Doug MacNaughton Takes Us On A Reassuring Walk Through Grief In “So Lost Without You”
Loss can be wrenching, no matter who is no longer in our lives, and Brandon, MB-based singer-songwriter Doug MacNaughton provides reassurance and a salve in his new single “So Lost Without You” from his forthcoming album Old Enough To Know Better.
The song starts out shimmery, and then morphs into an introspective ’70s-tinged folk-pop ballad. The sadness is overlaid with a marching, sunny optimism as MacNaughton lays out his grief:
You were here for the best days of my life
Now you’re gone, I don’t know what to say
I lift my eyes, I just see darkness all around
The world was brighter in the days we stood
Together
He searches his heart for a way to keep going and finds a well of internal optimism. “Fear shouts – but love whispers and is heard,” he sings. “Fear doubts – but love whispers and I’m reassured.”
The corresponding music video shows MacNaughton wandering around a town alone, with flashbacks of him with walking around the very same town but with a dog at his side. His feeling of lost searching is palpable as he meanders the streets in a daze. Finally, he ends up walking into a branch of the Humane Society, where he finds a new companion, a fluffy little pup to walk alongside again.
The song was simultaneously inspired by MacNaughton’s loss of his siblings when he was a young man and the sadness that can come from losing a beloved pet.
“My brother was killed in a motorbike crash when I was 18, and my oldest sister died of cancer when I was 29,” MacNaughton says. “I wrote this song when I was 55 as a way of dealing with that loss. People are not always comfortable talking about that kind of tragedy, but not talking about it makes it more difficult. This is for Bill and Elspeth…”
Different types of loss are impossible to compare, but anyone who has experienced one loss can understand a little bit about someone else’s.
“It’s also a song for anyone who has had their dog or cat pass away,” MacNaughton says. “It’s hard, but there will always be a piece of them in your heart.”
Watch the video for “So Lost Without You” below and learn more about Doug MacNaughton via our mini-interview.
Care to introduce yourself?
Hi, there. I’m Doug MacNaughton. I’ve been on the Canadian performing arts scene since 1982, mostly in musical theatre, theatre, and classical music. This song is the first single from an album of eight of my originals – please keep an eye out for Old Enough to Know Better. I’ve been playing guitar since I was a teenager, but I only started writing my own songs in 2017. I’ve been in various shows like ‘Les Misérables,’ ‘Man of La Mancha,’ ‘Twelfth Night,’ ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ I’ve been a TTC subway musician, I’ve been a member of the Celtic quartet ‘Chroí’ (Irish for ‘heart’). I am currently living in Toronto, waiting to move to NYC.
Tell us about the process of writing “So Lost Without You.”
This was the first song I wrote, and it came from jamming around various chord progressions and riffs. It kind of jelled around the chord progression for the chorus – Jessica Stuart, my producer, talked about this chorus as the most Joni ‘Court and Spark’ moment of the album. I’m not worthy of being compared with Joni, but I’ll take the compliment! At first, I didn’t know what the lyrics were about. They just came to me. Several days into writing this, I realized the lyrics were all about my late brother Bill and my late sister Elspeth.
What’s it like being a musician in Brandon, MB?
I was very lucky to grow up there when I did – there was a great band/orchestra/jazz band program in the schools, my high school had a great choir, and the head of music at my parent’s church was a great encourager of young musicians – because of her, I did junior, intermediate, and senior choir way earlier than usual. She also encouraged us to play our instruments regularly. “Hey, I hear you’ve taken up the tuba – Dev plays euphonium, David plays trumpet; if I get another trumpet and a French horn, are you game to do some brass quintets?” “Hey, wanna play guitar in a couple of weeks?” “Hey, wanna play handbells?”.
Music saved me – if we hadn’t had music in the school, I don’t know what I would have done, but I’d be a much less happy individual. I was very lucky to grow up with a very close group of friends who shared our albums with each other all the time, and we all had remarkable collections of prog-rock and jazz fusion, much of which we’d had to pick up in Winnipeg.
The local university is one of Canada’s best-kept secrets for a music faculty – because the school was so small, I ended up playing bass in the orchestra, guitar in the jazz band, recorders, etc., in the early music ensemble, and singing in the choir.
Who was the first Canadian artist to blow you away?
Oh, wow, that’s really hard to say! I first heard Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Way I Feel” the year it came out, in 1967. I remember wearing out our vinyl copy… We had the Guess Who’s “Wheatfield Soul,” Lighthouse “Live,” Joni Mitchell’s “Song to a Seagull”… My sister Elspeth gave me ‘The Velvet Touch of Lenny Breau’ for my birthday when I was 12, and that was a game changer. I think Bruce Cockburn would have been the first Canadian artist I saw live in 1975 on the “Joy will find a Way” tour. Bruce is an artist I’ve seen live four times in four different cities.
You’ve been making music for a short bit now. What’s one piece of advice you can offer to those starting out?
Nourish your hope, and don’t let anyone or anything discourage you. The hardest part of our business is the constant and frequent rejection, but you can’t take it to heart! Yes, it is good to have a disciplined practice routine and to improve your playing/singing constantly, but make sure you step back and take pride in what you have already accomplished!
I have a secret notebook where I have written down all the times someone has said something really good about me. On the days when I feel myself getting down about myself, I leaf through it and remember the time when someone I really respected said, “You know, you’re the guy on this gig who has improved the most.”, or when I played a second guitar part for someone else, and they said “Nice!” in the middle of the show. Ideally, your self-affirmation will come from inside, but it can help to remind yourself that other people have said supportive things.