Jerry Douglas is laughing, of course. The dobro virtuoso rarely encounters a situation where it doesn’t cause him to start laughing. On the occasion of our recent interview, he was bravely eating some Junior Mints that had mysteriously melted together while holding onto his phone with his other hand. Still, he soon broke out into a loud laugh when he figured out how to handle his sticky predicament: “I’m wiping it on my road manager. It’s alright now.”
With a wonderful new album on the cusp of being released on September 20th (you can preorder here), Douglas has a lot to smile about. He’s on the road with his solo band and their first recording in seven years, The Set, features musical reflections from his soul and his roots. The lead single, a swirlingly lovely rendition of The Beatles “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” hit the airwaves a few months ago to glowing reviews. Of course, anytime Douglas places those fingers of his on a dobro’s strings, it’s like magic. He can conjure up emotions ranging from sadness to love to peace to giddiness to every little crook and cranny sensation in between. He has The Touch. And I’m sure he’d get a big laugh out of me saying that too.
A staple of Union Station with Alison Krauss since the late 1990’s, he’s also been with The Earls Of Leicester since their inception in 2013, and has played with such legendary artists as Ray Charles, Elvis Costello, James Taylor, Paul Simon and Garth Brooks, and his collaboration with John Hiatt on the singer-songwriter’s Leftover Feelings in 2021 was a five-star hootenanny of a record. “Jerry, besides being the best dobro player alive currently, he is just an amazing musician,” Hiatt told me during a 2021 interview for Glide. “He’s gone so far beyond just the instrument, the dobro, and he can play any style of music on that instrument, which is saying a pretty good deal. It’s not a fretted instrument, it’s a slide instrument, but he’s just incredible.”
One of the lucky musicians who kept working regularly during the pandemic – “I played all the way through the pandemic, on people’s records and live stream things, so I played every day but not with the band,” he said during a 2021 interview – he is now happy to be playing side-by-side with his band: Daniel Kimbro on bass, Christian Sedelmyer on fiddle and Mike Seal on guitar. And they are playing most of the new album live alongside a few oldies but goodies like “King Silkie,” “Who’s Your Uncle” and Tom Waits’ “2:19.”
With The Set, Douglas has really set his bar high while digging down deep into his Scottish roots. He once jokingly told me about his ancestors, “We had castles, we had lakes, we had lochs, we had everything. We ruled! But we also stole sheep and cattle to keep the English mad.” That fun and naughty ancestral DNA certainly shines through on such songs as “From Ankara To Izmir,” “Gone To Fortingall” and Sedelmyer’s “Deacon Waltz,” while that devilish joviality sparks friskily on “Something You Got” with Douglas himself on vocals.
“I’m proud of it. I’ve left no stone unturned,” Douglas stated. “I’ve been producing records for a long time, so I really, really put on that hat for this record. Usually, I like instrumentalists to have free rein in whatever they do. It’s the way they speak. If anybody had an idea, we chased it down to the end. I feel like it’s really finished. I’m really happy with the outcome of this whole experience.”
So while Douglas was sitting back eating candy on his tour bus on the highway to New York, we talked about the new album, bringing his roots more into the forefront, meeting Eric Clapton and some exciting news about Union Station.
The Set is filled with the sounds and vibrations from your ancestral roots in Scotland. When you knew it was time to do another record with your band, was that your original intention to go back to your so-called core?
Yeah, I think it was going to happen. It didn’t matter what kind of record I was going to make, that was going to happen cause that is just part of me now. That’s part of me as much as Flatt & Scruggs at this point. The Celtic music and listening to it, just the feeling of being there, all of that, I feel I’m from both places now. And I used what I learned from both places. They’re combined. So yeah, there’s a lot of it.
And the album cover certainly reflects what’s inside.
Oh, yeah. William Matthews is a western watercolor artist, a pretty famous guy and a friend of mine and he was in Scotland with me a few years ago and he was traveling around the Highlands painting different things that he saw. And this castle that’s on the cover is a famous castle that was actually the castle that was used in a Monty Python film. It’s a castle that was built out in the water so the only time you can get to it is by boat. But when the tide goes out, you can actually walk to it but it’s a mucky kind of a walk. You wouldn’t like it (laughs). Horses didn’t have a choice. But it didn’t stay dry long. It comes right back in. So yeah, the cover and all the music on it has that tinge as well. At this point in my life, I’m so about things over there and it’s infiltrated my musical brain.
When you go over there, do you go to the pubs where they have music and do you ever get up and play with locals?
I have, totally, yeah. That’s part of the gig. If you go in there, well, first of all, there aren’t many pubs where you just go and they’ve got a dobro for you to play (laughs) so I get out of a lot of them that way. But it makes me WANT to play. Even if I’m not playing, it makes you want to play. It’s so infectious. I don’t drink anymore so I don’t go there to drink. I go there to hang out with friends and watch people and I have just as much fun. I get drunk on the music, it’s the same thing (laughs).
How far back does your relationship go with “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”?
The first time I heard that song was a million years ago but who ever forgot that song? It is ingrained in all our DNA at this point and it was a song that George Harrison wrote that The Beatles didn’t want to record so he went and got his friend Eric Clapton and they recorded it and made it a big smash hit anyway (laughs). I never got to play with George, even though I heard he was a fan, and I was definitely a fan of his, but I’d never played the song. I’d heard it all my life but I’d never played it. So I just started playing it one day and it lays so easy on the guitar it was like it was written for dobro. I started playing it and I said to the band, “Hey, let’s play this,” cause they all knew it as well as I did, and it was a real pleasant song, a nice edition to what we do.
When and how did you meet Clapton?
I met him in Anaheim, California, when he was recording Riding With The King with BB King. I was with Alison and we played a gig in Anaheim and so we were on our way back off the stage and our road manager said, “Would ya’ll like me to bring back Eric Clapton now?” And Alison said, “Yeah, sure, bring him on back.” (laughs) And I thought, I don’t know man, Frank doesn’t just say things like that, he means what he says. Then I heard this British accent in the hallway and Alison was so gobsmacked she could hardly speak (laughs). But that is how I met him. And that was through Russ Titelman, who produced a record for me, Traveler. He produced a bunch of things for Eric and he was working on that record with them, with BB King, at the time.
But Eric came in and started talking and asking questions and we were just like, God, this is Eric Clapton! We were trying to decide, were we supposed to bow or what (laughs). So I just kind of kept in touch with him and did his first Crossroads Festival and I’ve done every one of them except one. I think the one in New York I did not do cause I was out with Elvis Costello and I couldn’t go. But he’s a good friend. The guy plays amazing guitar and always has and no one has done more for guitar than Eric Clapton. His name is emblazoned everywhere and is etched in stone.
Tell us about more about The Set, because the majority of the songs are ones you’ve done before.
When we went in to record this record, it’s called The Set but it could be confused with the setlist that we play because it’s pretty much what we play onstage live right now. A lot of those songs, some of them we don’t play as often and some of them are really older songs of mine that I believe have more to do with where we are and where I am in my playing in my career. I know the songs so well now. When you record a song the first time, you don’t really know it. You’re just sort of going through the motions, by the essence of what the song was. So reading down through The Set, the way we’ve laid the record out, it’s like our show.
Plus it’s an album package. It’s two discs so it’s got a fold out, got lots of information in it. It’s like records were in the seventies. I love the whole idea of the throwback when vinyl was king and vinyl is king again. Vinyl albums outsold CDs two or three years in a row now. We’re a streaming world but we have this thing called vinyl that sounds better than anything else. So I’m trying to tie all the loose ends up in one record here. It’s not my last record. I don’t want anybody to think this is it. I’ll make another record. This is just on my own label and it’s songs that people ask for when they leave the show. They’ve heard this song and they say, “What record can I get that on?” and I have to tell them it’s out of print or you can’t get it or you’ve got to go online and pay $150 for a copy of it. So I recut a lot of those things and I like them better now.
Is that why you chose to redo “From Ankara”, cause you’ve recorded it twice already.
Yeah, it was on Skip Hop & Wobble and it was on Under The Wire, which that was the MCA Master Series. I just thought I’d put it out there on this record. I could’ve put more things like “We Hide & Seek” or something like that but that’s been on a ton of records. It’s been heard enough and I didn’t need to record that again. I just wanted to record things that I had changed and that I had really learned the songs better and can play better now. And the way the band sounds, I love this band, the sound of this band, and that’s how I want to put these songs out there, that’s how I want to entrée these songs (laughs).
Over your career, did you struggle with staying traditional versus being innovative?
I would go back to TOO traditional once in a while, just to make sure I could still do that, because that is where my encyclopedia begins, you know. So you have to stay in touch with the things that you know. You want to really know those things cause those are the roots of your musical history and the direction you are going. It’s good to go back, it was great to go back to that with the Earls Of Leicester, to really go visit my roots’ roots. I feel good about that and we did well with that. And it’s part of my pie. My life is a pie (laughs). And part of it is this band, part of it is Earls Of Leicester and part of it is just freelancing and producing records. You’ve got to divide it up, have a plan and stick to it.
We’ve always talked about someone you’ve worked with, like Elvis Costello and Ray Charles and John Hiatt, so I wanted to ask you about playing with James Taylor, because his voice and your playing fit perfectly. How did ya’ll get that started?
The first time I met him was when we did a cut of a song called “Ol’ Blue” on Mark O’Connor’s record and James came in for that. And through the years we’ve all played with him together then we’ve all split off and done things with him, he’s called us for different things and we’re just part of that community now. So Hugh Prestwood wrote a song called “The Suit.” Hugh Prestwood is a really great writer and one of his biggest songs was “The Song Remembers When” and Trisha Yearwood sang it. He just writes the most incredible songs. He wrote “Ghost In This House,” and “The Song Remembers When,” is a masterful writing of a song; and he’s done that throughout his career. They should be carved in stone somewhere.
But he wrote a song called “The Suit” and I had asked James if he would do something on one of my records and he said, “Yeah, I have this song I really want to do.” He said, “I didn’t write this song but I love this song and I want to do it but I need a way to do it and you’re giving me the perfect way to do this.” (laughs) So we recorded it in Boston. I was up there doing Down From The Mountain, I think, at the time. So we went in the studio and recorded it and he came back in and hung out with me. I had taken people who were on the tour for the Oh Brother tour and we went in the studio – Barry Bales and Ron Block and Stuart Duncan, I forget else who we took in – and James was in there and Ron Block played guitar and he was so nervous cause he was playing guitar for James Taylor. He was like, how do you do that? (laughs) And James was playing another guitar so it’s really cool.
Then these folks in New York City just did a short film and entered it in contests for film, film festivals, all over the country and it’s “The Suit” and it’s the story about a farmer in Nebraska who never owned a suit because he was a farmer and he didn’t need a suit. But then he died and he needed a suit and that is what this whole thing was about.
What is the oldest dobro you have in your collection and do you ever use it?
No, I have a 1928 dobro. That was the first year that they actually manufactured and sent them out to the public but I don’t take those out. I think they’ve made it this far without me doing any damage to them so I think they’ve earned a place of respect and rest (laughs). But I check on them once in a while and I restring them and I make sure they sound like they’re supposed to sound. They are just the most beautiful sounding things. But yeah, I have some old ones and a lot of new ones but the old ones sound different than the new ones. We’ve made improvements in some ways and then in other ways it changed a little bit but they’re more hybrid guitars now than they were when the Dopyera brothers were building them.
What can you tell us about “Deacon Waltz”?
Christian wrote that for a friend of his that was getting married. He just wrote it and dropped it on the fellow and probably played it at the wedding. It’s a wedding song and yeah, it’s beautiful. That’s Christian, he plays that way, that’s how he sounds. Sometimes he sounds faster (laughs).
You’ve got a really fun song on the new album called “Something You Got” and you’re singing. How was that for you?
I like to sing (laughs). For so long I didn’t sing because who needs to sing when you have Vince Gill and Allison and James Taylor? (laughs) Not until I got a band of my own and got out on the road. I like vocal interruptions in the instrumental shows. I do not like totally instrumental shows, unless it was Chick Correa or something like that. I’m not interested in it otherwise. My shows, I thought, we need vocals and maybe I should start singing again and see what it sounds like. The first few outings were pretty terrible (laughs) but the more you do it, it’s an instrument, you have to do it, you have to keep it up. You can’t just drop it for fifty years and think, oh, this is going to come right back. This is something you have to work on every day. All those muscles are all different. But I love to sing. As a kid, I sang. When I started playing dobro, I stopped singing.
You didn’t sing in the early days of your career?
I sang parts, I sang baritone, parts that somebody needed to fill at night so I’d do it cause I can hear the part. It’s kind of hard to play dobro which has no stopping points, like frets or anything like that. Your fret is you’re holding it in your left hand and you’re in total control of your pitch so you have to be on with it. You don’t want to be out of tune and making bad sounds up there (laughs). I have a lot of trouble singing and playing at the same time. It’s real hard to do but with this great band behind me, I mean, I can stand there and sing and not have to worry about what’s going on behind me, what the music is. It’s a lot easier. I love it.
So the rest of your year, are you out on the road?
No, well, yes. I’m on the infinity tour. I’ll never stop. But I’m going to slow things down in a couple of years. Next year Union Station is going back out. We’re going to tour and do that for two years in a row. We have two records that are finished. The first one is going to drop next March and then we’ll start touring. Then another record will drop a year from then and we’ll tour again. We’ll see what happens after that. It’s really something we all have missed, you know. But we got so burned out. We played so much for twenty-five years, we were just gone and that wore everybody out. We’re all touring but not at that pace and this pace is enough for me.
You ought to go hook up with Robert Plant for a little while, like Alison.
No, I don’t need to do that (laughs) but I hope I look like that when I’m that old. Print that please! (laughs)
We’ll just call you the Golden God from now on, how about that, Jerry
I’ll take it (laughs)
Portraits by Madison Thorn (band) & Scott Simontacchi; live photo by Leslie Michele Derrough
