OK, the "Error parsing config file...." is actually not an issue, in fact, you kinda need that error message, as it's best to have multiple seed nodes, and having more than 1 in the config file does trip that message. However, it can be safely ignored.  
So what i did was add back in the seed nodes listed here, made sure my config file was correct (witness, miner and WIF keys correctly entered) and re-ran steemd after a replay.  Took only a few seconds of 1hp until i was mining again.