For every James Taylor, or even a Sixto Rodriguez, who for a time, fell through the cracks of greater cultural awareness, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of songwriters around the world who continue to connect to their craft, regardless of the size of their audience, but as we know, every musician, every person for that matter, has an important story. Searching for Sugar Man? Well, some are simply more fantastical than others. For a glimpse, Voluntary In Nature was there.

While certain players seek their fame and glory in music business hubs like London, New York, and Los Angeles, for others the creation of music is a more personal communion with the musical stream, a gift and release, never to be overtly commercialized. As one listens to more and more music with either age or experience, you begin to realize that talent does not necessarily equate to album sales or chart positions, or even by today’s mainstream measure of success, social media data.

Doug Cho started writing, recording, and performing songs in the pre-Internet/post-hippie coffee house scene of Vancouver, BC, during the mid-1970s. With patient dedication and vision, he self-financed and independently produced a series of vinyl records released between 1976 and 1979, that despite grassroots promotional efforts, never found their intended audience. Doug, a recent UBC graduate, followed a career path in pharmaceutical and medical supplies instead. With all of his job’s day-to-day responsibilities and bills to be paid, life moved on.

Over 25 years later, Doug returned to music and began recording instrumental compositions at home. He would offer them to close friends and family on hand-crafted CD-Rs and even to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation during a drive for regional contributions on their CBC Music website, which only remained online for a short spell.

By the early 2000s, I had become a major fan of Doug’s earliest work in the form of two long playing vinyl albums that were brought to my attention through a fellow record collector, collaborator, and friend, and in 2009, I connected with Doug Cho in person for the first time, at the corner of West Broadway and Oak Street in Vancouver. He told me of his musical past, that in his younger years he used to help out at Ming’s part-time, his grandfather’s well-known restaurant on Pender Street in Chinatown, and his more recent love of cycling.

As we parted, Doug handed me a CD-R that he had recorded in 2008, housed in a colour photocopied, homemade artwork sleeve titled Bearly Music. I chuckled at the pun from within, knowing the honesty, sensitivity, and vulnerability of Doug’s 1970s music, and more than excited to hear what he had just shared with me. The back of the sleeve read: “No loops, no pitch correction, no drum machines, no tricks! Just raw music played by real fingers without any manipulation. Live noises at no extra charge!” To me, Bearly Music is the perfect place to begin our journey along with the unique, musical voice of Doug Cho. To quote a pertinent lyric from his 1976 debut that should apply to everything we attempt in this life, “It’s the best I’ve done so far…” (VIN 004)

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