Just like East Nashville celebrated author, poet, and songwriter Doug Hoekstra’s multiple means of expressing words, listening to The Day Deserved requires more than just your attention and your ears. To fully appreciate his creation, one needs to also not only read the song lyrics while listening but to spend time reading the backstories to these songs which are little vignettes in themselves. This is not an album you just put on your turntable or slip into your player or click on digitally. That would be depriving you of the full experience. Hoekstra can start out writing a poem or even a short story and have it rather casually turn into a song. His songs often have unconventional structures such as no choruses, different rhythmic approaches halfway through, and a half-spoken, half-sung vocal style that while rather indistinctive, does help shape the mood and deliver the lyrics articulately.
Another striking aspect of this project is the work of inventive guitarist and co-producer Dave Coleman, not for those familiar with Coleman’s work but for the uninitiated, his guitar stylings will undoubtedly capture your attention. Chances are though, that Coleman may be better known to the Americana audience than Hoekstra so here’s some background. Hoekstra is a Chicago-bred, Nashville-based creative whose poems, performances, songs, and stories, have appeared globally in publications and playlists, stages and setlists, his eight CDs and three books have earned multiple awards.. This album will be followed by a new short story collection Ten Seconds In-Between (Better than Starbucks Press) in June 2021.
Recorded at Howard’s Apartment Studio (Coleman’s studio) in Nashville, Hoekstra co-produced with the proprietor. The core backing band included Coleman on guitars, Hoekstra (rhythm guitars and keyboards), Chris Benelli (drums and percussion), and Paul Slivka (bass). Guests included Jimmy Bowland (saxophone), Hannah Fairlight (vocals), David Henry (cello and violin), Jude Hoekstra (clarinet), and Preacher Boy (vocals).
As mentioned in the headline, this is Hoekstra’s first album in over a decade, and as alluded to, the songs are diverse and deviate far from the typical singer-songwriter fare, with a nod to the likes of Cohen, Velvets, Kinks, and other folks Hoekstra tends to get compared to. All were fully demoed to explore arrangement ideas, but flowed from core band sessions, coalescing into a mix of the tight and the orchestral, reflecting rock, folk, and reggae touches, colors of everything from gypsy fiddle (“Seaside Town” a tale of a disenfranchised artist) to reggae roots melodica (“Carry Me,” an ode to fatherhood and connectedness). Lyrically the tunes are character-based but intended to reflect these times, both symbolically and in some cases, literally.
Just to provide a sampling of some of the material, here are a couple of examples. He writes about a woman gone missing on her own terms in “Seaside Town “Watching from the sidelines/Wasted by the clock/She stole somebody’s schooner/Tied up to the dock/Took a trip around the world/With her last love/Nobody looked too hard for her/In that seaside town.” “Higher Ground” is told from the point of view of an elderly man watching his homeland disappear in this amazing, true story – “The fields I used to roam/ Are an underwater plain/ We danced one more time /In the eye of the hurricane/ I won the lottery/Half of us moved away/I can see everything/From this mountain peak/I see love that’s lost/For eternity/ In a lottery.”
Other highlights include the soul-inspired “Wintertime,” (layers of history, race, and music), the cello-driven “Unseen Undetected” (alternate tales of an immigrant and an intolerant, both heretofore hidden), the fictitious tale underscored by the power groove of “Gandy Dancer,” the closer, just Coleman and Hoekstra on “Outside Looking In,” the ruminations of the narrator who is the manual scoreboard operator at Wrigley Field.
As you can doubtlessly tell, this is far from the usual singer-songwriter fare. Delve into Hoekstra’s real and imaginative worlds, bask in his words, and enjoy the full experience.