Customer Reviews

Bothering the Coffee Drinkers

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I once had an elementary school teacher who told me the best way to make it on stage, was to make it big backstage. I am near fifty and I am still working back stage.

Being a big fan of the singer-songwriter genre, it warms the cockles of my heart to see someone doing so successfully at my chosen profession that they have to write a book about it. Okay, maybe just a tad bit covetous, but if Ron Howard and Tom Hanks are involved in the movie I am really going to be seething with envy.

I was surprised when I found out how long many successful artist had been pounding the pavement before success came a knocking. Doug takes you down the road of the working musician, the band-in-a-van guys, who are opening up for the guys with the tour bus with a trailer, who are opening up for the guys who fly in while the crew rides a tour bus and the gear is packed into 18 wheelers. When success or failure hinges upon whether or not your fan belt holds out.

Broken glass, broken hearts, broken dreams, but somehow the band-in-a-van keeps rolling. A true inspiration.

"Bothering the Coffee Drinkers: Musical Fiction and Essays" is a delicious collection of story essays by Nashville-based singer and songwriter Doug Hoekstra that could be set to music as songs, or perhaps vice versa. Hoekstra is a talented independent performer and gifted songwriter, so it comes as no surprise that he can also write creative fiction. What makes "Bothering the Coffee Drinkers" so easy to absorb must be the 'blarney' effect. Each detail segue compactly into the next and before you know it, the book has hooked you in a distinctly quirky and entertaining way. Like all great music, it sounds easy to do. As all great musicians know, this is a deceptive effect that is only maintained through constant work and practice. Hoekstra's writes in a style that could safely be called eclectic, but that doesn't do his either his music or his literary genius true justice. He is like a quirky art collector, putting together odd bits and ends, and then making them into something with an effect so much more than the mere sum of their collective oddities. Hoekstra sandwiches his story essays with a biographical beginning and end piece that is also very effective. It grounds the reading with an even more pronounced flavor of the author's presence and outlook. "Bothering the Coffee Drinkers" is very readable, very enjoyable, and very highly recommended to consumers of good music and well crafted literature.