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Storyteller bringing tales to Okotoks

A Lundbreck musician who shares his life’s joys and struggles with strangers through music is heading north to Okotoks this weekend. Singer/songwriter Doug Rawling and the Caraganas are performing at the Grace Lutheran Church April 5 at 7:30 p.m.
Doug Rawling
Lundbreck singer/songwriter Doug Rawling and the Caraganas will perform at the Grace Lutheran Church in Okotoks April 5 at 7:30 p.m.

A Lundbreck musician who shares his life’s joys and struggles with strangers through music is heading north to Okotoks this weekend.

Singer/songwriter Doug Rawling and the Caraganas are performing at the Grace Lutheran Church April 5 at 7:30 p.m. Refreshments will be offered and the cost is a free will offering.

“My songs are mostly faith based,” said the 60-year-old storyteller. “That’s the perspective I see the world from.”

Music has been a part of Rawling’s life from an early age. His father was a music teacher and his mother a voice teacher.

“We toured a little bit with my parents when we were kids,” he said. “The Rawling Family, we
travelled a bit and played. By the time I graduated from high school I’d already had a couple of bands.”

At the age of 26, Rawling and his brother Bruce, who was 10 years his junior, began playing as a duet and ended up being part of a Christian rock band in the 1980s.

“We had a record deal and sold quite a number of albums,” said Rawling.

When the band toured coast-to-coast twice in one year, Rawling left the band to spend more time with his family. It wasn’t long before Rawling started another band, The Fourth Watch.

Shortly after Rawling decided to take a hiatus from music, he and his brother got together in a recording studio one weekend.

“We pounded out a bunch of songs we’d written and hadn’t done anything with just for therapy or whatever,” he said. “We ended up touring independently as The Rawling Brothers for years and playing small venues, mostly in churches. When Bruce and I were steamrolling pretty good there we played a lot of folk festivals. We had a sound that would work at blues festivals, folk festivals and gospel festivals.”

Three years ago, the brothers went their separate ways - Bruce to Saskatchewan to pursue other interests and Rawling, a storyteller at heart, kept writing and singing.

“I just keep writing music,” he said. “It seems like if you write a bunch of songs you should play ’em.”

After losing his father a few years ago, Rawling wrote an entire album’s worth of material about his life from that experience called Time Lines.

“I write songs about what I’m going through,” he said. “It’s a therapeutic thing to feel deeply about something, write a song, hear it and go ‘That’s what I’m feeling.’ A lot of times it has to do with family and things like that.”

Rawling said poetry is a big part of his music, and during his concerts he likes to talk about why he wrote the song and where it came from so people can get a feel for it when they hear it.

While in Okotoks, Rawling will be backed by experienced musicians Kieran Swinney on guitar and son-in-law Ken Olson on bass, who are new to the Caraganas. Rawling will sing and play acoustic guitar and harmonica.

“I did a tour to Oregon with them last year,” he said.

“It’s got a good sound with potential. The more we play the more seasoned it will become. It’s got an unplugged acoustic sound.”

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