The Bluegrass Family Man

By Jon Hochschartner

John Doan, a 49 year old elementary school music teacher, loves music. So much, I fear he can't hear me.

I knock on his door again and again. No answer. Finally, I let myself into the foyer. And there it is. I can hear Doan's soulful plucking strumming, coming from another room.

I call out, and finally he hears. He puts down his guitar and greets me warmly. He’s a big guy, with a full head of graying hair. He’s rocking wool socks, blue jeans, and a “Hobo Fest 2009” shirt. He admonishes his dogs for failing their guard duties and we sit down.

As I said, Doan loves playing music. But he doesn't know why.

"I think I had to," he says.

His parents encouraged him. His mother was a singer and a pianist. He followed in her footsteps, taking piano lessons. But he seems to trace his real musical beginning to when he first picked up the banjo at 13.

"I played that for a while," Doan says. "Then kind of moved what I knew on the banjo to the guitar. Because it wasn’t very socially acceptable to play the banjo. It wasn’t a good take-it-to-your-parties-(instrument)...They were happy when I started to play guitar because they didn’t ever have to tell me to play again.”

At the time, his musical inspiration ranged from the more mainstream, performers like James Taylor, to the more obscure, technical finger-pickers such as Leo Kottke.

“In high school I think I just wrote love songs and silly songs,” he says, dismissively. “When you’re that age you just write about whatever you’re feeling. I think that’s what got me hooked on playing an instrument, was that I came up with my own stuff almost right away.”

In college he played in a number of bands, ranging in style from blues to bluegrass. After graduating, he lived the life of a “vagrant musician,” performing as much as he could whilst working odd jobs.

“I did everything: carpenter, wood-chopper, painter,” he says, smiling. “Music has always been one of those things where if the right opportunity is there, you want to do it as much as possible.”

His band played parties, contests and festivals. The crowds ranged in size from small gatherings to those that number in the thousand.

But as the years passed, he faced something of a crossroads. The choice wasn’t as stark as that presented to Robert Johnson, the legendary bluesman, but it was a choice all the same. Would he pursue his musical ambitions or settle down and start a family?

For Doan though the choice was simple.

“I just found somebody I wanted to be with the rest of my life,” Doan says.

He was married in 1986.

One of his former band-mates, a banjo player named Mark Vann, would travel west, to Colorado, to play with a band called Leftover Salmon.

“They’re kind of a bluegrass jam-band,” Doan says. “It was a really progressive band, and they started to get really popular.”

At the time, he was running a landscaping and construction business, and he admits that, at times, he yearned for the road not taken. But then he’d remember where his priorities lay.

“I realized that I don’t think it’s the kind of life that I’d like to have a family with,” Doan says. “You know, just because you’re constantly touring. You get home, you’re exhausted, and then you’re back on the road. I kind of opted for the family.”

Eventually he’d find a job at North Country School, an elementary-aged boarding, where he’d become a music teacher. Which presented an entirely different struggle.

“I’m still trying to figure out how to do it,” he says, laughing. “Sometimes it’s easy. You know, the reward of it is when you see somebody, the spark has taken hold in them. They’re playing all the time and just loving it.”

Despite the long hours devoted to his school duties, he still manages to find time to play with his newest band, Big Slyde. It’s a four member-band, of which his daughter, Hannah, is a member. With that in mind, one might say that Doan’s choice to start a family wasn’t such a bad move.

“We’re playing such cool music and it’s just kind of effortless and it’s growing,” Doan says. “This is a band that I could see actually slowly and gradually just kind of working out into the area.”

He insists he has no “dreams of grandeur.” He’d like to expand only as far as Plattsburgh, Burlington and Saratoga. No further than that, because for Doan, it’s really just about the joy of playing.

“You always have dreams of making a go of it,” He says. “But music for me, it’s just something that I do.”