Doug Powell

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Biography

A protégé of Todd Rundgren, Doug Powell is a more straightforward musician than his muse, more along the lines of XTC’s Andy Partridge. Like Rundgren, Powell had a run of bad luck with record companies early in his career, but it’s easier to carve out a place for oneself away from the major labels than it was in the late ’60s and early ’70s, so Powell has been able to find a ready audience in the American power pop underground. Raised in Oklahoma, the son of a physicist and a professional flutist, Powell grew up as a fan of XTC, Rundgren, and Jules Shear, whom he approached at a solo gig in Chicago with a home-recorded tape of 22 songs. Taken with his young fan’s work, Shear shopped the tape around to various labels and produced a more professional demo that landed the young singer/songwriter a development deal with Elektra Records. The A&R executive at Elektra who liked Powell’s songs then ended up at RCA, for whom Powell recorded his first album, Ballad of the Tin Men. Unfortunately, by the time the album was ready, the A&R executive had jumped ship to Mercury Records, which finally released the finished album in 1996 just as Powell’s mentor was fired by an incoming label president, immediately stopping the album in its tracks. By this time, Powell had met and toured with Todd Rundgren, who agreed to produce his second album. After Mercury rejected the demos for the album and dropped Powell, the singer/songwriter (who had settled in Nashville by this time) placed one of the rejected songs, “Torn,” on Nashpop: A Nashville Pop Compilation, a local scene compilation released by the Colorado-based label Not Lame Records, which then released the entire set of rejected demos as 1998’s Curiouser and commissioned an album of all-new material, More, in 2000.
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  • caro_g

    genial!

    29 Jun 2011 Reply

  • malize

    Sobresaliente!

    24 Oct 2010 Reply

  • MasteringSound

    Does Doug have a website? I'd like to find out more info.

    13 Jan 2010 Reply

  • JimmyDrew1

    Thank's Doug Powell For Releasing Some Of The Best CD's To Come Out Of Our Present Time , I Own All But One ,I'm Working On That, & As Far As Todd Rundgren Having Anything On You , Yeah Maybe 30 Years Ago But Not Now You've Leaped & Bounded Way Past Him Musically Since Curiouser , & The Car's Were Retarded Not Having You Finish That CD You Were Doing With Them, I Heard The Song Rundgren Did With Them And So Have My Friend's They All Hate It, But When I Put Your Four Season's Album On I Alway's Get The Same Reaction, Damn That's Good Why Did They Go With Rundgren! Just Thought I'd Let You Know.

    29 Apr 2009 Reply

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