I have worked with many different musicians throughout the years, but Doug Slagle is by far one of the most creative and innovative musicians I have ever met. He is an amazing lead guitar player and vocalist, banjo, fiddle, and mandolin player. Don’t even get me started on the penny whistles that he made out of PVC pipe! Yes, he actually sat down with PVC pipe and made penny whistles, tuned them in, and set them up! That was my birthday present one year from him.

I was at the beginning stages of being a rhythm guitar player and had been a lead vocalist for well over 30 years. Doug comes into my life when I was playing at Crescent Brewery. He’s this amazingly talented guitar player. He also just happens to play mandolin and fiddle. We hooked up playing music together and he made me better at rhythm guitar. He loved the Celtic music that I was playing at that time, and we became fast friends.

He’d been side skipping over the world of music for many years. in the 1950s their mother had twins. They were singing cowboy songs at the local fair and talent shows in their hometown at an early age. They were bookends. Probably cute, but, more of a comedy act. 

Around 1960 their cuteness faded fast as did their budding cowboy bookend careers. They moved on to tap dancing, Doug thought his mom was hoping he’d be the next Danny Kaye.

“With zero coordination, a shaky voice and a tin ear, there was little hope. Growing up in a little town with three and a half TV stations and a few AM stations, big band, country, and bubble gum rock… kind of stunted my musical growth… the big bands and country swing was pretty good. Some of the folk stuff was OK. Every now and then you heard Johnny Rivers doing a remake of some old blues or R&B tune.” Doug recalls.

He found music that really moved him like John Lee Hooker and some of the R&B songs floating around at the time like “You Put a Spell on Me”, and “Midnight Special”. Early stuff by Elvis was pretty good, then, along came the Beatles! Their music was OK, but, the hoopla surrounding them was about as alien as anything he’d ever seen. “What was the big deal?” He asked himself. Of course, the bubblegum pop station was buried in The Beatles.

One day, in the early 60s, his dad brought home a guitar. It was a wall ornament really. The bridge was in the wrong position. Doug couldn’t make anything work so, he hung it up, and never thought about that guitar again until a few years later. His dad got a guitar and amp as collateral for a bill at the store his family owned. He tried some stuff on the guitar, and he could finally make sense of it. That guitar went away when the bill was paid off by the customer. Later on, in 1966, when he was in high school, he got an acoustic guitar with a sound hole pickup and just started making noise. He’s been doing it ever since.

Eventually, he created a band. His twin brother Dave was on drums, with a few friends from town, and Doug on the guitar. They made their own brand of noise everywhere they could. The band was more of a social club than a musical entity. It kept them out of trouble.

He played in the marching band in school. He wanted to play sax or trumpet but was persuaded by the instructor to take up the sousaphone. Music and sports all in one instrument. The music instructor heard he was playing guitar and told him if he learned some stage band charts he could play in the stage band. So he did.

“I think the band instructor took pity on me when I got near high school graduation and recommended me for a music scholarship at the Junior College in the “big” city, (Wenatchee, WA). All I wanted to do was play music. All this real-world stuff kept rearing up its ugly head. I spent a year playing and studying all kinds of music and attending Wednesday night keggers. I decided the following year (that I) would be just playing music. Spent most of it playing bass guitar for a band in a strip joint. What an education!”

Of course, the world had other plans for Doug. The Vietnam war was still going on, and his draft number was low. Eventually, he wound up doing pushups in “The Ice Plant” on a beach in California. Yep, he was in the military now. “Well, my illustrious military career included staying stateside with minor excursions elsewhere. I’d have to shoot you if I told you,” said Doug.

The Army got him into other music though, more blues, soul, southern rock and a bit of Irish. The Irish and southern rock stuck with him. The Irish thing was weird to him. He was hitchhiking from Fort Belvoir to Washington D.C. when a young fellow picked him up and had Irish music playing on his car stereo.

“I think it was the Chieftains. The modality and voices and rhythms all stuck with me. I spent some time trying to find Irish, Scottish stations/programs. I was at the time pretty much convinced that I was mostly German background. Little did I know my background, more Celt and Anglo Saxon than German Saxon.” He loved it and carried it with him through the next few years.

He got out of the Army in the middle 70s and all of the music that was just happening. The artists that died like Hendrix, Morrison, and Joplin all had effects on him. Then eventually Ronny Van Zandt and Stevie Ray Vaughn all affected his music. He did one semester at Washington State University right out of the Army. He didn’t like his advisor and, as a result, his major in college. He decided it wasn’t for him.

After the military, and his semester at WSU, he was now living on the Columbia River, and then in the Cascade mountains. There were working orchards in the valleys where he could find work but it was the end of the hippy era.

He was now playing guitar in the local taverns with some coastal musicians. They played lots of Bay area music from Santana to Mark Almond, as well as The Grateful Dead. At this point, he worked the harmonica into his repertoire.

Doug got married and decided to go back to college, this time at a trade school in Spokane. He liked music technology, so he got a degree in analog electronics. He took the digital courses that were available at the time but felt that music was always going to be analog. So far only the transducers, guitar pickups. microphones and other electronic equipment had remained analog.

Spokane introduced him to a fellow from Texas that performed everything from Tex Mex to western swing. He didn’t realize that he had missed country western as much. “Good stuff. My maternal grandmother died, and I wound up with a fiddle. I started playing that. Picked up a banjo and toyed with that as well.”

After he graduated, he wound up in Oregon working for a scientific instrument manufacturer. Oregon introduced him to fusion music. He ran into music such as Jean Luc Pontee, Chick Corea, Bob James…some blue grass as well.

Move forward to the 1980s. While in Oregon he was taking Engineering classes. After his son was born, he got an opportunity to go to college in New York. In Central New York he wound up playing more country music and old rock and roll with many different bands in many situations. The Irish thing started working back into his life. He had some exposure to Celtic bands through local music societies.

In 1990 he moved back west after ten years of being away. He learned more old-time fiddle, bluegrass and Celtic tunes involving contra dancing and bluegrass bands associated with folk music societies. He also played banjo in a light opera called “Shenandoah.” It was at this point that he picked up the mandolin.

Doug’s marriage ended. He spent months working on a suite of guitar instrumentals that go from alternate tunings that flow from one to another to minimize stress on the guitar. He wound up moving to Idaho, where his twin brother Dave lived and picked up playing with him again. They started playing venues with a female vocalist playing top forty country music with a smattering of Irish as a sideline. When that ended, they took up with a five-piece vocal-oriented band and played a few venues. At this point, he got a day job back in NY.

In 1996 Doug and Dave formed Slaglebois, a 2 piece guitar duo that plays country, rock, folk, and originals at Crescent Brewery and other venues. Doug, always being the forward thinker that he is, is always looking for the next great adventure with music.

In the 2000s in New York state, he revisited and played mostly country music with sideline work in a light opera playing bass with “Always Patsy Cline”. He played with a country band and did weekly dances and many honky tonks in central New York. He also became interested in Harley Davidson bikes. He’s an avid rider to this day.

He did solo gigs playing instrumentals and his own tunes in local restaurants and at art shows. Had a friend who made guitars and they started an owner’s group. They had get-togethers with folks having pretty eclectic music styles. They wrote several tunes together and Doug, as always, moved forward.

In about 2010 he moved back to Idaho. He got a duet going with his brother. They played the local bars using MIDI backup tracks. They played originals, Celtic, old country and rock tunes and played lots of free shows. He wound up doing some shows at the Crescent Brewery in Nampa. There he met me and I was performing mostly Celtic tunes of the Welsh variety. They wound up doing many shows together. It was quite the learning experience. 

Check out Doug playing “Dancing in My Dreams” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYidi06KymE

These days he solos sporadically. “…not as young as I used to be. I do a Celtic round every Monday in Nampa at Crescent Brewery that is called Ceol de Luain, and once or twice a month Dave and I play a show with our MIDI backup tracks. Dave’s wife Barbie sings many tunes with us.”

His solo show at Weiser will consist mostly of his own tunes with some of his favorite Celtic tunes that he’s learned over the years. Since he’ll be performing solo, he will be playing acoustic guitar and six-string banjo.

Doug will be performing from 12-1 pm at the Weiser Fiddle Festival at Memorial Park on Friday, June 21st. Stop by and check him out. He’s an amazing musician, and I am very fortunate to know him. He has enriched my life as both a musician and a friend.