Doug Seegers goes from street singer to global superstar
Jun 8, 2014 10:10:20 GMT -6
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Post by Johnkenn on Jun 8, 2014 10:10:20 GMT -6
www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2014/06/07/nashville-street-singer-transformed-global-superstar/10110601/
Maybe you've passed him on a downtown sidewalk. Maybe thrown a couple bucks his way.
Doug Seegers, 62, is a street singer. He's been in town for 17 years. He's been homeless and addicted. He's been singing on Second Avenue, outside The Old Spaghetti Factory, and on Charlotte Avenue, outside the Goodwill store.
Gray hair. Guitar case open for thrown change. Sign that says, "Out of work. Anything helps."
He sits on the ground when he plays. Talks in a voice still colored by his New York upbringing. Sings with a drawl colored by the Hank Williams records he heard as a child. His parents liked country music.
Maybe you've seen him.
Maybe you've heard him.
Anyway, he's country music's newest international superstar.
He's in Sweden right now, breathing crisp air instead of Nashville's summer sauna. He's playing festivals, sharing stages with Neil Young and Dwight Yoakam and signing his name on the cover of his just-released debut album, an album that finds him duetting with Country Music Hall of Famer Emmylou Harris.
She called him about a month ago, Emmylou did. She said a few nice things about his singing. Country music's newest international superstar choked out a few words of thanks, then he hung up the phone and wept.
'Who is Doug Seegers?'
On Dec. 17, 2012, musician Aaron Espe posted a cellphone video to YouTube and titled it "Who is Doug Seegers?"
"He's an out-of-work carpenter in Nashville," Espe wrote. "He sometimes eats at the mission on Charlotte. Busks a lot on 2nd Avenue. That's all I know, really."
In the video, Seegers strummed a cheap black guitar. He wore a toboggan hat and glasses. There was a one-dollar bill visible in his soft-shell guitar case. He strummed hard, guitar strings vibrating as he sang, "I'm going down to the river, gonna wash my soul again/ I'm going out to the country, gonna bury my head in the creek."
"Nobody was listening," Espe wrote. "People don't understand that you cannot teach what he's doing. ... That vibe. His haunting voice. The way he makes you feel something. ... I hope people watch this video. I hope a million more dollar bills go into that guitar case of his."
Espe's 2012 video received no Facebook likes. It wasn't widely viewed until March 2014, when people from far away with names like Torstensson, Ostberg and Hultkvist made comments like "This man is amazing," " 'Down to the River' is one of the greatest songs I've ever heard. It stings my heart," and "The people in Sweden just love You and Your song."
Duke the Drifter
Grammy-winning Nashville musician Buddy Miller is talking about his mid-1970s days as an Austin, Texas, scuffler.
"He went by Duke the Drifter," Miller says. "He moved from New York to Austin and stayed with me and my wife."
Duke was writing lots of good songs back then. He and Miller played in a band together. He bent everyone's ear about Gram Parsons' country-rock records, "GP" and "Grievous Angel," which featured glorious harmonies from raven-haired songbird Emmylou Harris.
"He couldn't care less about being big or famous or part of a scene," Miller says. "He didn't care about a warm bed or a nice place to live."
Miller moved around the country, wound his way to Nashville and joined Harris' band. He produced Robert Plant, Patty Griffin, Solomon Burke and ABC's "Nashville" television show. He collected awards trophies. He and Duke lost touch.
In April, producer Will Kimbrough left Miller a message, hoping he'd sing and play some guitar on an album Kimbrough was recording at Sound Emporium, the studio built by legendary producer Cowboy Jack Clement. Johnny Cash recorded there. Emmylou, too.
Kimbrough said he was producing this guy who'd been homeless but had been featured on Swedish television and now had a huge hit in Scandinavia.
Miller was busy. He texted back a few days later, saying he was sorry but he was too slammed to play the session. Kimbrough called back and left a message saying he completely understood.
"By the way," he added. "This cat says he used to know you, when he went by the name 'Duke.' "
Miller was driving when he got the message. He braked, changed directions and drove to Sound Emporium to reunite with Duke the Drifter, to meet Doug Seegers, country music's newest international superstar, and to listen as a voice of commanding vulnerability sprung from studio speakers the size of a preschooler's bed.
Al Perkins, famously featured on "Grievous Angel," played steel guitar. Harris' Red Dirt Boys band backed Seegers on other instruments.
Seegers walked from the studio floor into the control room and listened to a playback.
"That's what I'm talking about," he said, sitting in front of a $30,000 Trident sound board. "That's what I'm looking for, right there."
'When you give up, that's when it ends'
People who've heard Doug Seegers sing and play often call his talent "undeniable."
But it's not.
It has been denied thousands of times, usually passively, by people who walked past him on the street, averted their eyes and kept on with their conversations.
Music Row record companies employ A&R (artists and repertoire) executives who are paid to spot and sign talent. Those people didn't spot Seegers, or if they spotted him they did not spot his talent. Not that Seegers was banging on doors trying to get noticed.
"Doug is not in the Doug Promotion business," says Stacy Downey, who for four years has operated The Little Pantry That Could, a Charlotte Avenue operation that provides groceries for 170 families each week. "If he'd had to approach someone and say, 'Hey, I'm Doug, I'm great, listen to me,' none of this ever would have happened."
It also wouldn't have happened had Seegers not staved off depression and addictions that plagued him for many of his 17 Nashville years.
"I worried about him, big time, a lot," says Downey, a close friend whom Seegers likens to "Mother Teresa of West Nashville: She'll drive a man to his tent in the woods. Heart of gold."
"There were times he wasn't doing well," Downey says. "Nobody can beat Doug up worse than Doug. But from the day he turned the corner, I've never worried about him. Not once, not again. Maybe a year ago, he just opened the door."
When Seegers opened the door, he was a good ways into his second vodka bottle of the day. The sun was shining. The scene was not unusual, but, for whatever reason, it seemed alarming. He could be the guy with a guitar and a song, or the guy with the vodka bottles, he reasoned. He decided he liked the first option better.
"I believe everybody falls by the wayside," he says. "When you fall, you can think, 'I can't handle life. I'm going to be worthless.' But get up, dust off. When you give up, that's when it ends. Be strong with it, and realize there's gonna be times you're gonna be led astray. The devil is a strong son of a bitch."
'Down to the River'
Swedish country star (yes, there is such a thing) Jill Johnson was doing a documentary about Nashville for SVT, Sweden's national television. She and her producers were looking for stories about musicians who were down on their luck.
On the Internet, they learned that The Little Pantry That Could hosted "TLP Unplugged!" nights, where songwriters gathered. (By then, others at the Pantry were already calling Seegers "The King," a royal upgrade from his Duke the Drifter designation.)
The Swedes called Downey, and she led a talent scout around town to places where some of her friends played on the streets.
"I kept asking Doug, and he kept saying no," Downey says. "With Doug, you don't push. But the day they shot the documentary, Doug came walking down the alley with his guitar and saying, 'I don't know, I might play something, I might not.' "
He did. He sat in the grass, by the alley, and sang, "I'm going down to the river, to wash my soul again/ I been running with the devil, and I know he is not my friend."
Host Johnson and guest artist Magnus Carlsson were stunned.
"That was the most beautiful thing I've heard," Carlsson said in the moment, which was televised but not scripted for television. "Straight both to the brain and the heart."
Johnson, who has released 17 albums, frequently comes to Nashville to collaborate with Tennessee musicians. She'd never heard anyone like Doug Seegers.
"I was blown away by the moment," she says. "There, outside the shelter, I fell in tears."
Johnson recalibrated her plans for a show that would ultimately focus on Seegers.
"I'm floating around a bit," Seegers said on camera. "I'm a homeless gentleman. I live in a place that's rent-free, under a bridge. That's OK, 'til the warm weather hits."
'On the wings of a song'
The next day, Downey drove Seegers to Hendersonville's Cash Cabin, the private recording studio where Johnny and June Carter Cash made music. There, the former Duke the Drifter recorded "Going Down to the River" with Johnson and Carlsson.
On March 5, "Jill's Veranda" aired and "Down to the River" became an instant hit. The recording topped Sweden's iTunes chart, other musicians began recording cover versions, Johnson played it, by request, at all of her shows, and a nation clamored for the arrival of a Nashville street singer.
Seegers soon signed a record contract with Lionheart Music Group and prepared for a major, 60-date tour that would require him to fly in a plane for the first time. Lionheart bought him an iPhone, provided a recording budget to make his first full-length album and matched him with producer Kimbrough.
"Doug's got the playing chops, the singing chops and the writing chops to go head-to-head with anybody," Kimbrough says. "Everybody recognized it, immediately: Emmylou, Al Perkins, (bass genius) Chris Donohue. ... If he'd walked in from a corporate boardroom in a suit, it would have been the same reaction. It transcended 'I was homeless, now I'm doing well.' It was 'He's meant to do this. He was born to do this. And now we get to do it with him.' "
After meeting back up with Seegers at Sound Emporium (he sings a duet with Seegers on "There'll Be No Teardrops Tonight"), Buddy Miller called his friend Tracy Gershon, the president of A&R at Rounder Records.
"I got a 10 p.m. call from Buddy, which I never get, saying, 'You need to come hear something,' " says Gershon, who has spent more than 25 years in the music industry. "When I walked in the studio the next day, everybody was grinning ear to ear. When I heard Doug sing, I felt like I was listening to a combination of Jimmy Webb and Hank Williams."
Miller also called Emmylou Harris.
"I said, 'I've never asked you for a favor, but I need you to sing on this record,' " Miller says. "I showed her a clip from the Swedish show, told her the story and showed her a picture of me and Duke in the '70s. She heard his voice and flipped. She joined the mission. She wants to get him on the 'Opry.' "
Harris, now a silver-haired songbird, added her own vocals to Seegers' version of Gram Parsons' "She," a song she first recorded with Parsons in the autumn of 1972. Oh, and she called him and said some nice things about his singing. And he choked his thanks, hung up the phone and cried at the enormity of it all.
In May, the day before he left for the airport, to fly to Chicago, to fly to Sweden, he sat at musician Barbara Lamb's dining room table, holding her guitar and singing the first song that came to mind. It was one Harris wrote called "The Road."
"With a song I pray," he sang. "And on the wings of a song I'll fly away."
'The Art of Healing and Truth-Telling'
Country music's newest international superstar has a home now. He shares a small space with friends, and has since last winter. The apartment had nothing to do with his Swedish success: He got it on his own.
Seegers is frugal with any music-related money coming in. He's bought a few wood-working tools, and he likes to purchase copies of a book called "Snake Oil: The Art of Healing and Truth-Telling" by Becca Stevens, who founded Nashville's Magdalene residential program and its social enterprise, Thistle Farms, to help women who have survived hard times. He buys one, gives it away, then buys another and gives it away.
Seegers' goals don't involve fame or fortune. He'd like to own a home. He'd like to have a Larrivee acoustic guitar. He'd like dental implants. And he'd like to have a dog.
The singer
When Seegers got to the international terminal at O'Hare airport, he was immediately spotted (and soon befriended) by Swedish admirers. His flight was delayed, so he took his guitar out and jammed with some other delayed musicians. His new fame hasn't dampened his love of songs for songs' sake.
"I've been singing on the streets all my life and will continue to sing on the streets all my life," he says. "Sometimes, my preference is to play without anybody knowing who the hell I am. Then you get the real response."
This summer in Sweden, Seegers won't be playing for people who don't know who he is. He'll play for fans, and he'll be followed by a camera crew filming a documentary that will run on SVT in the fall, when he'll return for a tour with American musicians and, most probably, a tour bus.
"The Swedish people feel part of his story now, which is a beautiful thing," Johnson says. "He's going to throw himself into open arms. And he will open another door for the population in Sweden, which I'm very happy about."
Back at The Little Pantry That Could on May 30, Downey supervised a crew of volunteers who loaded in the Saturday groceries. She also fielded some phone calls from Sweden: Seegers landed happily.
Inside, men passed around the same guitar that The King had played a week prior. One sang a self-penned song about thanking the Lord for cardboard, because cardboard is shelter from the cold.
Ronnie Thompson played classical music on the steel-stringed guitar, then switched to the Carter Family's "Wildwood Flower" and then to heavy metal shredding.
"I can get old Doug on the lead guitar," Thompson said. "But, man, he's the singer."
Reach Peter Cooper at 615-259-8220 and on Twitter@TNMusicNews.
How to help
More information on The Little Pantry That Could is available via the organization's Facebook page. Donations to The Little Pantry That Could may be made by calling Stacy Downey at 615-260-5769.
Maybe you've passed him on a downtown sidewalk. Maybe thrown a couple bucks his way.
Doug Seegers, 62, is a street singer. He's been in town for 17 years. He's been homeless and addicted. He's been singing on Second Avenue, outside The Old Spaghetti Factory, and on Charlotte Avenue, outside the Goodwill store.
Gray hair. Guitar case open for thrown change. Sign that says, "Out of work. Anything helps."
He sits on the ground when he plays. Talks in a voice still colored by his New York upbringing. Sings with a drawl colored by the Hank Williams records he heard as a child. His parents liked country music.
Maybe you've seen him.
Maybe you've heard him.
Anyway, he's country music's newest international superstar.
He's in Sweden right now, breathing crisp air instead of Nashville's summer sauna. He's playing festivals, sharing stages with Neil Young and Dwight Yoakam and signing his name on the cover of his just-released debut album, an album that finds him duetting with Country Music Hall of Famer Emmylou Harris.
She called him about a month ago, Emmylou did. She said a few nice things about his singing. Country music's newest international superstar choked out a few words of thanks, then he hung up the phone and wept.
'Who is Doug Seegers?'
On Dec. 17, 2012, musician Aaron Espe posted a cellphone video to YouTube and titled it "Who is Doug Seegers?"
"He's an out-of-work carpenter in Nashville," Espe wrote. "He sometimes eats at the mission on Charlotte. Busks a lot on 2nd Avenue. That's all I know, really."
In the video, Seegers strummed a cheap black guitar. He wore a toboggan hat and glasses. There was a one-dollar bill visible in his soft-shell guitar case. He strummed hard, guitar strings vibrating as he sang, "I'm going down to the river, gonna wash my soul again/ I'm going out to the country, gonna bury my head in the creek."
"Nobody was listening," Espe wrote. "People don't understand that you cannot teach what he's doing. ... That vibe. His haunting voice. The way he makes you feel something. ... I hope people watch this video. I hope a million more dollar bills go into that guitar case of his."
Espe's 2012 video received no Facebook likes. It wasn't widely viewed until March 2014, when people from far away with names like Torstensson, Ostberg and Hultkvist made comments like "This man is amazing," " 'Down to the River' is one of the greatest songs I've ever heard. It stings my heart," and "The people in Sweden just love You and Your song."
Duke the Drifter
Grammy-winning Nashville musician Buddy Miller is talking about his mid-1970s days as an Austin, Texas, scuffler.
"He went by Duke the Drifter," Miller says. "He moved from New York to Austin and stayed with me and my wife."
Duke was writing lots of good songs back then. He and Miller played in a band together. He bent everyone's ear about Gram Parsons' country-rock records, "GP" and "Grievous Angel," which featured glorious harmonies from raven-haired songbird Emmylou Harris.
"He couldn't care less about being big or famous or part of a scene," Miller says. "He didn't care about a warm bed or a nice place to live."
Miller moved around the country, wound his way to Nashville and joined Harris' band. He produced Robert Plant, Patty Griffin, Solomon Burke and ABC's "Nashville" television show. He collected awards trophies. He and Duke lost touch.
In April, producer Will Kimbrough left Miller a message, hoping he'd sing and play some guitar on an album Kimbrough was recording at Sound Emporium, the studio built by legendary producer Cowboy Jack Clement. Johnny Cash recorded there. Emmylou, too.
Kimbrough said he was producing this guy who'd been homeless but had been featured on Swedish television and now had a huge hit in Scandinavia.
Miller was busy. He texted back a few days later, saying he was sorry but he was too slammed to play the session. Kimbrough called back and left a message saying he completely understood.
"By the way," he added. "This cat says he used to know you, when he went by the name 'Duke.' "
Miller was driving when he got the message. He braked, changed directions and drove to Sound Emporium to reunite with Duke the Drifter, to meet Doug Seegers, country music's newest international superstar, and to listen as a voice of commanding vulnerability sprung from studio speakers the size of a preschooler's bed.
Al Perkins, famously featured on "Grievous Angel," played steel guitar. Harris' Red Dirt Boys band backed Seegers on other instruments.
Seegers walked from the studio floor into the control room and listened to a playback.
"That's what I'm talking about," he said, sitting in front of a $30,000 Trident sound board. "That's what I'm looking for, right there."
'When you give up, that's when it ends'
People who've heard Doug Seegers sing and play often call his talent "undeniable."
But it's not.
It has been denied thousands of times, usually passively, by people who walked past him on the street, averted their eyes and kept on with their conversations.
Music Row record companies employ A&R (artists and repertoire) executives who are paid to spot and sign talent. Those people didn't spot Seegers, or if they spotted him they did not spot his talent. Not that Seegers was banging on doors trying to get noticed.
"Doug is not in the Doug Promotion business," says Stacy Downey, who for four years has operated The Little Pantry That Could, a Charlotte Avenue operation that provides groceries for 170 families each week. "If he'd had to approach someone and say, 'Hey, I'm Doug, I'm great, listen to me,' none of this ever would have happened."
It also wouldn't have happened had Seegers not staved off depression and addictions that plagued him for many of his 17 Nashville years.
"I worried about him, big time, a lot," says Downey, a close friend whom Seegers likens to "Mother Teresa of West Nashville: She'll drive a man to his tent in the woods. Heart of gold."
"There were times he wasn't doing well," Downey says. "Nobody can beat Doug up worse than Doug. But from the day he turned the corner, I've never worried about him. Not once, not again. Maybe a year ago, he just opened the door."
When Seegers opened the door, he was a good ways into his second vodka bottle of the day. The sun was shining. The scene was not unusual, but, for whatever reason, it seemed alarming. He could be the guy with a guitar and a song, or the guy with the vodka bottles, he reasoned. He decided he liked the first option better.
"I believe everybody falls by the wayside," he says. "When you fall, you can think, 'I can't handle life. I'm going to be worthless.' But get up, dust off. When you give up, that's when it ends. Be strong with it, and realize there's gonna be times you're gonna be led astray. The devil is a strong son of a bitch."
'Down to the River'
Swedish country star (yes, there is such a thing) Jill Johnson was doing a documentary about Nashville for SVT, Sweden's national television. She and her producers were looking for stories about musicians who were down on their luck.
On the Internet, they learned that The Little Pantry That Could hosted "TLP Unplugged!" nights, where songwriters gathered. (By then, others at the Pantry were already calling Seegers "The King," a royal upgrade from his Duke the Drifter designation.)
The Swedes called Downey, and she led a talent scout around town to places where some of her friends played on the streets.
"I kept asking Doug, and he kept saying no," Downey says. "With Doug, you don't push. But the day they shot the documentary, Doug came walking down the alley with his guitar and saying, 'I don't know, I might play something, I might not.' "
He did. He sat in the grass, by the alley, and sang, "I'm going down to the river, to wash my soul again/ I been running with the devil, and I know he is not my friend."
Host Johnson and guest artist Magnus Carlsson were stunned.
"That was the most beautiful thing I've heard," Carlsson said in the moment, which was televised but not scripted for television. "Straight both to the brain and the heart."
Johnson, who has released 17 albums, frequently comes to Nashville to collaborate with Tennessee musicians. She'd never heard anyone like Doug Seegers.
"I was blown away by the moment," she says. "There, outside the shelter, I fell in tears."
Johnson recalibrated her plans for a show that would ultimately focus on Seegers.
"I'm floating around a bit," Seegers said on camera. "I'm a homeless gentleman. I live in a place that's rent-free, under a bridge. That's OK, 'til the warm weather hits."
'On the wings of a song'
The next day, Downey drove Seegers to Hendersonville's Cash Cabin, the private recording studio where Johnny and June Carter Cash made music. There, the former Duke the Drifter recorded "Going Down to the River" with Johnson and Carlsson.
On March 5, "Jill's Veranda" aired and "Down to the River" became an instant hit. The recording topped Sweden's iTunes chart, other musicians began recording cover versions, Johnson played it, by request, at all of her shows, and a nation clamored for the arrival of a Nashville street singer.
Seegers soon signed a record contract with Lionheart Music Group and prepared for a major, 60-date tour that would require him to fly in a plane for the first time. Lionheart bought him an iPhone, provided a recording budget to make his first full-length album and matched him with producer Kimbrough.
"Doug's got the playing chops, the singing chops and the writing chops to go head-to-head with anybody," Kimbrough says. "Everybody recognized it, immediately: Emmylou, Al Perkins, (bass genius) Chris Donohue. ... If he'd walked in from a corporate boardroom in a suit, it would have been the same reaction. It transcended 'I was homeless, now I'm doing well.' It was 'He's meant to do this. He was born to do this. And now we get to do it with him.' "
After meeting back up with Seegers at Sound Emporium (he sings a duet with Seegers on "There'll Be No Teardrops Tonight"), Buddy Miller called his friend Tracy Gershon, the president of A&R at Rounder Records.
"I got a 10 p.m. call from Buddy, which I never get, saying, 'You need to come hear something,' " says Gershon, who has spent more than 25 years in the music industry. "When I walked in the studio the next day, everybody was grinning ear to ear. When I heard Doug sing, I felt like I was listening to a combination of Jimmy Webb and Hank Williams."
Miller also called Emmylou Harris.
"I said, 'I've never asked you for a favor, but I need you to sing on this record,' " Miller says. "I showed her a clip from the Swedish show, told her the story and showed her a picture of me and Duke in the '70s. She heard his voice and flipped. She joined the mission. She wants to get him on the 'Opry.' "
Harris, now a silver-haired songbird, added her own vocals to Seegers' version of Gram Parsons' "She," a song she first recorded with Parsons in the autumn of 1972. Oh, and she called him and said some nice things about his singing. And he choked his thanks, hung up the phone and cried at the enormity of it all.
In May, the day before he left for the airport, to fly to Chicago, to fly to Sweden, he sat at musician Barbara Lamb's dining room table, holding her guitar and singing the first song that came to mind. It was one Harris wrote called "The Road."
"With a song I pray," he sang. "And on the wings of a song I'll fly away."
'The Art of Healing and Truth-Telling'
Country music's newest international superstar has a home now. He shares a small space with friends, and has since last winter. The apartment had nothing to do with his Swedish success: He got it on his own.
Seegers is frugal with any music-related money coming in. He's bought a few wood-working tools, and he likes to purchase copies of a book called "Snake Oil: The Art of Healing and Truth-Telling" by Becca Stevens, who founded Nashville's Magdalene residential program and its social enterprise, Thistle Farms, to help women who have survived hard times. He buys one, gives it away, then buys another and gives it away.
Seegers' goals don't involve fame or fortune. He'd like to own a home. He'd like to have a Larrivee acoustic guitar. He'd like dental implants. And he'd like to have a dog.
The singer
When Seegers got to the international terminal at O'Hare airport, he was immediately spotted (and soon befriended) by Swedish admirers. His flight was delayed, so he took his guitar out and jammed with some other delayed musicians. His new fame hasn't dampened his love of songs for songs' sake.
"I've been singing on the streets all my life and will continue to sing on the streets all my life," he says. "Sometimes, my preference is to play without anybody knowing who the hell I am. Then you get the real response."
This summer in Sweden, Seegers won't be playing for people who don't know who he is. He'll play for fans, and he'll be followed by a camera crew filming a documentary that will run on SVT in the fall, when he'll return for a tour with American musicians and, most probably, a tour bus.
"The Swedish people feel part of his story now, which is a beautiful thing," Johnson says. "He's going to throw himself into open arms. And he will open another door for the population in Sweden, which I'm very happy about."
Back at The Little Pantry That Could on May 30, Downey supervised a crew of volunteers who loaded in the Saturday groceries. She also fielded some phone calls from Sweden: Seegers landed happily.
Inside, men passed around the same guitar that The King had played a week prior. One sang a self-penned song about thanking the Lord for cardboard, because cardboard is shelter from the cold.
Ronnie Thompson played classical music on the steel-stringed guitar, then switched to the Carter Family's "Wildwood Flower" and then to heavy metal shredding.
"I can get old Doug on the lead guitar," Thompson said. "But, man, he's the singer."
Reach Peter Cooper at 615-259-8220 and on Twitter@TNMusicNews.
How to help
More information on The Little Pantry That Could is available via the organization's Facebook page. Donations to The Little Pantry That Could may be made by calling Stacy Downey at 615-260-5769.
