SUNDERLAND TODAY (Sunderland UK) May 31, 2002

Low-key gig is Hoekstra special - by Alistair Robinson

One of America’s quirkiest singer-songwriters makes his North East debut next week.

Doug Hoekstra, from Chicago, but now based in the country music capital of Nashville, is at the Rose and Crown on the riverside at Holborn, South Shields, on Wednesday night.

Hoekstra is in the Leonard Cohen tradition of whispered vocals and oblique narratives. Occasionally he rides a melody for a few bars, but his delivery is closer to speaking. I’ve been listening to his last-but-one album Around the Margins, and his approach grew on me. It allows the listener to catch the words of his musical short stories. The album has tuneful arrangements, but Hoekstra will be playing solo on his Tyneside gig.

Over the last five years or so, softly-spoken Doug has been quietly building up a solid reputation within the music industry.

His second album, the splendidly-titled Rickety Stairs, was nominated for a Nashville Music Award. The follow-up, Make Me Believe, entered the first phase of the Grammy nominations and was named one of the top 10 records of 1999 by CD Now magazine. His latest release The Past is Never Past, was released in October and also made it on to album of the year lists in America and the UK

The Rose and Crown, by the way, is out of the way. You’ll find it hidden behind factories and workshops off Commercial Road in South Shields, which is one of the main routes into the town centre from the A19- it’s just upriver of the Customs House.

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