from Music Makers, Idaho Magazine (August 2005)
by Ryan Peck

Many musicians dream of being rock stars, often a fantasy that includes playing in front of thousands of fans at sold-out stadiums. A select few, however, have a stronger desire to simply make a consistent living playing music. Doug Cameron is one of the latter. "I have a lot of friends that go to work for eight hours a day not doing things they care about too much. I figure if I can work eight hours a day doing music, whether it be producing, writing, or gigging, that's pretty good work," Cameron said with a smile.

Born in 1974 at Denver, Colorado, Cameron moved to the northern Idaho town of Moscow at age nine. At twelve, Doug started to play guitar. It wasn't, however, the first instrument Cameron played. "When I was a kid I had one of those microphones that you tune in through the radio...it was pretty cool. I'd turn my parents' stereo way up and think I was Neil Diamond or something," Cameron said with a laugh.
Doug joined his first band, The Bedheads, right after high school in 1993. The Bedheads released an album and toured the Northwest. Cameron calls his tenure with The Bedheads "a great learning experience." In 1996 one of the mainstay pubs in Moscow, The Capricorn, needed a new house band. Cameron was up for the challenge. He left The Bedheads and formed a new band, dubbed Stranger Neighbor, with drummer Casey Miller, trumpet player John Fricke, and bassist Ryan Gibler. "It was great," recalls Cameron, now a Boise resident. "I was able to write a bunch of songs and try them out on a live audience every weekend." They were also making some money, most of which they stowed away in a "band fund." Two years later, Stranger Neighbor had enough material (and money) to record its first album called Memories of This. With the new CD, Stranger Neighbor had gained the confidence to begin touring. The members used their remaining savings to buy a van and a trailer and hit the road.

Things started going really well.

In 1998 the band relocated to Denver due to its central U.S. touring location. A few months later, the band released a live CD. They gained a distribution deal and starting doing bigger gigs. Bands such as The Samples, and Big Head Todd and the Monsters, that had previously been only idols, became friends and peers, frequently sharing shows with Stranger Neighbor. At the end of 1999, Stranger Neighbor took a few weeks off the road to record their second full-length album, In This World.

Then things began to unravel.

Casey Miller left the band to be with his wife and pursue a more rooted career path in Seattle. Ultimately, Miller proved to be irreplaceable. "We kept going for a bit," recalls Cameron, "but we kept cycling through drummers. It got really tiring." Eventually Cameron streamlined the band to duo status with his band-mate and best friend John Fricke. The two lived on the road for most of 2001. They gave up mortgage payments for a van and a slew of odd hotel rooms. They played everywhere from high school music classes in the San Juan Islands to small dive bars in the middle of nowhere.

In 2002 Doug and John recorded the acoustic album Everything That Matters. The album represented a new direction for Cameron. Rather than using a big (and expensive) studio to make the recording, the album was recorded entirely at Doug's parents' house in Alpine, Wyoming using a small digital 8-track recorder. "Technology had made it easier for me to record my songs with studio quality sound. It enabled me to make an album when I otherwise couldn't have afforded (the studio time) to do it." Down the road, Cameron would find other do-it-yourself avenues to keep his costs low and his profits high. A song on Everything That Matters, titled "Once Was" was entered in the Boss BR8 song writing contest. (The Boss BR8 was the unit that Cameron had used to record Everything That Matters.) Cameron and Fricke won the national grand prize, garnering Cameron $5000 worth of music gear. It was a shot in the arm for Cameron. Doug and John hit the road and toured all over the West. During their perpetual tour, Cameron formed a new band. A few months later, however, the drummer left (sound familiar?). It left Cameron scratching his head. "I went on a hiatus," says Cameron. "I was tired of always being on the road." After a short stint in Arizona, Cameron moved to Seattle to work at a music store.

In the meantime, Cameron didn't quit writing songs.

In Seattle, Cameron reunited with former Stranger Neighbor drummer Miller, by then a producer and recording engineer at a Seattle studio, and constant musical companion Fricke. Cameron had a new sheaf of songs to offer, and with the help of Miller and Fricke in 2004, he recorded Consequence of My Choices his first solo album. Cameron's solo debut album showed an artist who had matured both in the subject matter he dealt with and his songwriting abilities. "I have a big fear of getting in a songwriting rut where I'll write the same things over and over," Cameron said. Consequence of My Choices, however, showed little redundancy or retreading; it was a great album, only made fresher by Miller's tightly packed production.

With his new CD in tote, Cameron moved back to Idaho, this time to Boise. "I am not a big city guy...growing up in Moscow I got spoiled with the small town feel," Cameron said. "I like Boise. I am close to family and friends, and Boise still has that small town feel. I can walk into a coffee shop and randomly run into a friend. It's great." Cameron started playing some local gigs, did a couple short tours, and started selling a bunch of his new CDs.

Doug eventually joined forces with skilled drummer Jacob Florence, acoustic guitarist Chris Riches, and bassist Dave Manion. Cameron and crew now play gigs as The Doug Cameron Band. They are keeping things a bit more sensible this time around. Rather than using a national distribution company, Cameron now sells his albums online, using the online service CD Baby as his distributor (he has sold CDs in Germany and Serbia). Cameron has incorporated the do-it-yourself approach into nearly everything he does. He enlists friends to help with his records, he books his own gigs, and he even does his own promotional work. According to Cameron, the playing field has shifted dramatically (largely due to technology and the Internet), enabling small-scale musicians to be quite successful. Whereas it used to be that musicians had to fork out tons of money to record albums, pay lots of money to make a run of thousands of CDs, and then show mass success to get a distrubutor to sell their music, musicians can now record their own albums and distribute them on their own. It works for Cameron, who says he is as monetarily successful as he would be on a large label.

A few months ago, Cameron reunited with Miller and Fricke again to record a five-song outing of new material called Crossed the Colorado Line. As a bonus, Cameron includes the making of a DVD with his new CD. The DVD, made by Cameron and Miller's younger brother Jimmy, shows a highly motivated songwriter making an album using today's technology.

Cameron plans on recording a full-length CD with his new, and what he deems a highly talented band, this summer. "These guys (Florence, Riches and Manion) are great. We are really getting really comfortable with each other. We're gonna be around for a while," says Cameron.

And what about Idaho?

"I love Idaho...I plan on staying here," says Cameron. "There's a bunch of great Idaho musicians. I really look up to Bill Coffey...Dan Bukvich at U of I [Univiersity of Idaho], he is awesome."

Cameron continues, "There are so many great places in Idaho. Even the drive just north of here where you hit Donnelly and McCall...you can just keep going. You gotta love those small towns..."

Ryan Peck lives in Boise. His "music makers" column, about Idahoans in the music industry, appears monthly in IDAHO magazine.