Doug MacLeod (5)
Brilliant singer, songwriter, guitarist and raconteur from L.A.
Doug MacLeod was born in Virginia circa 1950 and raised in St Louis. He has overcome abuse and a crippling stutter to become a very highly regarded guitarist and singer songwriter on the L.A music scene. His love for blues was nurtured by a mis-spent youth prowling the bludgeoning St. Louis scene on the ‘funky’ side of the city. Here he heard and befriended Albert King, Little Milton and Ike and Tina Turner amongst others.
Enlisting in the Navy he was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia and spent his free time playing and singing to fellow sailors in the rough, downtown blues bars. After discharge he signed on to the Berklee School of Music in Boston for a four-year jazz course. Post graduation he went on the road eventually winding up in Los Angeles where he began running with George Smith and Smokey Wilson around the booming California blues scene. It was here that he befriended Pee Wee Crayton who would sit in on Doug's regular Sunday gigs and Doug made his recording debut as the bass player on Pee Wee Crayton's Murray Recordings. It was also here that Doug recorded the wonderful ‘No Road Back Home’ album for Hightone, which was crammed full of original songs. Since then he has worked solidly in the blues field writing and recording a further eight excellent albums and becoming a consummate live performer, weaving tales of the road together with performances of songs inspired by these experiences. Many of these songs have been covered by the likes of Albert Collins and Joe Louis Walker, which speak volumes for his stature amongst his peers. James Jensen of Acoustic Guitar Magazine noted his guitar playing in saying that ‘ Real excitement is created by Macleod’s highly rhythmic acoustic guitar’. (Personally I believe it is in the economy of notes played where his true genius lies)
In the last couple of years Doug has seriously moved up in profile and has cracked both the Asian and Australian markets and is often appearing at festival circuits around the world. I speculated last year that we probably would soon no longer be able to afford him but thankfully we have been able to book him recently at short notice ‘one more time’.