|
WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAL (July 13, 2001) by Ed Bumgardner Fri, Jul 13, 2001
Doug Hoekstra has written and published prose, and gotten splendid reviews for his efforts. But it is his musical career, begun in 1994 and spread over four adventurous and evolutionary albums, that best promotes his creative juices. His latest album, Around The Margins, stays true to its title. The music flirts with several styles and genres yet never fully commits to any one of them. Rather, it stretches the imagination through arrangements that race from fragile and genteel to barely controlled chaos. It is in every way a magical and commanding listening experience, a telling of well-crafted stories that makes equal use of the freedom of imagination and the more earthbound tenets of a well-schooled intellect (Hoekstra has degrees, including a master's, from three universities). "I like to think of my music as a combination of immediacy and intellect," Hoekstra said. "I'm not a total egghead. The writing pretty much taps into my intellectual side. But in the studio, when it comes time to execute the ideas, I try to let things go their own way. "Unlike writing prose, music is, by nature, a collaborative thing in that most songwriters make use of outside musicians to create their music. To keep that collaborative vibe going, I tend to follow the lead of Duke Ellington, who used to hire, not necessarily the best musicians who could play the way he liked, but musicians whose playing and ideas he liked. That way, the music would grow organically. I'm a firm believer that thought engages spontaneity." He paused, pondered in silence, then laughed. "OK, OK - maybe I am an egghead." Egghead or not, Hoekstra knows a good song when he writes it - and when he hears it. He admits to a lifelong love of the work of Van Morrison and Bob Dylan (he recorded a fine version of "Isis" for Around The Margins). He loves how each of these veteran singer-songwriters has nurtured an evolving career in which the body of work is as important as any single album. "For me, Dylan is the beginning of everything," Hoekstra said. "Without his influence, modern music would not have evolved as it has. He is always responding to text, and I can fully relate to that. "Each album - no, each song - should stand as a little novel. The trick is to not get too precious." The reach of Hoekstra's narratives is impressive. He has written everything from poignant songs about baseball - he is a die-hard fan of the Chicago Cubs, and his songs "Only The Ball Was White" and "Andy Pafko's Shoestring Catch" are in the National Baseball Hall of Fame - to "That's Where He's Living" from Margins, a murder vignette that boasts a surprise wallop of an ending. Not surprisingly, Hoekstra counts himself among the minority of songwriters who write lyrics before they write the music. "This is going to sound pretentious, and forgive me, but I think of myself less as a performer than a writer, more of a composer than a tunesmith," Hoekstra said. "I think if you listen to a lot of what is on the radio now, the lyrics are, sadly, one-dimensional. I work hard to be the antithesis of that mind-set. I am not mainstream, and I don't think of that in a bad way. I am just a songwriter, a storyteller, first and foremost. "For that reason, I tend to almost always write the words first. The thing about lyrics is that they almost always dictate the mood that should accompany them. That has been true from minstrels to Chuck Berry to hip-hop. I'm no different." What is different about Hoekstra is that he views each new album as a blank canvas, thus a fresh start. Each of his four albums - When The Tubes Begin To Glow (1994), Rickety Stairs (1996), Make Me Believe (1999) and the new Around The Margins - can stand alone as a distinctive album. The arrangements on each blur genres and take the sort of chances rarely found on folk or pop albums. "As highly arranged as everything sounds, and is, the resulting performances are oddly organic," Hoekstra insisted. "Things always start in a little studio in the basement, and we try to keep the arrangements fresh but uncluttered. The point of the arrangement is to serve the story, not to detract from it, and I think I do that concept justice." He laughed. "Mine is not a black-and-white world." • Doug Hoekstra will perform at 10 p.m. Saturday at The Garage. Pop Rocket and Briefcase will open the show. Admission is $5. Call 777-1127. • Ed Bumgardner can be reached at 727-7284 or at ebumgardner@wsjournal.com Return to Press |
|
|