs went on to become world famous, million-selling songs. I'm not saying that this is going to be one of them!
DM: I wouldn't mind it to be honest about it.

BW: Where do you think your muse came from? Where does that talent come from because you have a talent for creating a wonderful story?
DM: I don't know if I create it, to be quite frank with you. I don't know if I create it. I think what I do, I have a word for it, I call it "chronicling" it. I chronicle what I see.

BW: You're not giving yourself enough credit, that's not chronicling.
DM: I don't know. I don't know, Don.

Don Wilcock is a contributing editor at BluesWax. You may contact Don at blueswax@visnat.com.