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AMERICANA-UK.COM (Liverpool UK) (October 30, 2001) http://www.americana-uk.com/html/doug_hoekstra.html How are you enjoying being over here at the moment? It’s been great. We did about nine dates in the Netherlands and just came over into London last night, and we start two weeks of gigs in England, and then we’re off to Ireland. So it’s good so far. Your first band, Bucket Number Six -was that a good experience in retrospect? What kind of music did you play? Yeah, it was definitely a good experience. It was sort of like alt-country although it was a little bit before that became a common catchword, and we did stuff that was influenced by Gram Parsons and Hank Williams, Johhny Cash and people like that. We covered songs by those people, and then I was the main writer and there was another guy who wrote about 30% of the tunes himself, and it was good. We hit it hard - we weren’t around for that long but we made a lot of friends and did two records over a couple of years, and it was a great experience. But a couple of guys in the band weren’t really committed to doing music so when it ran its course, we split up and I did my own thing. Connected to that, you mention in your bio that you grew up listening to the Beatles, Dylan and Stevie Wonder - did the country influences come along later on then? Much later, and it’s funny because when you grow up in Chicago, it’s such an urban environment and country’s kind of like, I’m not sure if it’s uncool but you’re certainly not that exposed to the cool stuff. It’s not easy to hear Buck Owens or Merle Haggard or the people who are the real deal, and so that came much later really. And my guitar player from the band, Steve who was a friend of mine from way, way back - we went to school together - he really got turned on to country and he introduced me a lot to the hipper stuff and that’s what immersed us into it. Your lyrics are staggeringly well written at times - do you think your degrees in English help you with your songwriting? Um, maybe - that’s a tough one to say. I think my interest in literature did, and I think that especially since I’ve always written songs from when I was pretty young, when I went into my academic courses, I did think, like, what can I get out of this? If I get into something I’m turned on to in literature, I do think of a way to process it, how it might benefit my songwriting, and I think there’s a lot of things in terms of detail, sensual details like smell and taste and touch - things that you really find in great poetry and literature, that kind of focussing in. I think it’s something that probably helped. Because you write prose too, don’t you? Yeah I do - I write short stories mostly, and we’re supposed to have a book of those coming out at the end of the year. We’re a little delayed on it. Do you see solo albums as quite experimental? Where do you get your ideas from for them? Well, I guess I like to push things, but it’s funny because I never think when I’m in the studio, “OK, I want to do this purposively for the sake of doing this.” To me, they always come out of some inspiration that’s connected to the song. If a guitar and a cello is what a song needs, I’m cool with doing that, but if other things in the song and the lyrics and the mood suggest certain things to me, then I’m not afraid to try it, and I think that’s just because they’re the type of records I like. I really like all the production stuff the Beatles did or somebody like Prince - I find it all interesting. And I think it’s important because a lot of singer songwriters can be great writers but they just put their live show on the CD. Which is OK up until a point, but at some point you’ve got to think, well, people are coming at this record from different viewpoints. If somebody’s not literary minded for instance, I hope they can get into the sonic moods that shift. Tom Waits is another guy who’s always been inspirational for me - it’s basis blues songwriting with lyrics, but he’s not afraid to do interesting things in how he presents it. So do you feel when you perform live that it’s a restrictive environment playing with just a guitar? No, I think it’s kind of cool because it allows me to do something different, and to strip the songs down and try another take on them - it keeps the songs fresh that way. And it would be nice if I was kicking it so I could have a seven piece band everywhere, but at the same time I never think “Oh, I have to reproduce this like it is on the record.” To me it’s still the song that has to be served - the difference is I’m in a different setting. Your new record “The Past is Never Past” has been described as an “alternative look at an alternative record” - can you elaborate on that? Yeah, we did so much material for “Margins,” it’s like a 65 minute record, and I had about eight or nine songs over that we didn’t put on, and then I had a few other odd things, like there was a thing on “Comes with a Smile,” and I sent a rough dub to my label guy, and he said he thought it was cool and that we should put it out. So I added a couple of new songs, and it just seemed to hold together as an entity, and in a way a lot of the stuff parallels what was on “Margins” but in a different way. There’s even some similar themes. The character on the title track of the new one is not unlike the character in “Undone” on “Margins.” Different way of looking at the same set of ideas. Which artists or records are you listening to at the moment? I just got the new Leonard Cohen one which is great, and other than that, I can’t say I’ve listened to a lot of new people. On this trip, I’ve been listening to Cole Porter and lots of Van Morrison and a lot of old staples really. I go through phases and that’s where it’s at right now! How are you feeling about the world at the moment since everything that happened to America in September? Well, it’s interesting, because when I was talking to Cat Parsons, she’s the singer with me on this tour, when we decided to come over, we talked right after it happened and we both thought it was almost even more important for us to come over - for so many reasons. The simple fact is that you have to keep doing what you’re doing, and I think you have to try and do something positive. In the States right now, people are really freaked out and anxious, and it seems to me like you have to combat that energy with something positive, and I think coming over here’s a good way of doing that - for the musical reasons and everything else. In terms of the event itself, it was horrible but I also do see it in a historical context frankly and you can look at it in the context of going back to the Crusades, and in that sense it’s not completely surprising, and I think the thing that’s worrying some people is not what’s happening now but two years down the road. I don’t have the answers, but it’s such a complex thing. Finally, what are you up to when the tour’s over? I’m going to sleep for about three days! You know, probably I will take a little time off and kind of regroup on everything that’s happened as a result of the tour. I’m going to try and follow up on the short stories and see what’s happening with that for the end of the year. And then next year, we’ll probably do some more touring - maybe in Germany and Italy - springtime will probably bring that. I’ve got a lot of material ready so that I could do another record right now, but I really don’t want to - I want to stay out of the studio and get some space, because otherwise you’re constantly recording, and that’s fun, but touring helps define where you’re at.
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