A frequently homeless, 62-year-old singer-songwriter-guitarist gets discovered at a Nashville food pantry by a Swedish country music star, who helps him from the streets to superstardom in a country best known for Abba’s “Dancing Queen” and the like.
“What’s Abba?” asks Doug Seegers, in a voice free of irony.
Seegers isn’t much into pop music. He grew up on the hard-country sounds of Hank Williams, and came to adore the heart-first country-rock that Gram Parsons made with the assistance of young harmony vocalist Emmylou Harris.
Those influences are present on Seegers’ remarkable two album, "Going Down To The River" and "Walking On The Edge of the World", fully realized versions of the music he has been making on Nashville streets for decades. Before that, he was making it in New York, Austin and other locales.
“I’ve made a ton of money playing out in the street,” he says, slight Southern flair dosing the accent of his Long Island youth and his post-grad years in the Big Apple, where he lived in abandoned buildings, “ate and breathed everything John Lennon” while playing for tips in downtown Manhattan.
Guided by his guitar, he wound his way to Austin, Texas, where he became “Duke the Drifter” – a playful twist on Hank Williams’ “Luke the Drifter” moniker, the name under which country’s often-impaired superstar delivered Christian music and recitation.
In Austin, Doug/Duke teamed up with now-Nashville (music) and Nashville (the television show) Grammy-honored musician Buddy Miller. (That friendship, by the way, was recently reignited thanks to the Swedish recording project on which Miller, who is among Seegers’ ardent backers, appears.)
In Austin, the former John Lennon wannabe came under the spell of not only Parsons and Harris but of other country-rock-stylists like Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young and The Byrds. “They took me back to country music,” he joyfully testifies.
Somewhere in the timeline “I left Austin to go home and get married and raise my children in Upstate New York. I stayed with my wife quite awhile.”
But he dreamed of Nashville. “Right after my son grew up, maybe 16; I decided it was time to go to Nashville. I had two kids and I wasn’t about to leave them. "So I went out for a ride with my son one day, and I asked him what he thought about me moving to Nashville to play music. He said he was cool with it.”
The lamentation in his voice is perhaps because he misses his son. Or perhaps it’s because he’s calling from Sweden and he misses his Nashville street corners.“ I played all over Nashville. But one of my favorite spots is sitting in front of the Goodwill at Charlotte and 54th (in West Nashville), just across from a record store and a Laundromat.
“Goodwill is a Christian organization. I’ve been sitting in front of that store for 18 years. Only on Saturdays, though, and only if it’s nice and warm.”
Plenty of time also was spent among the buskers who open guitar cases and sing for tips in Nashville’s neonlit Lower Broadway tourist district. He was among the faceless chasing the impossible dream, most-often hurried past to an accompaniment of hushed tones by tourists and musical elite. Brilliant, with a satchel of magical, big-time-writer-worthy life-songs, he went virtually unnoticed.
In an era when country music brass find stars on televised singing competitions, Doug, musical brilliance hiding in plain sight, went ignored while his crystal-country voice offered songs from the heart rather than the Music Row assembly line.
“Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, well, they are songwriters. I’m just a person that likes to write songs. That’s a big difference,” Doug says, when complimented on the collection on the albums that made him a star in Sweden and, he hopes, will finally launch a real career in the States.
It was in seeking redemption that he was “discovered.” He’d decided he could put down the booze and take his best shot at the Nashville dream or he could flourish as a drunken street performer in a town filled with such souls.
“I am totally done with the drugs and the drinking. … And I made my commitment to God and God started shining in my life.”
During his self-reclamation, Doug received encouragement (and food and guitar strings) from Stacy Downey, who runs “The Little Pantry That Could,” a charity serving the hungry of West Nashville.
Jill Johnson, the Swedish country star, was in Nashville to do a documentary about down-and-out musicians, learned of Downey’s charity and was especially interested in the Pantry’s singer-songwriter nights, where Doug and kindred spirits entertained and encouraged each other.
Downey knew many fellows with worn guitars, busted strings and frayed hopes, but one person she was sure the Swede should meet was Doug.
Today’s Swedish superstardom was born when Doug sat on the grass by Johnson 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.”
The startlingly powerful song and pure voice changed Johnson’s mission. Her focus became this man, weathered of soul and spirit, so she took him to the Cash Cabin – where John and June created magic – to record the rough-edged fairy tale of redemption.
"Going Down To The River" became an instant sensation when it was rolled out in Sweden, topping the iTunes chart. This guy Johnson found on the streets of Nashville, a gentle but battered soul who was both unheard-of and unheard in Music Row’s corporate suites, was an overnight sensation in Scandinavia.
And that success fueled a desire to capture more of Doug’s music. A three-day flurry of recording followed at Nashville’s legendary Sound Emporium – an iconic studio founded by the late Cowboy Jack Clement, a Country Music Hall of Fame member and pal of Johnny Cash, who, of course, had recorded there. So had Emmylou, Taylor Swift, Elvis Costello and so many greats. The formerly homeless street singer was making music in hallowed space.
This stardom thing, well, predictably it’s tough for this country-and-western Pygmalion, literally lifted from the streets of Guitar Town and whisked off to Scandinavian superstardom.
“I’ve always wanted to be someone who has the opportunity to get his music heard. If there was some other way to do it, I would totally be interested in it,” says Doug.
“But there are good things about fame. When you have a reputation for yourself, people spend more time listening to your music.”
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