Doug Hoekstra

Guitarist and singer/songwriter Doug Hoekstra spent his teenage years in Chicago immersed in garage bands. From 1989 through 1991 he played with the local outfit Bucket No. 6, whose 1991 release High on the Hog captured their sound. Hoekstra remembers the group as alt-country before the label existed, drawing from Graham Parsons, Johnny Cash, and Hank Williams. In 1991 the members relocated to Austin, where the band held together for roughly twelve months before dissolving. Hoekstra headed back to Chicago and turned his attention toward a solo path.

His debut album, When the Tubes Begin to Glow, appeared in 1994, the same year he moved to Nashville in search of fresh surroundings. “I didn’t want to repeat myself,” Hoekstra says. “I didn’t want to get into the cycle of going back to the same venues and getting into the same comfortable situation as before. And Nashville’s a good town for a songwriter. There are a lot of musicians there who are used to working with other people and have a professional attitude about things. Everyone in Nashville has already done their band thing, so most of the musicians are open to working with different kinds of music.”

The follow-up, Rickety Stairs, surfaced in 1996 and received a Nashville Music Award nomination for Best Folk Album. Make Me Believe, issued in 1999, secured Hoekstra a European outlet through the U.K. label Round Tower. His next effort, Around the Margins, reached stores in March 2001 via the Dutch imprint Inbetweens, which also handles U.S. distribution. The balance of that year brought two additional projects—one of them live and the other again on Inbetweens—plus an extended run of dates across Great Britain, Ireland, and the Netherlands in October and November. Afterward Hoekstra retreated to his home studio alongside George Marinelli to shape Waiting, which Paste Records, based in Georgia, released in 2003.