THIS REVIEW IS A SPECIAL FEATURE OF TEXAS MUSIC KITCHEN NEWS, OCTOBER 4, 2003 (Updated & Revised Nov.29, 2003). Click here for Doug Lang's CD page. Doug Lang's Porchlights Click here to visit Doug's CD page and hear currently featured track from Porchlights. BUY CD DIRECT FROM ARTIST! CD Review by Hank Beukema This is a major league artist you'll hear… This is a voice crying out in the wilderness… This is a mighty wind blowing out of the prairies and border towns of Western Canada… This is a baritone so rich and so real and so revealing that it almost embarrasses you to listen, like you're hearing something that you're not supposed to be hearing… What "this" is, is Doug Lang, a singer/ songwriter / disc jockey / baseball coach / father and a few other slashes that make him possibly the most versatile guy since Bo Jackson… I first came across Doug when I was fortunate enough to hear a tribute he did to the late, great Mickey Newbury on his Better Days radio show in Vancouver, British Columbia… It turns out that he had stepped away from his own budding career a couple of decades ago so he could be around to watch his son grow up…. In the meantime, he coached an Inner City Baseball team and let other singers' names be out in front of the lights on his various radio ventures, first jazz and then an incredible mix that has never found a good name that I have ever heard… Some like to call it Alt-Country or Alt-Folk or Americana, but to me it is all of these names and more… What Doug plays are the people who fall through the cracks of the music machinery and the other genres that try to nail down an artist's soul and try to define it in one word classifications…. But now, it is long past time for this artist to take His place in the lights…. In this case, Porchlights, which is the third CD in just a very short time from this prolific writer… Knowing Doug, he has probably written three new songs while I've done this prologue…. But enough talk, let's deal… The first thing you notice on Porchlights, the opening and title song, is the rich, deep voice that you could swear sounds like somebody else but you can't quite nail down who… That's a good thing… it's always good to be familiar, yet unique… comfortable, but edgy… cruel, but fair… Ok, that last one's not true… I got carried away with my own self there, and I was enjoyin it so much I didn't want to stop… Doug doesn't just evoke images, he evokes entire movies or lifetimes in a three minute song… Doug has commented about Porchlights: "It holds my prairie childhood in it, the gypsy years of my adulthood, and the sense of loss I've experienced from losing close friends." With Porchlights, it's like the song already existed in your head, it just took the right combination of his words to bring it out… We've all had that late-night drive through nowhere where those porchlights off in the distance were your only friends; your only link to the rest of the world outside the cabin of your car… "The ones you love are far away, it's just you and the car, rolling through the darkness here, following some star… North of the River Jordan, West of the mighty storms, where the morning comes and gently rocks the moonlight in it's arms…" Oh my, boyo, this is some powerful stuff going down here and what's exciting about it is, we're only getting started… I'm only going to leave you one thought from the next song, but it's a memorable one…. "Got it Made in the Shade, boys, but the tree's burnin down…" That line goes right up on the wall of my mind next to Jesse Winchester's "If we're skating on thin ice, then we may as well dance…" Doug has a thousand more just like this… My mind's walls are getting so cluttered up I can hardly think anymore… We're coming up on one of my favorite songs and in case there's any "truth in advertising" types reading this, I better tell you that my very own name appears in the credits to A Newbury Waltz … Now, I'd love to tell you that this baby was half mine, but that's not how it came down… I wrote a nice little poem and I asked Mister Lang to turn it into a real song, and damned if he didn't take a line or two and do the rest himself…. "The north star moved down south last year to take care of the moon, Old horses don't forget the days they danced like frisky colts… Dance with me tonight, my dear to a Newbury Waltz…" This tune serves both as a tribute to the memory and music of our dear friend Mickey Newbury, and as a bittersweet look at a couple growing old together…. Doug's vocal on When I'm Hurtin' reminds me of a marriage between David Bromberg and Fred Neil, and if you can imagine the offspring of that, you sure have a better imagination than I do… I want to jump ahead to Border Town because it's one of my favorites, and after all, I do have a life, too, and I might want to go back to it someday if I ever finish this… Doug Lang has a thing about borders, probably from living near one most of his life…. Here's something he told me once about another time, another border: "Best border story I have is from visiting Kerkrade, Holland, my first ever visit to a discotheque, back before the "disco era" over here and it's literally right on the German border; the street has a boulevard and the boulevard is the border concrete about two feet high, then barbwire not too heavy, but before the Wall fell and this Dutch family had invited me to stay, play music, be their guest and this was the social thing, to dance, Gerdi and Ida taking me on the floor and you drink a lot of beer, it seems to help with the dancing… meanwhile their boy Wilber was outside, I went out for a look-see and he's on the Holland side and there's a German boy on the other side and they're playing frisbee, sailing this luminous orange disc back and forth, back and forth into Germany, back to Holland into Germany, back to Holland. So I went up to Wilber and asked him, could I throw it once? and he laughed and said yes. About five minutes later, Wilber had to interrupt me. Guess I'd gotten carried away there, throwing that thing, watching it crossing the border into Germany, again and again and again, and always coming back…" And now he's made us a little movie with his song, Border Town… "Her old man sits on the veranda nights, yellow teeth clampin' his pipe; he may never light it, his eyes look far away… Sun goes down like an open mouth forgotten what it started out to say…" This song hits you like the dust and wind hit your face when you're walking across a prairie road… Country, stark and windblown, and the people, so much a product of that way of living and buried so deep by the wind and the dust that they could never find a way to leave… In The Arms of the Angels we meet more of the folks that people Doug's stories… Staying close to the borders; they're all over the place on this album and you find yourself wondering where the border falls between Doug's life, memory and imagination… "They're in the care of the angels now, guess they always were, somehow. I remember them so well, the stories they could tell; they're in the care of the angels now…" A Blues for Disa is a simple, Leon Redbone-like bouncy tune about the emptiness that only the right person can fill and she's half a world away and so you make up a blues… La Rue Des Blancs Manteaux is, to me, the centerpiece of this album… Another movie, another slice of a lifetime; a church in Paris, a blind jazzman, Canadian drifters, music that invoked God himself right in front of a person, music as art, music as life itself, music as medicine… Make no mistake about it, this is Doug Lang's Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands; this is his Gallo del Cielo; this is his Jungleland… simply, this is his masterpiece… Soaring and shouting, carrying you along on his wake, taking you to that Paris church and everything and everywhere else his past or his imagination conjured up here…. An absolute jaw-dropping, show-stopping piece of work that you wish could go on for another seven minutes… Taste of Heaven is another wonderful song, and I know I keep saying that, but I'm not going to waste your time or mine by lying to you, am I?? It's a lovely Sunday morning at a time in a man's life when everything is going his way… Living in a neighborhood he likes with a woman that loves him and a son that will not want for love or money… "This must be my taste of Heaven, I've had my meal in Hell; it's summertime, I'm in my prime, and all my work goes well…" And except for a reprise of Porchlights, that would be it… but Doug has decided to end this tour de force with a song that was the centerpiece of his last album Something Out There, East of Eugene … If you've never heard it before, when you do you'll realize how wonderful a gift it is that it's included here… This time, our hero is driving with his friend Billy, and as the wipers set a hypnotizing rhythm, he remembers the music, the musicians, the women, and the towns that they have passed through on other nights just like this one… And with one paragraph, one swift and clever brushstroke with the artist's brush, Doug pays another tribute to the passing of Mickey Newbury… "Years later I remember that midnight highway sign; it came clearly to my memory last September 29… A spirit went out of the world just east of Eugene…" To say that Doug Lang is simply a singer or a songwriter would be selling everybody short, both him and you… Doug is simply a songwriter like Fellini was just a guy who took pictures, like Waterhouse was just a painter, and like Robin Williams is just a funny guy…. Listening to these songs and knowing that not too many other people have heard them yet, kind of made me feel like I was in on a secret… Here's a little reprise of Porchlights that says it better: "It's a traveler's benediction to hear this secret song, trust in where you're going let your memories keep you strong, across the lonesome prairie porchlights guard the farms, until the morning comes to hold the moonlight in it's arms…" Doug Lang is a mighty wind blowing out of the prairies and border towns of Western Canada… Doug Lang is a voice crying out in the wilderness… Doug Lang is an artist… Related links: To get a copy of Porchlights: http://www3.telus.net/billybob Doug Lang's radio show: http://www3.telus.net/billybob/betterdays/index.htm Doug Lang's CD page: http://www3.telus.net/billybob/dougCDs/ Jesse Winchester: http://www.jessewinchester.com/index.htm Mickey Newbury: http://mickeynewbury.com/ (Doug's "Pontiac" for Mickey) Guy Clark: http://www.guyclark.com ("Better Days") David Bromberg: http://www.davidbromberg.net/ Fred Neil: http://www.fredneil.com/ Leon Redbone: http://www.leonredbone.com/ Tom Russell: http://www.tomrussell.com/ ("Gallo del Cielo") Bob Dylan: http://www.bobdylan.com/ ("Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands") Johnny Cash: http://www.johnnycash.com (Doug's "Lantern" for Johnny Cash) Townes Van Zandt: http://www.townesvanzandt.com End note: CD cover art from an original painting by Randy Brown, a member of the Mickey Newbury list. Review © 2003 Hank Beukema Visit Camp Buckman: aka Hank's homepage http://members.tripod.com/buckmaniac/index.htm Hank Beukema: MTMKNews Archives July 2000: Buckman on Wrecks Bell's Dog's Life Please be sure to visit Wrecks Bell's DOG'S LIFE and Old Quarter - Galveston pages! Aug. 24, 2000: A fan's comment: Buckman on Mickey Newbury Dec. 10, 2000: Observations & Meditations on Open Mikes Sometimes it's just important to be in the right place.....It doesn't always have to be the right time, if it's the right place. Recently at the Hazydavey shows at Sparky's, I met a young lady from the Outer Mundanes named Loretta Orlando LaRue. She loved the shows and Camp Buckman, and is quite a lollipop of a blues singer herself; so I invited her to come back for the Open Mike Night at Sparky's. Unfortunately they wouldn't let Loretta sing that night because her name wasn't Mike and she had nothing to reveal about herself in her songs. It might just be me, but the Open Mikes are getting a little "samey" from week to week. I mean there are only three Mikes here and we pretty much know all there is to know about them, so what's the point, really? Anyway, with a little bit of begging I'm gonna try to get her back. Camp Buckman deserves to see someone that is on their way Up once in a while like Hazy and Loretta, instead of just me and Wild Bill Dillon, who though we are still somewhat entertaining, Up is no longer our best direction...... Drawings of Rev. Buckman (above) and Hazydavey at Sparky's by Hugh 0'Mara (The Hughster), courtesy of "The Hughsterville Chronicle." LSW/Ref: http://www.lonestarwebstation.com/mtmknews_rkv_12_11_2000.html Dec. 15, 2000: Buckman's OLD file: Paul Simon Dec. 24, 2000: A Christmas Meditation Dec. 28, 2000: Dance! A New Year's Poem Jan. 13, 2001: Do You Like Show Tunes? Jan. 20, 2001: Strange Encounter with Polar Bear Feb. 6, 2001: Rhapsody on FRISCO MABLE JOY with Polar Bear Feb. 18, 2001: Buckman in transition and on Books 'n' Music Apr. 12, 2001: SAILING TO PHILADELPHIA with a Polar Bear Apr. 21, 2001: LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY: Springsteen & the E Street Band July 29, 2001: Hazydavey NOT HAZY ONE BIT Oct. 23, 2001: Dylan's LOVE AND THEFT Nov. 25, 2001: Vince Bell's LIVE IN TEXAS Oct. 4, 2003: Doug Lang's PORCHLIGHTS © 1995-2003 Lone Star Webstation and Marq's Texas Music Kitchen created and maintained by Marquetta Herring for the sake of the song. All names, images, music, text and other items contained within are copyrighted material of the respective artists and/or their representative agents, unless otherwise specified (where known). I hope that the material presented here will result in a higher awareness of the music of Townes Van Zandt and related artists. 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