"Doc is a weathered, wily, but infinitely likable storyteller/performer. Writing from the dark side of the blues highway, Doc's distinctive vocals and bare fingers National guitar plot an intense, emotional remapping of contemporary Delta blues and roots music.“ I don’t think I could have written a better descriptive intro to this most authentic of blues artists (from Plug Music Agency). A real artist! Come and be present. Feel Doc’s sound Thursday, November 14 from 6-9pm at The Cove Inn, Westport. Details here: web link

Seamus Cowan: You have really lived the music you play. You have taken it to the road. What is it that has kept you going out there, exploring and performing?

Doc MacLean: I’ve always been a travelling artist, that’s how I’ve made my living for 52 years now. When I started out doing this in my teens, we didn’t know any better. In fact, it was hard to imagine it being any better. My performing career began in the early 1970s at a time when folk music and blues were in full swing. It was a time when I moved from campus to campus and festival to festival, and did multiple night club engagements in between. After a couple of years it was hard to imagine it all being any different but of course, the wheels turn. I still love the travel, the adventure, the dust of the open road, the sweet smell of the gasoline and the purr of the motors. The performance part of it is my life. The blues is a spiritual calling which has propelled and carried me through a rich world of experiences. From Son House, who provided me with my first out of body experience, to Chicago and Mississippi to Ireland, where those melodies might have come from, to west Africa where I really learned of the ancestors and where I was reminded that blues is not a genre. It’s as much about affirmation as it is about struggle. Inside of its great fabric, blues carries our common stories. Some sacred and some profane and some from yesterday and some from the beginning of time. I’ve spent my life finding stories and telling them and I guess that’s what keeps me going, the mystery of it all. Mix that with a decent wine and few dancing girls, and why would you ever want to stop?

Q: There is definitely a case of some early inspiration sharing the stage with some of the blues greats: Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Muddy Waters, and John Hammond. You must have siphoned so much of their thing into yours. What were some of your biggest takeaways from them?

Doc: I’ve thought about this a lot recently. I certainly did learn from all the people you’ve just mentioned, but these were largely life lessons, rather than music lessons. For instance, how to treat people well, how to treat people respectfully and how to bring this to a show. Watching Brownie, John Hammond Jr., and Muddy interact with people over dozens and dozens of shows and being the subject of their hospitality as we sat in green rooms and they dispensed advice freely. I’m older now than they were when I met them, and I try to act towards others as they did to me. Lessons and words never forgotten. Watching John give a mind blowing show to five people on a winter night. “They get the same show as five thousand would. You don’t know who they are, or what they went through to get here tonight.” And Brownie, teaching me how to solder wires in his amp, to check the spare tire in your car and to shine your shoes. “You got to be self-sufficient. When you live on the road, you need to know how to do all of the jobs. Nobody’s gonna do this stuff for you!” And he was right. My Lincoln resembles his WalkON Cadillac in many ways.
I fancied my musical influences to have been Son House, Big Joe Williams, Charlie Patton. And they were, but over time I’ve realized that it was the storytellers who really influenced what I’ve become. Gamble Rogers, Brownie McGhee, Peg Leg Sam and Sam Chatmon. Sam was in so many ways probably my most important influence. The last surviving member of the Mississippi Sheiks, composer of “Sittin’ on Top of the World” and other blues classics. I lived, travelled and recorded with him during the last part of his career. Colin Linden and I were his “BBQ Boys,” and with Libby Rae Watson, we are still known in the south as “Sam’s kids."

Q: There is a hypnotic sense to your delivery. It makes it feel deep, like it can’t come out any other way. I am thinking of your tune, “Who’s gonna love you”. What do you feel when you are performing like that?

Doc: That’s an interesting question. If I get really lucky, it’s an out of body experience and maybe that’s the kind of experience that keeps the real blues people going. You know, chasing that feeling, that place. I can’t speak for others, but for me, the songs and the stories are something that streams from your soul, from the universe. Technique is rehearsed or learned but beyond that, the rest is always somewhat open, otherworldly, unknown.

Q: Does working with Colin Linden in the early days and then again later feel like your travels have come full circle? I mean, we don’t have to keep moving on. We can keep connected and grounded to those that support on more levels than just the music.

Doc: I’ve worked with Colin Linden on and off for my entire professional life and we are still dear, close friends. We joined the musicians union together, performed as a duo, played in each other’s bands, toured, starved and shared dank little apartments. There was a time when I was the first one to hear every new Colin Linden song. Early on, I pretty much lived at his mom’s house and she drove us around to our early gigs! We’ve lived in very different worlds for a long time now, but we never forget where we started, who we met and played with, and what our core values are. Colin mixed my recent “Africa Blues” single that I did at Sharp Street, in Cape Town.

Q: Most would agree that you are a true traveling troubadour. Doing this for so long seems like this is what you know best. Is there still a lot more you want to discover on your journey down the path?

Doc: Looking at what I choose to cal the “last third” of my career, I’m already wrestling with the clock! During the Covid lockdown I was on a cane plantation in Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, and I had a chance to briefly disengage from the hustle of booking and travelling and playing. I realized that I’ve long since stopped building a career- I now maintain a lifestyle, although anything that makes life easier is certainly good. If I can figure how to spend more time writing, more time hanging out at my kitchen table and playing guitar– I will do so. And then there is a bucket list of places I still need to play, roads I need to drive, stories I need to tell, ghosts I need to address. If I get the right dog at the right time, we’ll teach each other new tricks. Posted: Nov 11, 2024 Originally Published: Nov 8, 2024