Doug Hoekstra by Paul Griffith

It seems rare when the artist and the self-starter co-exist within the same personality, but Nashville-based singer-songwriter Doug Hoekstra knows the importance of leg work.  "It's always been out of necessity and survival," states the Illinois native.  There's a lot of records out there.  If you're going to go to the trouble of making one, you have to put the same effort into making people  hear it."

Hoekstra, whose music is an imaginative blend of traditional acoustic, ethnic midwestern, and techno-friendly stylings, prefers to keep these efforst focused on short-term goals.  "I have to raise the bar, make better records, make more dough, and play better venues in more places, but in order to do that, I first have to work my current record hard."

"You have to be optimstic yet realistic," claims Hoekstra, whose placing of an early, hand-burned version of his new album, Around the Margins, into the hands of free-lance writer Philip Van Vleck resulted in a March 10 feature article in Billboard magazine.

What's most important, he claims, "is the nature of your goals.  It's okay to want a manager or record deal, but you have to want the right manager and the right record deal."  As Hoekstra and many other independent artists have found out, having the wrong people in such positions often creates work for you rather than relieves you of it.  "I've had management deals offered to me lately, and I've passed on them because you want someone who cares about it as much as you do, or at least half as much."

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