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December 19, 2024 107 mins

King of the Dobro!

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set podcast.
My guest today is the one and only Jerry Douglas,
dough bro and Lapskewal guitar player Extraordinarire. Jerry. What is
a doughbro?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Bob? Thanks for having me on today. A doughbro is
a guitar. Basically, it's a guitar.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
It has a People would recognize it from a shiny
like hubcap on top of the guitar, but that's that's
all something that goes into making the sound. There were
some five Slovakian brothers in the twenties who loved Hawaiian music,
but it wasn't loud enough for them. They were used

(00:55):
to hear in loud bands oompah, all kinds of crazy
stuff over there. Crazy to us, not to them, But
they came over here and there was a Hawaiian guitar
craze going on in the United States and the twenties
that had been a sort of a out you know

(01:15):
it was. It was created by a World's exposition that
had Hawaiian musicians at it, and the whole world went
crazy about these Hawaiian musicians. So all these guys started
selling these Hawaiian guitars door to door to all the
kids and selling them, you know, little sheet music to
learn how to play Hawaiian music. And so they first

(01:37):
created the National guitar in Chicago. It was an all
metal body guitar like it is on the front of
the Dire Straits record Brothers in Arms, and people recognize
it from that. But I play the wooden bodied version
that these guys developed in the late nineteen twenties in
Los Angeles, and I have pictures of whole dobro orchestra.

(02:00):
It must have been an awful sound, but it became
popular in Hawaiian music, and then blues music. Blues guy's
got a hold of it because it was loud enough
to compete with their voice, so they could go ahead
and sing as loud as they wanted to.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Uh and uh.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
And then it fell into the hands of Bashful Brother Oswald,
who played with Roy Acuff on the grandule Opry. And
he was working in a car plant in Flint, Michigan,
and in UH came across this guy, this Hawaiian guy
who played Hawaiian guitar, and Bashful Brother Oswald just loved
the sound of it and learned how to play it,

(02:41):
brought it back to Nashville, and then sooner or later,
the guy that I really learned from and the guy
that inspired me to play the guitar and the Doughbro
guitar in the first place, was a fellow named Josh
Graves Buck Graves, who played with Lester Flatten Earl Scrugs
in the Foggy Mountain Boys. And that's what I heard
that every morning getting up to go to school as

(03:03):
my dad was getting ready to go to to the
steel mill to go to work up in northeastern Ohio
and Warren, Ohio. And I heard that guitar every morning,
and I just fell in love with the sound of it.
So I played guitar at the time and started told
my dad if he would raise the action up on
my guitar, that I would learn how to play like

(03:24):
that guy that we'd seen the other night. I was
about ten years old, and that's when I started playing
dope row guitar.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Okay, the guitar has got the resonator on it. How
do you play it relative to a regular guitar.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Well, first of all, you start out with it on
your lap, have it laying on flat on your lap
and you play it with a metal slide. Instead of
pushing the strings down to hit frets to stop the note,
you use a slide, a metal slide on top, and
the strings are raised up from the frets, so you
don't hit the frets anymore. And that is your threat.

(04:03):
That steel bar that you're you're holding in your hand,
that that is, that's your threat. That's your point of
of being in tune and uh and uh try and
trying not to hit a bad note against a singer
like Alison Krause.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Okay, So in a conventional guitar, you know e a
d G B, you move your fingers. How do you
tune and get the different notes on a dough bro?

Speaker 3 (04:33):
The the the main the tuning that most Doughbro players
use is from high to low. It's DBG than an
octave lower dbg.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Uh. But I have.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
Messed around with different tunings over the years, all kinds
of tunings, dropping you know, to dropping my uh second
string to create a create a suspension you know between
there and and create create tune my B string down
to an aid. So it just creates a little bit
of of tension and it also uh gives you a

(05:13):
way to. You can pull the string behind the bar
and raise it to the proper pitch if you want to.
But you know, it's just a it's just a you know,
it's just an ornament really that tuning. But I also
have a thing on my guitar. It's called a hip shot,
a double hip shot that is like a looks like

(05:34):
a bigs B pedal, palm pedal, you.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Know, vibrato.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
But this thing, you release it and it drops the
tuning to a drop D tuning, which then is from
E a F sharp duh a D. So it's a
dead GAD, except there's an F sharp instead of the
first D.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
I was second D.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Let's go back. Your father worked in the steel mills.
How long was your family in America before he worked
in the steel mills?

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Our first Douglas came over in seventeen forty eight, Wow,
came into Pittsburgh, came into not Pittsburgh, came into Philadelphia
and was put on the road south. You know, they
were sort of dividing people as they came in. And
my people were from Scotland and then were you know,

(06:33):
because of the clearances where their land was given away,
they were they were sent to Northern Ireland, and they
didn't want them there either, so they went to America
and came into Philadelphia, like I said, were put on
the road south where they were trying to create a
lot of Italians and Scott's Irish were sent south because

(06:57):
they needed stone workers south to build the coke ovens
in order to build foundries and get some industry going.
So they were actually planning these kind of things. And
my Douglases came down into Virginia and settled in this

(07:17):
little town called Buchannan, which became West Virginia. That part
of Virginia became West Virginia. So Buchan in West Virginia
is where my people really settled for the first time.
And my mother and father now live about forty five
miles from there. So the family, that portion of the
family didn't spread too far, but others, you know, William O.

(07:39):
Douglas is a relative of mine, distant relative, and Douglas
is all over the place. I mean, I've I haven't
joined twenty three in meters, so I haven't tracked anybody down,
and I'm scared of that thing anyway. So being a
traveling musician, I don't need any other children or grandchildren.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
Okay, So how did they end up in Warren, Ohio?
And how did your father end up working in the
steel mill.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
My father's had some cousins that had gone north and
found work in the steel mills around Warren and Youngstown, Ohio,
in the northeastern part of the state, and they said, well,
come on up here, we can find work for you.
And in West Virginia at that point, if you it
depended on which party was in power, the Republicans or

(08:31):
the Democrats. And if you were in the Democrats, you
either worked in the coal mines, you worked on the
state road, or you were a farmer. And my father
was looking for a better life, so he my mother
got buried and moved straight up to Ohio and he
went to work in the steel mills and stayed there
for forty years until he retired from the mills. And

(08:54):
then they moved back to my mother's farm, which had
been in the family now for over two hundred years,
and built a nice, great, big log cabin on top
of a ridge, and dad's ninety two, mom's eighty nine.
They lived there by themselves, and they're just amazing. I
can't I know I've got those genes, and I'm scared

(09:17):
to death what I'll be doing when I'm ninety two
years old.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
So your father retired before the whole steel business imploded.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Well, he saw it coming.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
I remember the day he came home and said to me,
our steel days are numbered because they're buying Japanese steel now.
And then it became Chinese steel, and you know, yeah,
and his company was.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Owned by a huge, a huge.

Speaker 3 (09:48):
Rich family, European family, and they weren't getting much help.
So Dad took his retirement. He retired at just the
right time to get out with all his benefits and
his you know, everything in his retirement. It was like
it was the perfect American dream at that point, you know,

(10:08):
you could you could still get out of it and
take with what they said that you were going to have,
and they took it. So he, you know, just just
a couple of years ago his retirement ran out. You know,
so he has lived, he's lived the whole dream. He

(10:29):
lived through his retirement and he's just you know, he's fine,
he's fine.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Okay. So you're growing up in Warren. How many kids
in the family.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
My brother and I were just the two of us.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
There were a lot of cousins around, but most of
our family was in West Virginia, so we go south
for vacations, and the family never really we didn't really
travel that far. We didn't travel outside Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia,
you know, Pennsylvania, just surrounding high We didn't go that
far on vacations. But my dad would get these five

(11:05):
week paid vacations every year after he hit a certain
amount of years in the steel mill. So he would
go take us and we would just go to bluegrass
festivals and just hear all this music that you know,
that we loved. And he had a band. My father
had a band in Warren, Ohio called the West Virginia
Travelers and they were all guys from West Virginia who

(11:27):
had work in the steel mills. And they but they
when people from the south moved north, they took their
music with them, you know, and and a lot of
other things that maybe they shouldn't have taken. But I
think back to the jd Vance to the Hillbilly Elogy,
you know, those people moved to Dayton and took everything

(11:47):
with them, their lifestyle, everything.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
But in up in our our part of the our
part of the woods.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
There were so many people, so many different ethnic uh
you know, it with a lot of Greek people, people
from Greece, people from Italy.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
It was a huge Italian population and just a boiling pot.
And you know, and the food was amazing up there,
and uh, just all kinds of people getting along. You know.
It wasn't it wasn't didn't seem to be a division.
You know.

Speaker 3 (12:17):
They all had nicknames for each other. But there was
never any never any trouble or anything like that. But
but Dad, he he was up there sort of on
his own, uh you know, but had a band and
they started working and then there create that created other bands,
other bluegrass bands around there.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
But he was one of the first in that area. Uh.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
And and that because of that, I got to see
a band rehearse when I was, you know, five six
years old, rolling around under the kitchen table, watching these
guys figure out how to create a song, and that
all I was a sponge.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
I sooked all of that up. I learned a lot
from just watching them.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
Okay, your brother older, younger, where is he today.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
He's he's almost three years younger than me.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
Uh, he's retired now, and he was a meter reader
in West Virginia down there where he moved down to
be kind of keep an eye on the folks. And
he's on the next ridge over in another loghouse that
he but he can see their house, and you know,
it's it's great that he's there, you know, because I
can't be but uh he and he also started playing bass,

(13:37):
uh at one point, and and became a really good
bass player. But he just he wasn't as interested in
making a living at it or doing what.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
I did, you know, following following what I did.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
Okay, you come of age when the Beatles break. I
have close friends grew up in the exact same area.
So you talk about your father listening to country music.
Were also exposed to the British invasion in the other
top forty stuff.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
Definitely was.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
I mean, like I said, I would listen to Flatten
Scrugs or something like that in the morning. But at
night I was close enough to Cleveland that it was
I would lay in my bed with my little bug,
you know, and put that my ear and listen to
what the lightest rock and roll was coming out of Cleveland.
So I was really confused, you because I loved that music,

(14:27):
and I loved what I heard in the morning. I'm
trying to figure out, how do I marry these two things,
and how can I make how can I make one
music out of tude or you know, trying to figure
out that, figure that out. And I think I've done
it over the time. I think I've done it and

(14:48):
combined the two just by being a chameleon and being
a musician that listened, and you know, doing sessions.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
That's that's your job.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
Listen, you listen, and you you learn the song fast,
you come up with a hook, and you do all
of these things as fast as possible in order to
you know, move time. And that's that's one of the
things that that has really helped me in my career.

(15:21):
And but but those those radio stations up there also
had had a cousin moved in with us when he
was eighteen to k He came up there to find work.
He brought and the first night he was there, I
heard for the first time, I heard the mamas and
the papas, I heard, I heard the birds, and I

(15:42):
heard Don't walk Away, and I remember that song. I
mean the first night he was there, and I just
my mind was blown again. You know, it was like
I was really I paid attention to music. You know,
It's like the different music that I would hear, like
like what he brought in the house and what I
heard on the radio from Cleveland and and all of

(16:05):
these things. So it was, uh, it was quite an education,
you know, before I even really put the bar to
the strings and got serious enough about playing that. I
loved music before I ever really got into playing it
so much.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
Okay, so you hear flatt and scrugs. You hear the
dough bro? What age are you you decide to play?
How do you get a dough bro? How do you
learn how to play?

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (16:41):
Good, good question. Because I had a silver tone guitar.
It was a pretty cheap model that I'd gotten for Christmas,
and and we raised the strings.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Up on that.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
And one one day I came home from school and
my guitar was on the top of the stack of
guitars that we had, like guitars maybe.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
And the sun had come in and hit my case.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
And as soon as I hit the last latch on
the case and threw open the top of the case,
my guitar just folded up like that. And so we
had to go find something real for me to play,
and that's when we went on the search to find
a dough Bro But there were there weren't any. I mean,

(17:25):
they had stopped building Doughbro guitars in the late thirties,
so there weren't any. But the company was starting up again.
My luck, in nineteen sixty seven, they started to produce
guitars again and I got one of the first ones.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
But I had to go to a music store and
every time I'd ask them, they just look at me
like I.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
Had some strange disease if I say, do you have
any Doughbro guitars? No, So finally I got a brochure
and I ordered one from the brochure to the to
a music store in Newton Fall, Ohio. And six months
later that came in and I was just like, oh,
this is what it sounds like, you know, because I,

(18:10):
you know, I've been playing a guitar. It didn't it
didn't create all of that sound that comes from the
cover plate. And under that cover plate is a we
didn't get to this before, but there's an aluminum spun
aluminum cone. It's like a speaker cone. And and also
there's a there's a bridge to connect the bridge to
the rest of this contraption. There's a thing I like

(18:32):
called a spider that sits down on that cone and
contacts that cone at eight different places and transfers the
sound down into the guitar back up out of the guitar.
It was just an ingenious invention. I mean that there
are two screens at the top of the guitar.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
They're just like they're.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
Screens, they're round screens, and that's where the bass of
part of the guitar comes from because it's channeled in side.
Sound is just like it's just like light or water.
It bounces, it reflects, it does all of these things.
And these guys figured out how to create the inside
of the guitar so they could control the high end

(19:15):
from the low end. And it just created two sources
of sound in one guitar, and you could mix those
two together depending on where you put the microphone as
to how much high end or low end you get.
And I think they got lucky on a whole lot
of things. I mean, just the circumference of that metal

(19:40):
spun aluminum cone that's never changed, and the cover plates
never changed until I changed the design of it a
few years ago. And I'm the guinea pig for a
lot of things that come out for Dobo players, and
I get them first and it works.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
I keep it. It doesn't goes back to the whoever
gave it to me.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
Okay, So what's the state of manufacture of Doughbro guitars today?
How many people even make them?

Speaker 3 (20:11):
Doughbro does not make them. Gibson Guitars bought Dobro and uh,
they were terrible guitars that they were making. And so
I stepped in and said, can I can you build
me a signature model? And I will. I'll come in
with you. I'll go through all the pains and.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Everything with you to get this to be a good
guitar that somebody can buy as an entry level guitar
mahogany guitar at seventeen hundred dollars. And we all agreed
on we could do that.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
But the guitars, you know, if they have your name
on them anywhere, everyone who buys it thinks you built
it right. So they started they started doing some really
wacky things with this dough Bro like out of line,
or the the cone would not be or the cover
plate would not be in the center of the guitar
and be over to the left or to the right,

(21:07):
and you can't play a guitar like that. And they
were just bad. They were bad guitars. So Gibson and
I got a divorce. So I went to there's a
phelle named Tim Sheerhorn that makes excellent, excellent, excellent, like uh,
the greatest uh resophonic guitars, doughbro guitars. Doughbrow has become

(21:27):
a h. The word for doughbro now is ish resophonic.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
Doughbro was a name, like we started using it like kleenex.
You know, anything that looked like that was a doughbro.
And to me, I still call it that. I don't
care if they sue me or not, but you know,
I'm selling more of them for them than anybody else.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
So that was really awful.

Speaker 3 (21:52):
But UH, I got UH and and then I got
into a deal here with the fellow named Paul Beard,
who is in Hagerstown, Maryland and makes the best, the
best reservantic guitars. I was with Tim Sheerhorn for a while,
but he didn't want to build a signature model. So

(22:12):
I got with Paul Beard and he did so we
set to work on building a special one worked on
the inside so the sound would move and be reflected
in different ways, and the guitar sounded bigger. All the
new builders are building what I would consider hybrids of
the first of the original guitar at this point.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Okay, so let's assume I want to buy a Doughbro.
Are these things now readily available? How many companies are
making them? Is it still a very limited thing.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
It's not a limited thing.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
Nope, Through Paul Beard, there are several several entry level
guitars you can buy and not spend a lot of money,
you know, until you I tell people, if you're going
to buy a Doughbro.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Don't don't go out and buy one like mine right away.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Go out and buy, you know, a lower level guitar
to see if you really want to play this guitar. No,
don't spend ten thousand dollars. If you can spend you know,
fifteen hundred dollars and get something, And they're amazing guitars.
If I'd have had one of those guitars when I
was learning to play, I don't know what would have happened,
but yeah, suddenly, suddenly dobro players can get They're readily available.

(23:28):
You can find them all music stores. You know, you
go in, you go into guitar center, you can find
a dobro guitar, a resivantic guitar, and a slide and
picks and all everything. And I've been in situations in
the last couple of years. I had to fly from
Charlotte to Portland, Oregon to open for Shock Tea. I

(23:49):
was like one of the three people that got to
open for John McLaughlin and Zakir Hussein and all of
these amazing musicians. I mean, any of us in any
genre of music, will we sort of bow down to
what those guys have done because it's incredible music and
no one else can play it like they can. So

(24:11):
they were doing they're doing their fiftieth anniversary and probably
the last run. I get out to Portland and I
have no guitar, and I don't have a guitar the
next day either when I'm supposed to play. So I
put out an APB found another guitar that was my
signature model that showed up that had everything on it

(24:34):
that my guitar had. It was exact, you know, almost
exact copy mine's been played for three years, so it
sounded a little different. But that's happened to me about
four or five times over the last two years. So
I'm thinking, why do I even carry a guitar? Why
don't I just announce where I'm going to be and
have people show up and bring me one to play.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
But nothing like playing your own guitar. But it's.

Speaker 3 (25:02):
I don't know, you have to depend on so many
people to get from A to B anymore. It's kind
of it's a tough world out there for us traveling
with one in one instrument.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Okay, how'd you end up in the Pacific Northwest without
a guitar?

Speaker 2 (25:18):
Airlines?

Speaker 3 (25:20):
They just left it somewhere they you know, I have
air tags and everything. I knew exactly where it was.
It left, never left Charlotte, you know. And I needed
it in Portland, Oregon like now, And so two hours
before the show, my guitar showed up to so I
was covered.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Okay, So now you get a guitar, how do you
learn how to play it?

Speaker 3 (25:46):
That was when I was learning how to play. There
was no one, I mean, there was no internet. There
was the only way you could learn how to play
something was listen to the person that played it, you know,
and and find somebody who knows how to tune it.
And I got lucky there. My dad's banjo player said,
I think it's the first four strings of the banjo,

(26:08):
and then I don't know.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
What's up after that.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
So we just went with what the tuning that I have,
and I got lucky, you know, And I just started
listening to Flatt and Scrugs records and trying to copy everything.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
You know.

Speaker 3 (26:22):
I couldn't slow my my record player would not slow
down any farther than thirty three, so I had to
put something heavy on it to slow it down so
I could hear the intervals between notes and what notes
they were and try to figure out where they were.

(26:44):
I mean, I'm totally self taught. I had nobody to
tell me anything ever, And and it wasn't until much
later in the eighties when there were started to become
homespundings and stuff like that, and teaching teaching tools to
teach all instruments, and Dobro was included in those. But

(27:08):
it was it was hard because there were plenty of
people could tell you how to play guitar or manlin
or benjo or a violin, but dobro nobody, and uh
so we were all just kind of listening to each other.
And then you'd meet to another dobro player and it
was like you'd learned a foreign language, gone to that
country and tried it out on them and they actually

(27:29):
understood you.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
You know. It was that kind of a great feeling.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
And and the dobro community was a very very close
knit community because there weren't that many of us, but
now there are. There are like one thousand percent more
Doughbro players now than there were when I first went
on the road.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
Okay, so you're learning how to play the conventional stream
for people from your demo. My demo is They then
formed bands, They played high school gigs, et cetera. What
did you do?

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, I played it.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
I played in bars with my dad's bluegrass band. I
you know, we didn't play behind chicken wire, but we
needed it a few times. We were playing in in
bars around around Warren, Ohio where uh we played in
one bar that was right across the street from Alcoa,
And when the midnight shift from Alcoa let out, those

(28:27):
guys all came in that bar right across the street,
and we already had our our regular clientele in there, dancing,
you know, and and uh and making them so much
noise we could barely hear ourselves.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
That was it.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
And but uh, yeah, I I when they my friends
didn't know what I was doing. I didn't tell anybody
that I was a musician. I didn't tell anybody that
I played bluegrass music, country music, rock and roll. Didn't
tell them anything until my senior year, a bunch of
my pals found out where I was playing. They knew

(29:02):
I played. In fact, one of my friends told me,
he said, show and tell. One time you brought your
dough brow to school and the teacher gave you a
c And I thought, well, I just don't think she
understood what I was about. And but yeah, there was

(29:25):
nobody and and the band teacher for the high school
found out that I was a musician after that.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
They told him and he said, why didn't you want to?
Why could Why didn't you play in the band?

Speaker 3 (29:34):
And I said, it's not the same it's not the
same kind of music, and it's it's a completely different
world from what you guys are doing. Marching on a
football field and stuff.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
I'm not. I don't do that. I play for I
play for live people, and who.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
Are you know, applauding and and you know, I'm playing
for fun.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Really, I'm playing for fun.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
And and it was all fun until I got up
to be about fifteen sixteen years old, and then it
was then I got scouted by a professional bluegrass band.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Okay, going sideways for a second. Not everybody got sophisticated.
Please define bluegrass music.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
To define bluegrass music is a tough thing to do.
I mean, nobody agrees. But one thing that I think
we can all agree on is there was no bluegrass
music until Bill Monroe stepped on stage with Earl Scruggs.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
And Lester Flat And that's the night bluegrass was born.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
It was right here at the Grand Ole Opry in
Nashville in nineteen forty seven, and Earl Scruggs stepped up
to the microphone and played something so fast nobody had
ever heard anything like that before, and he got I
think they got five standing ovations, and they played the
song like five times, and that had never been done

(31:08):
at the Opry, you know, other than Hank Williams doing
something like that, nobody had ever done anything like that before.
But bluegrass music is basically a basic bluegrass band is
comprised of a guitar, a banjo, a violin, fiddle, mandolin,
and a bass and then Dobro is sort of the

(31:30):
stepchild of all of that. Josh Graves made it work
for Flatten Scruggs, gave them a broader audience than they
had because.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Of his blues influence.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
Just the instrument sort of inspires a blues atmosphere, you
know when he and he was from an area of
the country that that and he learned from an old
African American man who hung out around around Knoxville, Tennessee,
And so when he joined Flatten Scruggs, there was this

(32:02):
whole blues thing that happened to them that had never
happened before, and they used it and that's why they
were such a popular band with so many people. But
bluegrass they didn't they didn't even say they were a
bluegrass band because Bill Monroe was a bluegrass band, and
it was just they didn't want to be called bluegrass

(32:23):
because they thought it was limiting Bill Monroe and the vocals.
In bluegrass, the vocals are pitched kind of high because
Bill Monroe sang everything in it, mostly in B and
in higher keys than most men did so, And so

(32:43):
I think that that kind of explains bluegrass is different
than country music in that it's mostly acoustic as well.
We've all adapted pickups and all kinds of things to
our acoustic instruments at this point, so it's no longer
purely purely acoustic. But that was the only way we

(33:05):
could play in great, big places without feedback and things
like that was to sort of, you know, make our instruments,
adapt our instruments to the situation. But bluegrass music, I
don't that that's pretty much how I could explain bluegrass
music is the parts, and it comes from it comes
from the South, it comes from gospel music, comes from

(33:28):
rag time, it comes from the blues, comes from the
field hollers. Gospel music is a huge, huge part of
bluegrass music. And and just the sentiment, more of the
sentiment than that, like I believe and you must believe,
it's it's it's there are songs that have been sung

(33:51):
for a long time, and and bluegrass music is a
music that's very stays true to its roots as true
to its roots as it possible, and when it goes
out of bounds once in a while, and then it'll
get pulled back.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
Okay for the uneducated, Where is the line between bluegrass
and traditional country.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
There's a very fine line between bluegrass music and traditional country.
Traditional country, you know that was played in the fifties
and sixties was very much related to bluegrass music other
than they introduced electric instruments and drums, and that's pretty
much the difference. That's the difference. They were singing about

(34:36):
the same they were all singing about the same subject
matter pretty much, you know. But bluegrass music is a
music that came from porches, you know, and people just
playing in the country just to pass the time. So
did old time country music. But country music is a

(34:58):
more and has always been more of a commercial has
more of a commercial side to it, and bluegrass, you know,
because it came from a you know, a poor, poor background,
didn't really I don't think it expected much for a

(35:20):
long time and until it learned how to play the
country music game, you know, until we actually monetized our music.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
So tell me about getting scouted.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
I was playing with my dad's band.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
In nineteen seventy two, playing at a festival with it
with my dad's band. And also there was a band
there who was sort of the cream of the bluegrass
crop at that point, was called the Country Gentleman, And
they were based out of Washington, d C. And there
was this whole white collar bluegrass situation going on in

(35:58):
the Seldom scene and bands like that around Washington, d C.
But the Country Gentlemen. I looked out we were playing.
I was playing with my dad. We were playing the set,
and I looked out and I saw one of the guys,
Charlie Waller over to my left. I saw Bill Emerson,
the banjo player to my out in the center, and
I mean, it was like being scouted as a baseball player.

(36:19):
And they came up to me like right after that
show and ask if I could leave with them that
night and go to the next show. And I said, guys,
I gotta I gotta go back to school. I mean,
I need to go to I need to go to
It'll be my junior year in high school. I need
to go back to school. So the next summer after that,

(36:40):
after my junior year, I went with them. I went
out on the road for that summer and I missed.
I missed my last my senior year of football because
I was out running around with the bluegrass band all
over the country instead of having my spring training with
my football team. So I didn't play football that year.

(37:01):
And but I think it all worked out.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Okay. Uh.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
I don't think I was going to be a professional
football player anyway. But I had a chance to go
to as a as an English major, to go to
the University of Maryland, and I and I, I was
out on the road with country gentlemen, walking through a
field and listen to all of these people play. After this,
after the concerts were all over, and people would camp

(37:28):
at these big bluegrass festivals and they and at night
bonfires rose up and there were jam sessions everywhere. You
could just walk around and listen to different bands play,
people play.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
And I thought, you know, this is this. I love this.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
I want to do this forever. I wanted to be
like this forever. Well it hasn't been but.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Music. It was just music.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
It just made me, made me whole, It finished me,
and it uh and I and I thought, you know,
I I think I would rather do this. I think
I'm better at this than then I would be as
an English teacher or you know, reading late literature for
the rest of my life. So I made a choice
to stay on the road and become a musician, a

(38:14):
road musician, and hopefully a recording musician someday.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
Okay, you said you hoped that it would be like
this festival with bonfires and jam sessions, but it wasn't.
What was it like?

Speaker 3 (38:30):
For a long time, it was, and there was a
there was There was a sort of a just an
era where the festivals were more family oriented and people
would go there to meet other people that played bluegrass
because it was still a sort of a rare commodity
to run across somebody who even knew what it was.

(38:51):
And as it as it built, you know, and then
that you know, things things like the nitty gritty dirt
bands Circle, the Unbroken Record made a big difference. Then
later on, oh, brother made a big difference. And but uh,
it didn't. When I say it didn't stay that way,
was because it became the festivals got bigger, they got

(39:13):
more harder to manage the people, you know, and and
then all of a sudden, you know, every festival thought
it should be Woodstock, and so there would be thousands
of people the motorcycle gang, the Pagans, whoever showed up
would be the security for the festival.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
And that just got it got too crazy, he got
out of hand, and uh.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
And anymore, you can go to festivals, and there are
some festivals that still you can find people jamming out
in the after at night after after dark, but they're
very far a few and far between anymore. And the
festivals really aren't set up that way anymore either. There's
still a lot of camping, but there's you know, I

(39:56):
don't know. Uh, we've just changed as a society. We've
we've changed. We're more private, I guess, I don't know. Uh,
but there's less jamming in the campground. But I don't know. Uh,
it's it's just a different time. People more When it
was more of a family event, you saw a lot

(40:19):
more people get out, and you saw a lot more
people get out and jam, you know, and it was
it was more local, felt more local.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
Okay, So you take the path to be a musician
as opposed to continue your education. So what happens are
you on the road with the band, do you switch bands?
How does your career ensue?

Speaker 3 (40:46):
Well, I played with the country Gentlemen, for a couple
of years, and uh, after my after my junior year
of high school, I went out and played the summer
with him. Then I came back, finished my scene your
year of high school, turned eighteen, graduated from high school, and.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Moved to Washington, d c. All in the same week.

Speaker 3 (41:08):
And that's that's when I was you know, it's not
it wasn't too late to turn back now, but it
was like I decided this is what I was going
to do, and moved down there, got an apartment and
started working full time music, being on the road, you know,
traveling in a bus and being on the road, and

(41:30):
I met other musicians, you know, through through the course
of just playing festivals and and just you know, meeting
other musicians. And I started working with this guitar player
named Tony Rice who was just a phenomena, and Ricky
Skagg's the same, and we I got into a band.
I was hired by a fello named J. D. Crowe,

(41:52):
banjo player in Lexington, Kentucky, who just he had this
band with Ricky and Tony, and it was like it
was like a step up for me. It was a
musical step up. And I followed those things. I followed
those opportunities where I thought, I can be a better
musician here, I can learn something here, you know. And

(42:13):
it wasn't about money to me. It was about it
was about learning. It was about learning to be a
musician in all aspects of it.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
And these guys.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
Gave me a real foot up and it just opened
my mind to a lot of other different kinds of music.
Even I heard Weather Report and Chick Korea the same day,
and that blew my mind. I thought, WHOA. I thought
I knew music pretty well, but this is something I've
never heard before.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
I mean, this is brand news.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
So I started, you know, my forays into that area
with David Grisman on the West Coast and meeting all
these different musicians all over the country. And that's when music,
the bluegrass music started to change, started to take in
a lot of jazz elements, a lot of blues elements.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
You know.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
It allowed itself for these things to pour in because
we have these renaissance periods. All music does, but I
notice some more in bluegrass music because right now we're
in one right where Chris Deely and Molly Tuttle and
Sierra Hull, Sierra Farrell, Meuni it's an explosion of brand

(43:26):
new talent. And I think that happens every fifteen twenty years.
I was in one of those classes. You know, it's
like it happens.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Music is.

Speaker 3 (43:39):
Like all music starts at twelve o'clock. If you go
around the dial, it starts. It starts with roots music.
You know, something terrible happens in the world roots music
twelve o'clock, and then it goes around the dial and
it gets shinier and shinier, and by the time it
gets back around about eleven o'clock, everybody's going, oh man,
this is too much. We can't deal with this anymore.
And then something happens and we're back fruits music start over.

(44:04):
And if you I've been here for in Nashville for
at least three of those occasions.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
When I first moved to town, we were leaving what
was called the uh was it called the uh uh
oh it was. It was Mickey Gilly and every and
when everybody had everybody had a mechanical bull. It was
the urban Cowboys scare. That's what we called it. It

(44:34):
was like the folk scare that happened in the sixties
and then and then the urban Cowboys scare, and then
we had the Broe Country scare and we you know,
but but when I came to town is about the time.
Uh then Ricky, when I moved to Nashville, Ricky Ricky
Skaggs hit, uh, uh Randy Travis hit and uh, Emmy

(44:55):
Lou was hitting. And it was the traditional country movement.
And I was here at the perfect time to belong
to that, to be part of that, and that really
gave me, gave me a foot up on becoming a
more of a musician, you know. Then then I went
out on the road with Emmy Lou Harris, and I

(45:15):
saw how these huge shows move buses, trucks, you know,
lots of musicians, you know, lots of guests, you know,
all these things had all works and and that was
a different time, you know, and then that saw its
time go away, you know. And there have been different

(45:37):
scares of Barbara Mandrel scare or the you know, all
of these different times in country music where we're in
one right now. We're in one right now where I
went to fill out my CMA ballot the other.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
Day and I didn't know who anybody was.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
I mean, and at one point I was doing you know,
fifteen sessions a week, playing with everybody and knew who
everyone was. Now I barely know who anybody is because
I'm just not doing that anymore, not playing on it
all as many sessions.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
You know, it's more pick and choose.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Let's go back. Graduate from high school, you moved to
d C. You're eighteen years old, you go on the road.
In the rock world, it's sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
What was it like in the bluegrass world for you?

Speaker 2 (46:34):
It was pretty much sex, drugs and bluegrass.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
But it was, uh, you know, we're young. We were
doing everything we're supposed to do, and we're young, and
as we got older.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
We watched the other people do the same thing. But yeah,
it was wild out there.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
And and you know, bluegrass went through a drug period,
just like rock and roll did. It's just like it
was everywhere. And I don't know what it's like now
because I've I'm out of that. I'm not taking drugs,
so I don't know what they've got, But I think
that I think they they I think they pretty much

(47:12):
hoopooed the drugs and and and a lot of them
just no, I don't want drugs, you know, it was.
It was the period of the kids were going to
say no to drugs, and so everyone did. And uh,
I know Chris Deely uh never touched anything.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
You know.

Speaker 3 (47:28):
I remember when he turned eighteen and he and he
saw his first movie that wasn't a G rated movie.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
You know.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
He was telling me about all these movies and and
and uh, it was fun to watch these guys who
were our you know who we had generated these people,
Uh through them watching Bayla Fleck and Sam Bush and
Tony Rice and and me and Mark O'Connor play.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
They they went to school on us. Man. They they
learned everything that we did.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
And and uh, you know the only thing they don't
have that we have our old souls.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
You know.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
Okay, so you talk about switching from the country gentleman
to Ricky Skaggs Tony Rice. Everybody's humble, But what's the
real situation you see? Are you taking advantage of the
situation or are you is it just dumb luck You're
sitting there and someone says, hey, come play with me.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
It's a combination of both. Really, I I I Uh,
the way I joined Alison Kraus and Union Station was
just a phone call, you know, it was like I
had produced one of her records and played on just
about every record she had that she'd made, but I
wasn't expecting that call and and.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
And yeah, it was like, yeah it was I was.

Speaker 3 (48:53):
I was playing the game. I was watching where my
next musical step could be. Uh, As I say, it
wasn't financial, but you know, things things were better, I
mean because I was, you know, more identifiable and and
playing on lots of records and everything like that, and

(49:13):
showing up with lots of shows. But it wasn't It wasn't.
Uh that's I wasn't doing it for the money. I
was doing it for the for the music. But but uh,
I don't know. These these these new kids cropping up
billy strings is amazing, I mean, And that's that's way.
That's another phenomena that we could talk about. But you know,

(49:36):
I did a show with him the other night, and
and it's the same songs my father was singing to
those steel workers, is what he's singing to that audience,
and plus writing his own material too. But it's a
phenomena to watch the audience reaction. And I would I

(49:58):
was going from from one gig to another, from I
went from the country Gentleman to JD. Crow to the Whites,
Buck White and his two daughters, Sharon and Cheryl, and
we had top ten records, country records. Then from there
I was doing so many sessions that I had to

(50:20):
get off the road with them and just take care
of my recording career. But then I got bored.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
And I needed I needed the crowd reaction. I needed.

Speaker 3 (50:31):
I needed people, you know, to give me new ideas
and to try things out on me, because that's a
great place to try try new things in front of
an audience, if you get a reaction there, and then
take it back to the studio with you and use it.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
You know, in some way. But just.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
I just loved I just loved playing. So I would
go from one one gig to another, and worked a
lot with Peter Rowan, who was gave me a very
worldly view of not just bluegrass, but you know, traveling
through Europe and doing a lot more of that. Seeing
the world a little bit more opened up, opened up

(51:13):
things a little more for me as well.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
Okay, so you're working with Ricky Skaggs, working with Tony Rice. Yeah,
does someone say in the world of doughbro are there
other people who were the first call. How do you
get noticed in how many other people are in the world.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
I was pretty I was pretty alone in that world.
I mean, there was Josh Graves who played who was
getting older, but it wasn't with flattened scrugs anymore, didn't
have quite the notoriety anymore. But still just he's my
man to look to if I want to remember something

(51:55):
good and hear something good. And Mike Aldridge was another
Doughbro player from the DC area that was just amazing
and and had taken the doughbro into a different subject
matter with a seldom scene mean, and was wasn't playing
so fast all the time, but but very his tone
was so good.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
So that so here's speed.

Speaker 3 (52:16):
And then tone, you know, and uh, I'm trying to
have both at the same time. It depends on the song.
So it depends on the subject matter, you know. I've
dived deep into these things and to try to figure
out what to play because I want to be as
as uh empathetic as the singer. I feel like I

(52:39):
am another singer and and so I that's that's how
I go at it. But but moving from one band
to another was not a not a decision about money.
It was a conscious decision about becoming a better musician.
And uh, the final one, you know, with with Alison,

(52:59):
I have my own band. Who you you saw, you
saw us and we're.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
Yeah, gave us a bunch of love of jazz Fest.
You made my day.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
I mean, it was raining, it was cold, I was miserable,
and then I saw that it was like, oh, okay,
all right, it was a good day after all.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
But I had my own band.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
And and love playing that stuff, you know, playing with
my own band, because I those are all my songs
and I get to hear their take on what my
on my songs. So it's good. But working with Alison
is like the pinnacle.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
Of all these worlds.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
You know, You're you're playing on a big stages, huge crowds,
great sound systems, everything is everything is state of the art,
you know. And and to walk out on that stage
and hear that voice every night, and and all of
those players, all those guys, my friends for more than
twenty years now, it's it's just a it's it's the

(54:01):
culmination of a long a lot of work for me,
for me, and uh, I feel so at home in it.
And it's like it's like part of my legacy at
this point.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Okay, so you're playing with these varying things. How do
you end up in Nashville as a studio musician.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
I moved here to work with the Whites, with Buck
White and his daughters, and we started We had a
we had a record deal with curb Uh and then
we had a record deal with Capital. But we were
pumping out these you know, number ten, number nine songs
and we never made it to number one or anything
like that.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
But that's when.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
It got really busy for me because we were right
in the middle of the traditional country movement and I
was playing on all kinds of records, you know, just
just you know, anybody.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
Called I was just jumping. I was I was doing
anything I was called for.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
And it got to where it happens to a lot
of musicians that way, you get you know, there was
different scales and there, and they're different session times you
know there at we do session times at ten, two,
and six, and I was doing all three of those,
you know, every day and kind of getting burnt out

(55:25):
on it. You know, you you start to wonder if
you had just played this song with some other artists
two three days ago. You don't know, you can't remember
because it's all getting mixed up in there, worried about
if you had just played the same solo or something
like it, you know, last week or something, because it was, uh,

(55:46):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
It was just burnout time for me.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
I needed to do I needed to get away from
it for a little while and and uh too to
realize how wonderful it really was. And uh but that's
when I took the job with Alison. I was right
at the end of a of a really tired of
doing what I'm doing kind of session. I was actually
producing a band when she called and and so I

(56:14):
started doing that, but I kept my own band at
the same time for just you know, to be able
to roll into that and know exactly what I was doing.
And uh but but playing with Alison was like you're
part of an ensemble, You're part of You're You're a
puzzle piece.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
And I like that. I really like that, really like
being part of a puzzle.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
So how long did you do the studio thing?

Speaker 3 (56:40):
About ten twelve years? Ten twelve years. I was I
was just running down. I was home most of the time,
and I was running downtown with a doughbro and going
in and playing on two or three songs and then
going to the next studio, you know.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
And that was that was my job. That's what I did.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
I replaced saxophones, a lot of saxophones, to bring a
song back to country instead of you know, if they decided,
if if they cut the record and they played it
for somebody and they went, that's no, it needs to
be more country. They called me to replace the the
saxophone part, bring it back to country music. It's not

(57:22):
just me, but you know, things that would make it
more country.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Uh So, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
It's it's uh, it's it's it's hard to it's hard
to remember. Uh why I actually, you know, shied away
from it. I just stopped when I got the gig
with Alison. I stopped doing a lot of the sessions
that I didn't really want to do, you know, that

(57:51):
were worked for me. I started being a little more
choosy than what I did. And that's the way it's been.
So that's why it's remained up to now.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
Okay, when you start to pull back, is there somebody
to fill your shoes or does the phone keep ringing,
Hey Jerry, we need you.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
The phone keeps ringing.

Speaker 3 (58:10):
But there are also guys that can fill my shoes.
But also there are you know, there for for that
many dobro players, new dobro players, there are ten times
that many bands, you know, so the whole thing was
growing exponentially.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
But dobro players there are so many good ones now.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
I mean I love hearing other Doughbro players because I
went so long for and not didn't hear any, you know,
I was it was just me and two or three
other guys at a festival, and you know, we were
like the lost tribe, you know when somebody would meet.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
When I'd meet a.

Speaker 3 (58:51):
Dobro player, was like, whoa. You know, you don't have
to show me everything, you know, I'm just glad to
meet you. You know, I'm just glad to meet another
dobro player. We're a rare bunch.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
Okay. You also play the lap steel guitar. Tell us
exactly what that is.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
It's it's the forerunner of the pedal steel guitar. I mean,
it's sort of between dobroh was the first slide slide
guitar like that, and then then lap steals came out
and they're just a board with strings, you know, and uh,
it's a pretty simple, simple instrument that got keys on it,

(59:30):
but the strand the strings are high and has pickup
on it, so it's an electric instrument and uh, but
there are so many different things you can do with it.
There was a guy named Little Roy Wiggins that was
here in the in the UH in the forties and
fifties who uh just revolutionized country music with this the steel.

(59:52):
And then Buddy Emmons and Shot Jackson and these guys
started working on pedals, putting pedals on it to raise
and lower strings and do all kinds of things, and
it became a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
It became a pedal steel guitar. So that's the three
steps sort of this. So the lap steel is between those,
but lap steel now is used. David Linley was.

Speaker 3 (01:00:14):
One of the greatest examples I can think of of
of what I think lap steels should be used for.
And they're just like they're rock and roll instruments, and
they can be they can be really sweet and old
time country music. But lap steels are used as overdrive.

(01:00:35):
You know that the sound is overdriven and and it's
sort of a harder, meaner sounding instrument, you know, but.

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
There are really pretty things you can do with it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:46):
But it to me, it gave me license to be
to be a little more ferocious, you know, to be
a little more ferocious, to start using some of that
stuff I learned when I was laying in my bed
listening to Cleveland stations, you know, to sort of take
on a Joe Walsh attitude all of a sudden instead

(01:01:08):
of instead of laying back in bluegrass world.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
Well, you mentioned Linterley, you mentioned Walsh. To what degree
have you intersected with these rock musicians, these rock guitarists,
and what has that experience been like? Have they been
wanting to learn your lessons you've been learning their lessons
or just treating stories.

Speaker 3 (01:01:30):
But David Linley and I were really good friends and
we would trade We would trade stories. And I remember
having a slide. There was a brand new slide, and
I was a Winnipeg at a big festival, big folk
festival in Winnipeg, and I was running across this field
to surprise David with this brand new slide. And I

(01:01:53):
got about ten feet from him and I held up
the slide and he held up one exactly like it.
And Ry Cooter there's another one that they say, never
meet your heroes, right. I mean, the first time I
met Ry Cooter, I said, I, Ry, I'm I'm a
doughbro player and he said gee.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
And just melted me. I just you know, shattered me.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
I just like they almost had to pick me up
off the rug and with a you know, vacuum cleaner.
I was in pieces. I was so shattered, uh that.
But then I met later on met his brother in law,
Russ Teidelman, who produced a record for me and I
and I explained to him. I said, he said, well,
what did Rye say? And I said that he said gee,
and he said, yeah, doughbro ge And I went.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Oh, is that what he meant? And he says yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
So the next call I get from Ry Cooter is
inviting me to one of his concerts. So I felt
better after that. You know, we we healed and we're
we're friends now.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
So but Derek Trucks is another guy.

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
You know, it's like you talk about slide players these days,
Derek Truck's name is going to come up because he's
probably the greatest living.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
Slide guitar player there is out there.

Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
I mean all the you know, straight out of Dwayne
omen you know, he played with the Alvin Brothers. He's
just he's just got this thing. And the first time
I heard him, I I thought, God, this is if
I played that guitar. This is what I would want
to sound like, this is what I would this is
how I would play. I heard him play, and we

(01:03:32):
just had this, you know, this great link to each other.

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
And we're good friends. And we talked. We talked, you know,
fairly off and and.

Speaker 3 (01:03:44):
Yeah, a lot of a lot of the people that
I admired, and uh like David and and Derek and
uh and Eric Clapton, you know who I've worked with
now and produced produced a cut with for Eric Clapton,
which sounds crazy but true. It's we're all. We all

(01:04:05):
kind of I was surprised they knew who I was.
I was just shocked that they knew me. But uh,
you know, and and I was just doing I was
in hero worship world, you know, and uh, I didn't
know they they kind.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Of were too. It was it was it's it's shocking.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
How do you end up producing a record for Eric Clapton?
What's that experience like?

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
Well, I I do this. I do this show.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
I'm a co music director for this show called the
Transatlantic Sessions that we do. We start in Scotland. This
whole thing was we filmed. We filmed six years of it,
isn't it And a couple of years ago we started
touring the show. So we played two nights and Glad
School at the Grand Concert Hall. And then it's like

(01:05:02):
a seventeen piece band plus five guests who's who may
speak Gaelic, may sing in Gaelic or uh, you know whatever,
but they're they're all people. We bring people from America
and just put them together with people over there they've
never met people and you know, reg who are on

(01:05:23):
the same level as them, and just kind of it's
a collaboration show and we just see what comes out
of it. And it's a it's a different show every year,
and the last show is the last show. It never
happens again, and it's just it's it's amazing this music.
But but the way I got to Eric to produce

(01:05:44):
an a a song on Eric was he wanted to
he wanted to play on the show. He wanted to
he wanted to play play with us on the show.
He'd been to the show five or six times in
in London when we play there, and and I'd gotten
to know him through Crossroads and a whole bunch of
things like that, and he wanted to know if.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
Get up play with us. I said, I'm playing this
song every night.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
Called uh when my while my guitar gently weeps.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
I said, I think you know that one.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
And he said he said, He said, do you play
the chorus? And I said, yeah, yeah, I played the chorus.
And he said, I've never played the chorus. And I said,
you never played the chorus?

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
So but he got up and played with us that night,
and he also did this other song called sam Hall,
and he and I kind of arranged it backstage and
then treated it, gave it a Transatlantic Sessions treatment where
at the end of it, the big crescendo and the
big end is alien pipes take the take the the melody,

(01:06:52):
and so all of a sudden there's this you know,
wild animal loose in the room. A lot of people
don't know what that sound is, you know what they
hear it when they hear it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
And but he really liked the mixture of all the
instruments you know, there's two violins, pipes, guitar, bass and drums,
piano and an accordion, and and it's all of these
guys who play Celtic music are all in the band,

(01:07:23):
but they're they're having to adapt to some American country
music at the same time. And and and we're playing
We're playing uh old tunes, you know, two hundred year
old fiddle tunes. You know that just make your will
boil blood. You know, it's just that kind of you
feel like you're sitting in a room full of vikings
all of a sudden, and then uh it's just beautiful, beautiful,

(01:07:47):
uplifting music. And Eric really loved it, and so he said,
why don't we record this?

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):
And I said that'd be great. When do you want
to do it? When I go, can we should? I
have everybody stand down?

Speaker 3 (01:07:57):
He said no, we'll wait a month or so, and
so I had to fly back. Most of the guys
are there are from the UK or or Ireland. And
uh so everybody convened at Abbey Road in the same
in the in the Beatles in the Beatles room. And Eric,

(01:08:19):
you know, he was trying to he's trying to do
everything to just kind of completely blow our minds.

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):
And he did.

Speaker 3 (01:08:24):
And so we're in there playing in the Beatles room
and hanging out in the you know, in the cafeteria
where the Beatles ate every day, and nothing's changed in there.
I mean, it's all the same. It's just an amazing
week of box checking for me. He said, Okay, we're
going to Abbey Road. All I get to take the
transit Land guys with me. Great, Eric Clapton, you kidding, Yeah,

(01:08:49):
this this is You can't.

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
I can't. I couldn't have made this up. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:08:53):
It's like, this is so good and he's and he's, uh,
you know, we have a lot of things in common.
We talked about a lot of things, and he's he's
a pretty wide open guy at this point in his life.
I don't think he's always been, but he is right now.
And you know, there's some there's been some bumps lately.
I just you know, him voicing his opinions about things,

(01:09:14):
you know, but uh, when we get together, we don't
talk about any of that stuff. We're we're all music.
It's all music, and and it's it's amazing to be
uh me and to meet Eric Clapton, to meet Eric,
to meet to play with Eric Clapton, to play with

(01:09:35):
Earl Scruggs, to play with Bill Monroe, to play with
all these guys in between, Vince Gill, you know, all
these you know, Eagles records, whatever. It's an amazing life.
I couldn't have I couldn't have ever guessed at anything
like any of this would have ever happened.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
So how'd you end up working with Russ Titelman and
what'd you learn from him in terms of producing records.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
Russ was one of those spellows. I used to meet
all the time at places in New York and we go,
we should do something together someday, you know, you do
that with a thousand people, and it never happens. But
I got to this point where I wanted to make
a record, but I didn't want I didn't want to
be the producer. I wanted to play. I wanted to
pay more attention to what I was doing and uh.

(01:10:22):
And then so I called Russ and he said, yeah,
I'd love to do that. So we made we made
a deal and he started making calls and we made
this record called Traveler, uh, and it had Mumford and sons.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
I did a cut of.

Speaker 3 (01:10:39):
Of uh the the the boxer couldn't think of it
and Uh we did that out in the middle of
nowhere in a studio outside London and had a great time.
And those guys were big friends of mine and uh
and then uh keV Moo came in.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
Uh just like it was.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
It was fun and he and uh and he knew Clapton.
That's how I That's how I was. That's that was
My first meeting with with Eric was uh uh Russ saying, Hey,
Jerry Douglas would like for you to sing this song
and he says, I would like to do it and
be flat. So it's like, okay, all right, I guess

(01:11:26):
we're on the road.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
And we were.

Speaker 3 (01:11:28):
We were in New Orleans cutting this record. So I
had Doctor John playing piano on one side of me
and this whole, you know, this whole these great musicians
from New Orleans playing and it was just another another
world of another feel, another way.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
To do this.

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
You know, there's so many ways to make to make
great music, and I'm I'm lucky. I'm getting to find
out a few of them down along the way.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
So how did you end up producing records? And when
someone hire you what are they getting.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
On the radio.

Speaker 3 (01:12:04):
I could listen to, uh, you know, there would be
a cut, a country music cut, and then there'd be
a bluegrass music cut come on the radio for some reason,
you know, probably on Exam or Sirius where they could
still mix the genres and uh, and it just didn't
stand up, you know, it just didn't stand up. It

(01:12:24):
didn't sound as good. I mean, I don't think they
paid as much attention to recording. They were happy to
be recording, but they didn't have bluegrass bands. Most of
them did not have the blue the studio savvy when
they went in.

Speaker 2 (01:12:38):
They didn't know.

Speaker 3 (01:12:39):
Where to place the microphone on their instrument to get
the best to get the best performance, and or how
to maybe leave this maybe instead of going to this verse,
you know, maybe something else happens here.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:12:52):
Just just keeping the songs interesting was what people hired
me for. I had, I had, I got a good
track record with bluegrass albums, different bands, producing different bands,
And then I then I started getting called for that
because I was, uh, you know, I was doing okay

(01:13:16):
and and and plus I never thought you could hear
the bass on bluegrass records. So I made sure there
was enough bass, you know, I just I kind of
brought the sound of was trying to bring the sound
of bluegrass up to the next level.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
You know, uh.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
In in in in treating, uh in treating the studio,
you know, really using the really using the everything that
was in.

Speaker 2 (01:13:44):
The studio to make the music better.

Speaker 3 (01:13:45):
Let these guys play and put the microphones in the
right places, and just give them an idea once in
a while. Sometimes you're a referee, you know. Sometimes a
producer is just a referee between people. But this was
I like to sit down with the bands and find
out what the songs are about and and see how

(01:14:07):
they play them, and then make suggestions from there, you know,
trying not to completely reinvent the wheel, because these people
have a sound, and I want to I want to.

Speaker 2 (01:14:17):
I want to.

Speaker 3 (01:14:18):
I want to keep their sound. I want to keep
the sound of this band. But I want to make it.
I want to make it. I want it to be
big enough to be heard.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:14:30):
So what about your band, the Earls of Leicester.

Speaker 3 (01:14:35):
I always wanted to Flatten Scrugs band. I always wanted
to be in that band and heard them all my life,
and I just over the years, I've been keeping my
eye on the on everybody that played out there on
the road, and I was looking, I was casting, I
was casting Lester, I was casting Earl. I was casting

(01:14:58):
everybody down to the slap and bass, and uh, finally
got time to do that, and uh when I'm working
with Alice and we took some time off and I
and I just went, yeah, this is as good a
time as any to go ahead and just get this
band together that I've always wanted to get.

Speaker 2 (01:15:17):
So the last I got.

Speaker 3 (01:15:18):
You know, Charlie Charlie Cushman, the banjo player, and Johnny
Johnny Warren Uh to play the fiddle. Johnny Warren's father,
Paul played the fiddle with flatt and scrugs, and he
played the fiddle exactly like his dad. So that was
a no brainer. I mean, those two guys were like
they were. They were Lester and uh or they were

(01:15:39):
Earl and Paul.

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):
I had that.

Speaker 3 (01:15:41):
So I got Tim O'Brien to be Curly Vey or
Curly Seckler, who was the tenor singer mandlin player, and
there weren't a lot of mandolin solos in flatt and
scrugs songs. If you've ever paid attention to that. Well,
they they they kind of had a deal with Bill
Monroe that they would not be a mandolin driven band,

(01:16:04):
that they would be a banjo driven band. And so
the mandolin players that they got were not didn't have
to be a great manlin player.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
They had to be a good tenor singer.

Speaker 3 (01:16:13):
And even Lester said early, he's not that great a
mandlin player, but he looks good holding one. So I
so I cast and got this band together, and then
we went. They all came over here, and the last
guy to cast was was Sean Camp. I didn't know
who Lester was going to be. I thought about Del McCurry,

(01:16:35):
but then I thought, no, that's Del McCurry. Can only
be Del McCurry. He's Del McCurry. That would not be right.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
So my wife said, what about Sean Camp?

Speaker 3 (01:16:44):
And I said really? So I called him up. I
said would you be interested in doing anything like this?
And he said yes he. I said, well, we're going
to have rehearse tomorrow evening. If you want to come over,
we're going to run through a couple of songs and
just see what it sounds like. And he showed up
in a blue pinstriped suit with a boat with a

(01:17:07):
with a tie with the flattened scrugs tie and the
hat everything, and we started we we got we got
to the middle of the first chorus of the first song,
and I just threw up my hands and I went.

Speaker 2 (01:17:20):
This is it. This is this is it.

Speaker 3 (01:17:22):
This is as close as anyone's ever going to get
to sounding like flattened scrugs. So we need to do
something with this. And I checked my schedule and we
had I had ten days in the middle of July,
and I said, we're going to record in the middle
of July. So we did all this studying, you know,

(01:17:42):
and down to the week, we wrote notes, we we
we wrote notes on who backed up when, on what song,
and we got as close as we possibly could. And
the record won a Grammy, you know. But the main
reason I wanted to do the band was, you know,
other than to play with flatten scrugs, was uh, flattened

(01:18:05):
scrugs and that and that whole part of bluegrass music
had disappeared from the landscape out there, you know. People
weren't doing people had forgotten about them, left them so
far behind, and I and I just thought, there are
a lot of fundamentals.

Speaker 2 (01:18:20):
That you can learn here.

Speaker 3 (01:18:22):
These guys, these guys did it right. We're all trying
to do it this way. And and I we just
sort of reinjected flattened scrugs back into bluegrass world. And
we we we made our point, you know, we made
our point. We we won everything but that the IBM as,
We won everything but female vocalists that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
But it was, it was, it was. It was just
a we got.

Speaker 3 (01:18:50):
Their attention and and then all of a sudden, there
were more ties, there were more suits, there were more
you know hats. You know, these guys doing more choreography
on stage with less microphones, because that's what we did.
We we did that too. We really wanted the full
effect and the choreography. You can hear it on the records.

(01:19:11):
You can hear these guys move into microphones, and uh,
it's something that's just gone. It's it's gone from the
landscape of bluegrass music. So I thought, well, let's let's
let's see if we can see if we can put
this back in. And I think we've been pretty successful

(01:19:31):
at that. And the band has slowed down just because
everybody's gotten so busy. And uh, but I think we're
going to record again, and uh, there's only so many.

Speaker 2 (01:19:41):
Times you can do Flatten scrug songs. You know. I
don't really want to do that. I want to I
want to write our.

Speaker 3 (01:19:48):
Own material and and produce it into in the way
Flattened Scrugs would have would have laid it out. That's
what I wanted to do. And I want to see
if people know the difference in an old song and
a new song. It's done by the same band, it's
done by you know. I think of us as as
Lester Flat and Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys
the next day, you know, like we could have done

(01:20:12):
it just a little bit different, you know, if we'd
had one more run. Earl Scruggs was so mad still
to this day because he had recorded a version of
Earl's Breakdown in a radio station back in the forties
and he'd only missed he'd only flubbed just the just

(01:20:32):
the end of the song, and thought he would go
back and just fix that. So they did another take
and then when it wasn't as good, and he said,
when he went back to just fix to put the
ending of the news song of the new cut on
the old cut, the guy had erased the original his
original cut. Oh he was, he was, he's still I

(01:20:54):
guarantee you he's still mad about that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:56):
And he's been dead for ten years.

Speaker 3 (01:20:59):
But I bet he's still mad about that.

Speaker 2 (01:21:04):
And and that's you know, that's another thing.

Speaker 3 (01:21:07):
You know, we we have to be careful, uh, in
the studio with.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
You know, save save, save, save save, you know, like
I'm doing right now. And uh, it's just it's it
was wacky.

Speaker 3 (01:21:21):
It was wacky, and he being him, conjuring up that
same feeling from all those years ago that was part
of his legacy. Everybody plays Earl's Breakdown, but they don't
know how good it could be. Only Earl knew how
good it could be.

Speaker 1 (01:21:37):
Okay, you have your first new album in seven years,
The Set. It's titled the Set, just to make that clear.
Why now, I.

Speaker 3 (01:21:47):
Had so many people coming up to me after concerts
going where can I find.

Speaker 2 (01:21:52):
This song and this song and this song?

Speaker 3 (01:21:54):
And I'm going, well, that song is on a record,
is on a is on vinyl, and you can't get
it anymore. So there were a lot of these things
that I kept hearing that so much and so many
record companies, you know, that I've dealt with over the
years and had contracts with and made a record, and

(01:22:14):
then that record would be shelved or or you know,
hard to.

Speaker 2 (01:22:17):
Find or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:22:19):
So I just went back in the studio and I'd
cut the songs that people had been asking me where
they could find them.

Speaker 2 (01:22:26):
I recut a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:22:27):
I recut some of my old songs, but I like
them better now because when you go in the studio
with a brand new song and you let it down
and you play it the best you can, you still
don't know it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:40):
You don't know the insides and the outsides of it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:43):
You have to you have to play it. You have
to play it with these other musicians for a while
for it to really, you know, to really come into
its own. So it had been years since i'd cut
for instance, a song I wrote called from Ankara to
Ismir that I wrote while I was in Turkey a
long time ago and doing uh I was doing playing embassies,

(01:23:08):
actually just playing in embassies, and.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
And so I wanted to do those songs. And but
I love the way this band plays things. I love
this band. This is this is the best band I've
ever had.

Speaker 3 (01:23:22):
I love playing with them all the way around, great personalities,
they're just really good fellas, and uh they play so good.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
There's there's so good. And so I just.

Speaker 3 (01:23:34):
Thought, let's go in and cut. Let's cut our set list.
Let's cut our set list, and you know, and add
we have we had a concerto that we had never recorded.

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
We put that on there the fifth season, and then.

Speaker 3 (01:23:50):
Just some other things. I made sure that each guy
in the band had a song on the record, so they,
you know, have more input from them. And uh, I mean,
this is it's a band record, but uh, you know,
it's it's it's different if you put your name in
like for Spotify or all these other things, if you

(01:24:13):
put your if I just put my name, I'll get
more hits than if I put band beside it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:19):
You know, that's a crazy it's true. But uh so
I cut it and I put just my name on it.

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):
And but it is a band record. I really consider
it a band record. But for for uh, you know,
for for reasons of algorithms, I had to do it
that way.

Speaker 2 (01:24:42):
Crazy sounds crazy, but it's true.

Speaker 1 (01:24:46):
Are you a student of the game or did the
person who made the record have to tell.

Speaker 3 (01:24:49):
You that I'm a student of the game, and uh
I had I knew. I knew that from from other
people that had had this same thing came up, you know, And.

Speaker 2 (01:25:04):
And so I do.

Speaker 3 (01:25:06):
I do study the game, and I think the game's unfair.
And I've been to the Capitol a couple of times
with Naris to try to get these guys to come
to the table and talk about paying us what they
should be paying us.

Speaker 2 (01:25:17):
But they don't and they won't. And I don't know
we're gonna do about those people. We need to we
need to go in.

Speaker 3 (01:25:25):
There with like four or five bands playing at the
same time to get their attention.

Speaker 2 (01:25:31):
I think, I don't know what we have to do.

Speaker 3 (01:25:34):
But I got to play. I got to play my
doughbro all the way through the Capitol building one day.
And the rotunda is the best sound in the world. Yeah,
I loved it in there.

Speaker 2 (01:25:46):
That was so wonderful.

Speaker 1 (01:25:55):
Well, you've been in the game long enough to see
it change. So today they put out as many records,
and I think it's a day as they used to
put out forty years ago. So to what degree is
this a disincentive to record? The old days? It was
expensive to record. Few people could make records. If you
reach a certain hurdle, people were aware of you. Your

(01:26:18):
record might be listened to today. No matter how fantastic
you are, you might get lost in the tsunami of product.
So do you say, hey, not even make a record
at all, or you put it out there and have
low expectations, or don't spend that much. Where's your head at?

Speaker 2 (01:26:36):
Well?

Speaker 3 (01:26:37):
I loved the days when we when when recording was expensive,
when you went into a big sound stage and everybody
was there and every everything went down at the same time,
and it was and it was amazing because the the real,
the real music that counts is the music that meets
in the air. It's not it's not the you know,

(01:26:58):
it's not the music that comes right off of one instruments.

Speaker 2 (01:27:00):
It's all of it that mixes in the air.

Speaker 3 (01:27:03):
And I'm I don't think we should cut ten song
albums anymore. I think it's a waste of money. I
think it's a I mean, the Beatles would go in
and cut singles and they didn't put it just put
an album out. They waited until they saw what hit,

(01:27:26):
what would sell the most albums, and then they put
them out and and we're now we're doing you know,
up to ten songs.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):
And you know, and even even in.

Speaker 3 (01:27:38):
You know, satellite studios, not going into a big soundstages,
going into a studio like I have here, you just
don't you don't get the same quality of recording.

Speaker 2 (01:27:53):
I don't think.

Speaker 3 (01:27:53):
And plus we're a streaming society now, And to cut
ten songs when people are going to take one off
of that, they're gonna they're gonna download one song. I
think I think making I think EPs are a better
idea going in and cutting five songs, you know, getting

(01:28:16):
five songs you really really like, and not getting five
more songs that you don't like as much as the
first five. Why cut those songs? You know, wait until
you know them better, or wait until they show you
that they should.

Speaker 2 (01:28:29):
Be out there.

Speaker 3 (01:28:30):
But I I I think that uh, and so many
people are doing it, just cutting the EPs to see
what lands.

Speaker 2 (01:28:38):
Because cutting a whole ten song.

Speaker 3 (01:28:40):
CD and and bringing in the players and and uh.

Speaker 2 (01:28:44):
The equipment that you need.

Speaker 3 (01:28:47):
On the floor, you know, to cut a to cut
a great big to cut cut a band, to cut
a whole band.

Speaker 2 (01:28:53):
Uh, it can be.

Speaker 3 (01:28:55):
Done in a home studio, but man, there's just something
missing to me. I mean that there's a you know,
you can tell, you can hear a record that's.

Speaker 2 (01:29:05):
Been done in pieces.

Speaker 3 (01:29:06):
You know, somebody, they'll call somebody, they'll come in, you know,
three days later and put a part down. Well, it's
to me, it's not it's not the same. It's not
it's not gonna equal what was put down the day
of when all the original ideas were flying around, and
and all the sounds were there, and everybody was bleeding

(01:29:28):
onto other everybody else's microphone. And you know, there are
some bad parts about that if you have to replace things.
But boy, you get a really good band, you put
them in one room and turn it on, let them
go that that's that's the way music sounds the best,
and and and and it's cheaper.

Speaker 2 (01:29:48):
It's uh.

Speaker 3 (01:29:50):
I mean, I remember when the twenty four track tape
machine costs half a million dollars, you know, and now
we can do a whole record on something that costs
you know, four hundred dollars. And so you got to
figure something's lost somewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:30:08):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:30:09):
It's it's not just technology, it's the way we treat it.
And uh, I think that I think that. You know,
I'm I'm working them with a band right now. Then
we're going to do an EP first and if we
and if we uh we get some traction, we'll we'll
do more. But I think we take our best five

(01:30:31):
and we throw them. We throw those first. You know,
if I could get away with three, I'd do it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:39):
So how much do you work on the road at
this point?

Speaker 3 (01:30:44):
I probably did one hundred and twenty five days this
year and plus so you can double that, you know,
as far as with travel. So yeah, and I'm sixty
eight years old. It's not as much fun as it
was when I was twenty thirty years old. Uh there,
you know it's I'm slower. I'm uh, I'm slower to

(01:31:07):
get up. I'm slower to uh to to want to
go out and do anything. Yeah, I don't know, it's just, uh,
I'm on the road enough. I want to cut that back.
Next year, I'm going out with Alison Krause again for
the next two years and those will those will probably

(01:31:29):
be eighty to one hundred and one hundred show years.

Speaker 2 (01:31:35):
And I want to cut that back.

Speaker 3 (01:31:37):
After after all the Alison stuff, I want to cut
it back to like twenty five. You know, it's just
I've seen the world. I've seen the road, I've seen
most of this country at night. But I feel I
feel I feel.

Speaker 2 (01:31:55):
Like i've I feel like i've seen it. I feel
like I've seen it.

Speaker 3 (01:31:59):
I feel like I've done a fair amount of things
that a lot of people don't get to do. And
I feel very fortunate about that part. But I'm getting tired.
I'm getting a little tired.

Speaker 1 (01:32:12):
Okay. There are some people go on the road. They
got tapes, they got click tracks. It's the same every night.
I don't know how they do it. It's gig one.
They got one hundred to do. You go out with
these acts. How do you keep it interesting for yourself?
And what's it like for you at every gig?

Speaker 3 (01:32:31):
Well with I will try to mix up that, mix
up the set list, you know, I'll take a look
at the audience. It's one way that I'll try to
keep myself interested in. And I love the songs. It's
not that I don't start off not, you know, in
a negative mood or anything like that. I'll take a

(01:32:52):
look at the audience and I'll mix up this, mix
up the show, you know, put some other songs in
there that might be it. Maybe a lot few more
bluegrass people in there than there were the night before,
so I will I might lean on the bluegrass a
little bit more. But our audience, my band audience, seems
like it's it it it. The people know that they

(01:33:14):
know I'm I'm there. They don't know what they don't
know what I might play, so they're okay with that.
But UH, with Alison, like I think, we went two
years playing pretty much the same set list. Like you say,
we didn't have any we didn't have any click tracks
or anything like that, so we were we were able

(01:33:37):
to move to move the uh, the tempo a little
bit into you know however we felt that night. But
there's still things when you're playing in a band like that,
and and and to UH audience like that, they expect
to hear certain things and you've got to give them those.

(01:33:58):
But I remember when when I was out on the
was out on the last couple of years with Alison
on Tuesday nights, I wouldn't play the same solos that
I played.

Speaker 2 (01:34:08):
On the records.

Speaker 3 (01:34:10):
That was just for me, that was just for that
was just for me. I don't know if they they
paid it. I don't know if they paid attention to
that and heard what I was doing or not. But
I played different that night. I had to or I
was going to go crazy. You know, I can't do
the same I can't play the same solo twice. And
but if it's on a record and people know it

(01:34:30):
that way, I'll try. And Uh, I could do it,
but I just don't want to. I don't want to.
I want I like the I like I like playing
off of something I heard somebody else. Do you know
somebody else might do something and trigger trigger a response
for me, and uh, it's going to be different than

(01:34:51):
it was the night before.

Speaker 2 (01:34:53):
I just that's just me. I can't.

Speaker 3 (01:34:57):
If I have to, I can play the same thing twice,
and I will, but I don't want to.

Speaker 1 (01:35:03):
So how have you balanced home life and relationships with
all this work on the road.

Speaker 2 (01:35:09):
It's tough. It's tough. I mean. The last thing I
have left this year is is a a gig at
BlackBerry Farm in East Tennessee.

Speaker 3 (01:35:23):
It's a really nice resort. Tommy, Emmanuel and I are
going to go play for an hour over there. I'm
gonna take my wife and we're gonna spend three days
over there, just relaxing.

Speaker 2 (01:35:35):
But there's.

Speaker 3 (01:35:38):
My daughter is about to have a baby, like any day. So,
you know, I've missed so many birthdays. I've missed so
many birthdays. I've missed weddings. I've missed you know, things,
my kids stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:35:55):
And you know, it breaks my heart to go back
and read my daughter's third grade paper, little paper she wrote,
you know, something that happened. Daddy was gone, Daddy was
Daddy was not home. You know, it just kills me
and I and.

Speaker 3 (01:36:14):
You know, there's no way around it unless it's your band.
You go, it's my son's birthday. Were not working that day,
you know, or whatever. But we can't really do that.
We're we're at the mercy of what the people want,
you know. And so I've been I've missed so many birthdays,
and it's been hard to balance it. It's been really

(01:36:35):
hard to balance it. I'd say I have a very very.

Speaker 2 (01:36:40):
My wife is so I don't know, We'll just say
she's she's put up with it.

Speaker 3 (01:36:49):
She's she's a good person. I want to I want
to be like her when I grow up. You know,
it's like, but she's put up for thirty seven years
now she's put up with me and all of this stuff.
And we have four children. Now we have almost seven grandchildren.
So I'm feeling the need to be around here a

(01:37:09):
little bit more, you know, and and be part of
my I'm feeling part of like being part of the
family more than ever.

Speaker 2 (01:37:17):
I don't know if.

Speaker 3 (01:37:18):
I I don't know if it was that I didn't
want to be I don't know. I don't think so
I wanted to be here. It was just, man, that
was my job, and that's what I went to do.
It doesn't matter if you're sick, if you're about to
black out on stage, You've got to play, you know,
And some of those can be some of your best gigs,

(01:37:38):
less distractions. So yeah, it's been hard to balance that
and and friends, you know. And some of my best friends,
you know. One of them lives right around the corner
from me, but Sam Bush, but I don't see him
unless we're five hundred miles from home, you know. And
it's not a it's not a normal lifestyle, but it's

(01:37:59):
a it's suited me. It's done well for me, and
I have no complaints about I just wish I had
seen a few more.

Speaker 2 (01:38:10):
Of those birthdays and been here for a couple more berths. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:38:15):
Okay, so sometimes the stars align, sometimes they don't. You
talked earlier about the clock metaphor, which was brilliant, but
up until now, maybe with Billie's strings, for the last
few decades, there has not been a moment where bluegrass
was literally at the top. We've had other things. We've

(01:38:38):
had the Mumfort and Sun Sound. We've even had Chris
Stapleton in Americana slash country, but there wasn't a moment
where everybody looked around and said, bluegrass that's as big
as anything. To what degree do you feel upset that
you and your music didn't have that moment at the peak?

(01:39:00):
Do you think this is a moment with Billy Strings
for just a momentary thing.

Speaker 3 (01:39:08):
I'm first, I'm I'm not upset that our music is
not that bluegrass music has not been.

Speaker 2 (01:39:17):
At the you know, like in a like a pop chart.

Speaker 3 (01:39:21):
You know, I'm I'm okay with that because it's not
that kind of music.

Speaker 2 (01:39:26):
I mean, it doesn't it mean it it's a it's
a it's a music that that does get to more people.

Speaker 3 (01:39:39):
I mean, there there are certain what am I trying
to say it's not popular amongst the African American audience.

Speaker 2 (01:39:48):
Uh, but it.

Speaker 3 (01:39:51):
It's it's like grown exponentially over the years. And uh
but but it's not an international snow music as much
as I mean, there are people that that are playing
in Europe and all over the world that are playing
bluegrass music. But it's their version, you know, with their musical,

(01:40:15):
with their with their musical, uh other other genres mixed
into it, you know, and their their cultural music mixed in.
But uh, I'm not I've never been I've never been
upset that it wasn't as big as country. I kind
of like, I kind of think that we've we've dodged

(01:40:35):
the bullet in a way that we didn't have to
get to that point and then have you know, when
you like it's when you have a single out and
you find out on Thursday that your single has tanked
and you need to start it. You need to go
back to the dwell and get another single. We don't
have that problem.

Speaker 2 (01:40:57):
We don't have that problem. We we uh, we are a.

Speaker 3 (01:41:01):
Genre and and and we're not a splinter of a genre.
Uh and and I don't I think that you know,
maybe you know, we'd like to sell as many records
as as Beyonce, But I I don't know how it
would change my life, you know, and uh, it's it's

(01:41:26):
I don't feel I don't feel bad about it not
being it's more popular than it is. I don't because
there I've watched it grow from almost nothing to you know,
taken off again. But I think Billy strings Is is
a phenomenon.

Speaker 2 (01:41:46):
Uh. I've played out there.

Speaker 3 (01:41:47):
I've gone out there and been on that stage and
watched that audience, and that audience loves everything that he
does everything, and it just never stops. I mean, it
starts before he goes on stage, and and he is
up there and the band is doing its thing, and
Billy Is is in his toy box, you know, he's

(01:42:08):
got all kinds of things going on stage and and
he's he's.

Speaker 2 (01:42:12):
Become this entertainer.

Speaker 3 (01:42:15):
But he has a he has a drive like I've
never seen, I mean, and it comes from him growing
up in a in a in a really really uh
depressing kind of world where he had a choice, he said,
he said, I had a choice.

Speaker 2 (01:42:32):
I got to this fork in the road. I can
either be a meth addict or I could try this
music thing. I try, any ie.

Speaker 3 (01:42:39):
I went to the music route and saved his life,
gave us all this great music from him, and uh
and and and it also gave gave another generation another
another direction to go, you know, and and believing that
they can they can achieve the same things he he has.

(01:43:00):
I think that's important to have that to aim for.
And he gets us up. I mean, I'm so polaed.
I'm thrilled that he asked me to get up there.
You know, I'm one of the old guys, you know,
but but he has a lot of reverence for for
all of us that came before him.

Speaker 2 (01:43:21):
He has a he has a deep, deep feeling about that.
And he's, uh, he's just this guy. He wants to
pay back.

Speaker 3 (01:43:31):
He wants to pay back, he wants to for music
saving his life. He wants to give everything to everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:43:38):
You know. He's he's that kind of guy. He's a
good kid.

Speaker 3 (01:43:41):
I've known him for you know, ten years now, and
uh just watched his meteoric rise.

Speaker 2 (01:43:49):
It's just amazing. It's many. All the ducks are in
a row. You know. The management's great, booking agents are great,
the venues are great. His team is like I haven't.

Speaker 3 (01:44:00):
I haven't been out on the road with A with
A with you know, I don't think the roll Rolling
Stones can rival his his team on the road.

Speaker 2 (01:44:09):
I mean all the.

Speaker 3 (01:44:10):
People that he's got to do whatever he needs, and
the great sound people, the great lighting.

Speaker 2 (01:44:16):
The lights are amazing. And that's another thing you have
to have. Now. Uh, you can't go out on the
stage and bowl people over with your musical ability.

Speaker 3 (01:44:25):
You better have something. You better have a kicker ready
to go, you know you need. The light show is great.
The light show. Bring out a guest once in a while,
you know, mix it up, make it interesting all the
way through. And nobody wants to just watch, you know,
watch five men stand on stage and just play into

(01:44:48):
microphones and not move.

Speaker 2 (01:44:50):
That's boring.

Speaker 3 (01:44:52):
I want to see people running around. I want to
see people enjoying what they're doing. And when you go
see a Billy Strings concert, just just joy from the
beginning to the end. And he's he's the main source
of it. And he's just all over the place doing
crazy things. He started the second set out the other
night with a He had a loop and he had

(01:45:13):
a bong and he blew into the bong and he
and he recorded that, and then he then he so
he had so he had a sound. So then he
set up a ding on the side of it and
another ding to to frame in what the beats were.

Speaker 2 (01:45:31):
And then they.

Speaker 3 (01:45:32):
Sang a total as they sang a whole song to that,
to that loop of the bonging.

Speaker 2 (01:45:42):
It was great.

Speaker 3 (01:45:42):
It was so incredible. You mean, who else comes up
with stuff like that? You know, it's like this guy's
got a he's got a brand new handle on things
that we never thought about before. And uh, I've been
watching this stuff for so long and it was just
thrilling for me to see that happening too. I see

(01:46:03):
it going up, and I see him helping bluegrass music.
But I think that you know, people, the people that
go to his concerts, they know what bluegrass music is,
but they're gone to see billy strings. They want to
see the phenomena. And he doesn't disappoint.

Speaker 1 (01:46:19):
Okay, you've accomplished so much, you're still working. One of
the goals in the future.

Speaker 2 (01:46:28):
I'd like to keep on working.

Speaker 3 (01:46:30):
I don't want to have to go out on the
road and beat the road anymore, but I want to
keep on working. And suddenly I can draw this thing
called social security and but you know, I know that's
not going to save me. But I just want to
keep my head above water and and my family happy,

(01:46:51):
and my musical friends happy, and play whenever I want
to and not when I don't want to.

Speaker 2 (01:46:59):
That's what I want to do.

Speaker 1 (01:47:00):
Jerry, it's been fabulous talking to you. You can really do.

Speaker 2 (01:47:04):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:47:05):
Your clock metaphor was great. You're everywhere, everybody knows you
and they know more about you now. Thanks so much
for taking this time to speak with my audience.

Speaker 3 (01:47:15):
I appreciate so much being able to speak to your audience. Bob,
Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (01:47:19):
Thank you. I had a great time.

Speaker 1 (01:47:21):
How's good on until next time. This is Bob left
sets
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