Canada's Doug Lang

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a troubadour, poet, teller of stories, singer of songs, world traveler

Doug Lang brings back visions of a scenery hidden in the mind and the heart, written only by the best poets of ancient and modern times...Egbert Myers, Holland

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I'm adding Doug Lang to my favorite Canadian songwriters, which includes Neil Young, Ian Tyson, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen...Mike Beck

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Doug Lang is for real. Thus he writes and performs songs that are for real.
Cut from an old mold but here now too. In a world where integrity grows more and more scarce,
Doug Lang still has it...Steve Young

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Lang was born in Moose Jaw , Saskatchewan Canada , the largest railroad center on the Canadian plains. Trains, farms, wide-open prairies, the wind, and the people who survived the weather and the hard times are indelibly stamped into his heart and have been the inspiration for many of Lang’s stories and songs.

"We choose a road and we travel down
Tomorrow is another town"...

Lang has embraced the world with curiosity and passion that allows him to draw from a deep well of memories and observations. Continually moving forward to new adventures, he finds meaning in simple things and greatness in common people, documenting it all with depth, sensitivity and a high degree of intelligence.

Lang has been called a painter of word pictures...a poet...and even a bit of a psychic at times. Listening to his extensive catalog of songs is a bit like having a personal tour guide of a world most of us would never have the insight to see.

Getting in tune at the Mickey Newbury Festival in Austin 2007 photo by Eric the Dane

Lang played the concert-festival-coffeehouse circuit in the Pacific Northwest during the late 1970s and early '80s before changing course to raise a son and work with street youth. Some of the people he shared stages with at that time include Mimi Farina, Taj Mahal, Tony Bird, Ferron, Valdy, Pied Pumpkin.

He has worked as a storyteller, coached baseball, was a freelance writer for several music publications, spent years working with street kids, hosted a jazz show on radio, and published a book of jazz poems. A couple of years ago he picked up his guitar again and began writing . He is an avid traveler whose adventures often find their way into his songs.

In 2003, after nearly 20 years away from performing, Lang dusted off his guitar and began writing again. Gritty, slice-of-life songs poured from his pen at a prolific rate. He released three albums of demos on the indie Mazappa label and was invited to play the Mickey Newbury Songwriters Gathering in Austin, Texas.

In 2004, Lang was a featured performer at Reykjavik 's Blues-Ice Festival in Iceland and toured Texas performing with Laura Newbury, Jonmark Stone, Marie Rhines, Cowboy Johnson and Kacey Jones.

In 2005, Lang, the Canadian, recorded an album in English, in rural Norway with Norwegian musicians.

Hanging out with James Joyce in Dublin

I'm adding Doug Lang to my favorite Canadian songwriters, which includes Neil Young, Ian Tyson, Joni Mitchell, and Leonard Cohen. Doug is well stated in his heartfelt lyrics that paint pictures in my head of scenes he has felt and experienced...He's all about the song...and I dig that! Hat's off to his new collection...Don't miss it!...

Mike Beck, singer/songwriter/horse whisperer

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I met Doug Lang in Austin Texas in 2004 and it was a pleasure to get to know this man and listen to him sing his songs. He is not only a gentle warrior of international friendship, whom I consider to be a dear friend; he is a poet and a painter with words. He traveled the world and brought back a treasure of deep felt experiences. Not a weary man; though he could have easily become one. Life is not always as gentle to the honest as it should be. His song poetry touches with beautiful lines, rhyme, structure and images. The singer reaches the deeper dimensions of feeling, that I miss so much in modern music. Doug Lang brings back visions of a scenery hidden in the mind and the heart, written only by the best poets of ancient and modern times. His high baritone voice delivers a touching soundscape, that takes you along on his ride to the hidden corners of feeling and emotions, which you almost forgot about a long time ago.

Go listen to his songs and, if you can, go to see the poet sing.

Egbert Meyers singer/songwriter, Holland

Lang loves discovering talented artists who may be under-represented on radio and introducing them to broader audiences through Better Days, his weekly radio show on www.coopradio.org in Vancouver, British Columbia.

You can read more about each show at: www.myspace.com/betterdaysradio.

Lang is not content to just pick a cd and play it, he learns as much as he can about the artist and why a certain song was written and when and where. This could be in part because he is a songwriter/musician/singer, but more likely it is simply because he loves the music and the people who make it.

Whatever, Lang carefully packed his guitar for traveling in June and flew to Austin, Texas where he was one of the star-performers at the annual Mickey Newbury music festival. Some other artists performing at the three day festival included Egbert Meyers from Holland, Doug Gill from Nashville, Sam Anderson from South Carolina, Jonmark Stone from Florida, Chris Newbury and Laura Shayne Newbury from the Oregon coast.

Lang also traveled to Nashville, Tennessee to do a couple of concerts, opening for Steve Young at Hillbilly Haiku and performing with Toni Jolene Clay at another. Clay and Lang performed together at the Newbury festival last year and have co-written several songs together.

Listen to Doug online: http://www.myspace.com/dukelang

When I grew up highways used to run right through the towns, joining the main drag, the idea being that motorists would slow down, even stop a while. When they started building new freeways and super-highways, this vital connection was severed. Towns began dying...Doug Lang

"Once we stood the crossroads down
The Devil went his way
There’s a toll bridge on the highway now
All who pass must pay"

Below:

Lang, Connie Nelson...photo by Eric the Dane