Product Description
DOUG MacLEOD - BETWEEN SOMEWHERE AND GOODBYE
RELEASE DATE JUNE 27, 2025. ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!
Reference Recordings proudly presents our 6th release with the outstanding, multi-Blues Music Award winner Doug MacLeod. Internationally acclaimed for his original songwriting, warm, soulful vocals, guitar wizardry and witty storytelling, Doug teamed with producer Andreas Werner and engineer Joe Funderburk in Nashville's Creative Workshop studio for "Between Somewhere and Goodbye". Supported by Nashville notables, drummer Lynn Williams, Mark T. Jordon on piano, Wurlitzer electric piano and B3 organ, and bassist Paul Ossola plus the vocal harmonies of The Shoals Sisters: Cindy Richardson Walker, Marie Tomlinson Lewey and Carla Russell, Doug offers up a collection of eleven of his compositions presented in both solo and ensemble settings.
DOUG MacLEOD
Between Somewhere And Goodbye
Reference Recordings
As he approaches his 80th birthday, Doug MacLeod has a mantelpiece full of awards and nothing left to prove. He knows it’s enough for him to gather a few musicians together, pick up his guitar, and reflect upon life in song.
That’s precisely what he does on Between Somewhere And Goodbye, a collection of excellent new material recorded in seemingly casual fashion. The album puts MacLeod’s acoustic guitar and warm, natural voice front and center without being a solo album in the strict sense like his most recent releases Raw Blues 1 and Raw Blues 2. This time around, he puts his trust in a band he’d never met before – the Funky Chester Rhythm Section. The session players keep the rhythms clean, lean, and simple, and it works beautifully.
The five-time BMA Acoustic Artist of the Year sounds relaxed and very much at peace this time out. More often than not, he chooses bright sounding keys and positive messages over the dark musical clouds that occasionally creep in. The title “Even Angels Get Too Sad To Fly” seems foreboding at first, yet the song feels as sunny as anything he’s ever written. The same is true of “Keep On Walkin’ On,” a song of encouragement that comes a quarter-century after his similarly messaged “Rise Up.” With “Roll Like A River 2025,” he revisits a tune he wrote in the mid-1990s, a reassuring tune about letting life flow.
Flying. Walking. Rising. Rolling. MacLeod clearly views life through the prism of movement. A few years ago he left his long-time home in Los Angeles for a new start in Memphis. Not coincidentally, the thumping acoustic funk of “Memphis In Your Soul” opens the album, bolstered by the sweet harmony vocals of the Shoals Sisters. The captivating imagery and “On The Road Again”–like boogie groove of the title song, as well as the moody and powerful “I Ain’t No Stranger,” add weight and depth to the album. “One Rib Short” and “I Don’t Like Your Chances,” by contrast, are two examples of MacLeod the humorist, as he riffs on the story of Adam and Eve and the perils of infidelity, respectively.
Between Somewhere And Goodbye is the sound of someone who is comfortable in his skin and content with how his life has turned out. It’s someone you’ll want to listen to.
– Vincent Abbate