WEBVTT - Jerry Douglas 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:12.440 Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set podcast. 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:16.480 My guest today is the one and only Jerry Douglas, 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:22.639 dough bro and Lapskewal guitar player Extraordinarire. Jerry. What is 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:23.200 a doughbro? 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:30.840 Bob? Thanks for having me on today. A doughbro is 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:33.040 a guitar. Basically, it's a guitar. 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:37.120 It has a People would recognize it from a shiny 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:40.800 like hubcap on top of the guitar, but that's that's 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:44.680 all something that goes into making the sound. There were 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:50.880 some five Slovakian brothers in the twenties who loved Hawaiian music, 0:00:52.040 --> 0:00:55.040 but it wasn't loud enough for them. They were used 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:58.840 to hear in loud bands oompah, all kinds of crazy 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:02.480 stuff over there. Crazy to us, not to them, But 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:05.399 they came over here and there was a Hawaiian guitar 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:08.240 craze going on in the United States and the twenties 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:15.240 that had been a sort of a out you know 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:18.959 it was. It was created by a World's exposition that 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:22.360 had Hawaiian musicians at it, and the whole world went 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:26.199 crazy about these Hawaiian musicians. So all these guys started 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:29.200 selling these Hawaiian guitars door to door to all the 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:32.600 kids and selling them, you know, little sheet music to 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:37.279 learn how to play Hawaiian music. And so they first 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:41.440 created the National guitar in Chicago. It was an all 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:43.520 metal body guitar like it is on the front of 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:49.200 the Dire Straits record Brothers in Arms, and people recognize 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:51.680 it from that. But I play the wooden bodied version 0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:55.520 that these guys developed in the late nineteen twenties in 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:59.880 Los Angeles, and I have pictures of whole dobro orchestra. 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:04.960 It must have been an awful sound, but it became 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:10.359 popular in Hawaiian music, and then blues music. Blues guy's 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:12.560 got a hold of it because it was loud enough 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:15.600 to compete with their voice, so they could go ahead 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:17.320 and sing as loud as they wanted to. 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:19.520 Uh and uh. 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:22.639 And then it fell into the hands of Bashful Brother Oswald, 0:02:22.680 --> 0:02:26.280 who played with Roy Acuff on the grandule Opry. And 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:29.760 he was working in a car plant in Flint, Michigan, 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:34.120 and in UH came across this guy, this Hawaiian guy 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:39.480 who played Hawaiian guitar, and Bashful Brother Oswald just loved 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:40.960 the sound of it and learned how to play it, 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:43.480 brought it back to Nashville, and then sooner or later, 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:46.839 the guy that I really learned from and the guy 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:49.919 that inspired me to play the guitar and the Doughbro 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:52.160 guitar in the first place, was a fellow named Josh 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:56.360 Graves Buck Graves, who played with Lester Flatten Earl Scrugs 0:02:56.400 --> 0:02:59.640 in the Foggy Mountain Boys. And that's what I heard 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:03.240 that every morning getting up to go to school as 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:06.000 my dad was getting ready to go to to the 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:09.520 steel mill to go to work up in northeastern Ohio 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:12.200 and Warren, Ohio. And I heard that guitar every morning, 0:03:12.240 --> 0:03:13.920 and I just fell in love with the sound of it. 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:18.800 So I played guitar at the time and started told 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.800 my dad if he would raise the action up on 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:24.400 my guitar, that I would learn how to play like 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:26.400 that guy that we'd seen the other night. I was 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:29.240 about ten years old, and that's when I started playing 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:30.040 dope row guitar. 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:35.760 Okay, the guitar has got the resonator on it. How 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:38.920 do you play it relative to a regular guitar. 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:43.120 Well, first of all, you start out with it on 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:46.280 your lap, have it laying on flat on your lap 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:49.040 and you play it with a metal slide. Instead of 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:52.720 pushing the strings down to hit frets to stop the note, 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:56.440 you use a slide, a metal slide on top, and 0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:58.720 the strings are raised up from the frets, so you 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:02.720 don't hit the frets anymore. And that is your threat. 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:06.400 That steel bar that you're you're holding in your hand, 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:10.200 that that is, that's your threat. That's your point of 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:17.160 of being in tune and uh and uh try and 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:19.720 trying not to hit a bad note against a singer 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:20.680 like Alison Krause. 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:26.360 Okay, So in a conventional guitar, you know e a 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:30.000 d G B, you move your fingers. How do you 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:32.880 tune and get the different notes on a dough bro? 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:39.000 The the the main the tuning that most Doughbro players 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:43.720 use is from high to low. It's DBG than an 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:44.920 octave lower dbg. 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:47.520 Uh. But I have. 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:51.400 Messed around with different tunings over the years, all kinds 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:56.520 of tunings, dropping you know, to dropping my uh second 0:04:56.640 --> 0:05:01.600 string to create a create a suspension you know between 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:04.920 there and and create create tune my B string down 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:07.280 to an aid. So it just creates a little bit 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:12.680 of of tension and it also uh gives you a 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:16.200 way to. You can pull the string behind the bar 0:05:16.360 --> 0:05:18.840 and raise it to the proper pitch if you want to. 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:23.560 But you know, it's just a it's just a you know, 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:28.360 it's just an ornament really that tuning. But I also 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:31.000 have a thing on my guitar. It's called a hip shot, 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:34.520 a double hip shot that is like a looks like 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:37.520 a bigs B pedal, palm pedal, you. 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:39.120 Know, vibrato. 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:42.760 But this thing, you release it and it drops the 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:46.120 tuning to a drop D tuning, which then is from 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:54.640 E a F sharp duh a D. So it's a 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:58.000 dead GAD, except there's an F sharp instead of the 0:05:58.040 --> 0:05:59.000 first D. 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:00.880 I was second D. 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:05.000 Let's go back. Your father worked in the steel mills. 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:08.320 How long was your family in America before he worked 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:09.560 in the steel mills? 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:14.719 Our first Douglas came over in seventeen forty eight, Wow, 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:19.719 came into Pittsburgh, came into not Pittsburgh, came into Philadelphia 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:24.919 and was put on the road south. You know, they 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:28.480 were sort of dividing people as they came in. And 0:06:28.640 --> 0:06:32.960 my people were from Scotland and then were you know, 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:36.840 because of the clearances where their land was given away, 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:39.960 they were they were sent to Northern Ireland, and they 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:43.240 didn't want them there either, so they went to America 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:46.800 and came into Philadelphia, like I said, were put on 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:51.920 the road south where they were trying to create a 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:57.200 lot of Italians and Scott's Irish were sent south because 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:02.520 they needed stone workers south to build the coke ovens 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:07.480 in order to build foundries and get some industry going. 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:11.800 So they were actually planning these kind of things. And 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:17.560 my Douglases came down into Virginia and settled in this 0:07:17.680 --> 0:07:22.680 little town called Buchannan, which became West Virginia. That part 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:26.360 of Virginia became West Virginia. So Buchan in West Virginia 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:29.400 is where my people really settled for the first time. 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:32.360 And my mother and father now live about forty five 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:36.560 miles from there. So the family, that portion of the 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:39.840 family didn't spread too far, but others, you know, William O. 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:45.440 Douglas is a relative of mine, distant relative, and Douglas 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:48.280 is all over the place. I mean, I've I haven't 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:50.920 joined twenty three in meters, so I haven't tracked anybody down, 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:54.560 and I'm scared of that thing anyway. So being a 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:59.920 traveling musician, I don't need any other children or grandchildren. 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:04.760 Okay, So how did they end up in Warren, Ohio? 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:08.160 And how did your father end up working in the 0:08:08.200 --> 0:08:08.800 steel mill. 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.560 My father's had some cousins that had gone north and 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:17.760 found work in the steel mills around Warren and Youngstown, Ohio, 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:21.320 in the northeastern part of the state, and they said, well, 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:23.400 come on up here, we can find work for you. 0:08:23.440 --> 0:08:25.840 And in West Virginia at that point, if you it 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:31.800 depended on which party was in power, the Republicans or 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:34.200 the Democrats. And if you were in the Democrats, you 0:08:34.240 --> 0:08:36.480 either worked in the coal mines, you worked on the 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:41.360 state road, or you were a farmer. And my father 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:44.440 was looking for a better life, so he my mother 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:47.400 got buried and moved straight up to Ohio and he 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:49.760 went to work in the steel mills and stayed there 0:08:50.679 --> 0:08:54.520 for forty years until he retired from the mills. And 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:57.679 then they moved back to my mother's farm, which had 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:01.440 been in the family now for over two hundred years, 0:09:02.200 --> 0:09:05.360 and built a nice, great, big log cabin on top 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:09.400 of a ridge, and dad's ninety two, mom's eighty nine. 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:14.320 They lived there by themselves, and they're just amazing. I 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:17.240 can't I know I've got those genes, and I'm scared 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:19.240 to death what I'll be doing when I'm ninety two 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:19.839 years old. 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:25.640 So your father retired before the whole steel business imploded. 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:27.240 Well, he saw it coming. 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:31.280 I remember the day he came home and said to me, 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:37.280 our steel days are numbered because they're buying Japanese steel now. 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:40.679 And then it became Chinese steel, and you know, yeah, 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:41.920 and his company was. 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:48.439 Owned by a huge, a huge. 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:53.440 Rich family, European family, and they weren't getting much help. 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:56.440 So Dad took his retirement. He retired at just the 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:00.640 right time to get out with all his benefits and 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:04.080 his you know, everything in his retirement. It was like 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:08.320 it was the perfect American dream at that point, you know, 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:11.600 you could you could still get out of it and 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:16.800 take with what they said that you were going to have, 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:21.840 and they took it. So he, you know, just just 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:25.000 a couple of years ago his retirement ran out. You know, 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:29.040 so he has lived, he's lived the whole dream. He 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:34.600 lived through his retirement and he's just you know, he's fine, 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:35.480 he's fine. 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:38.480 Okay. So you're growing up in Warren. How many kids 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:39.079 in the family. 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:42.360 My brother and I were just the two of us. 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:45.840 There were a lot of cousins around, but most of 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:48.199 our family was in West Virginia, so we go south 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:53.680 for vacations, and the family never really we didn't really 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:57.800 travel that far. We didn't travel outside Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, 0:10:57.920 --> 0:11:00.800 you know, Pennsylvania, just surrounding high We didn't go that 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:05.280 far on vacations. But my dad would get these five 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:09.079 week paid vacations every year after he hit a certain 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:11.480 amount of years in the steel mill. So he would 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:13.520 go take us and we would just go to bluegrass 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:18.560 festivals and just hear all this music that you know, 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:21.199 that we loved. And he had a band. My father 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.240 had a band in Warren, Ohio called the West Virginia 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:26.960 Travelers and they were all guys from West Virginia who 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.840 had work in the steel mills. And they but they 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:33.360 when people from the south moved north, they took their 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.240 music with them, you know, and and a lot of 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:41.160 other things that maybe they shouldn't have taken. But I 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:44.959 think back to the jd Vance to the Hillbilly Elogy, 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:47.480 you know, those people moved to Dayton and took everything 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:49.360 with them, their lifestyle, everything. 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:53.079 But in up in our our part of the our 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:53.760 part of the woods. 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:57.559 There were so many people, so many different ethnic uh 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:00.679 you know, it with a lot of Greek people, people 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:02.280 from Greece, people from Italy. 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:07.240 It was a huge Italian population and just a boiling pot. 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:09.600 And you know, and the food was amazing up there, 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:13.880 and uh, just all kinds of people getting along. You know. 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:16.920 It wasn't it wasn't didn't seem to be a division. 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:17.160 You know. 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.440 They all had nicknames for each other. But there was 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:24.920 never any never any trouble or anything like that. But 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:28.280 but Dad, he he was up there sort of on 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:31.640 his own, uh you know, but had a band and 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:35.080 they started working and then there create that created other bands, 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:36.880 other bluegrass bands around there. 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:40.800 But he was one of the first in that area. Uh. 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:43.880 And and that because of that, I got to see 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:47.080 a band rehearse when I was, you know, five six 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:50.920 years old, rolling around under the kitchen table, watching these 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:56.120 guys figure out how to create a song, and that 0:12:56.240 --> 0:12:58.880 all I was a sponge. 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:01.600 I sooked all of that up. I learned a lot 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:04.679 from just watching them. 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:09.160 Okay, your brother older, younger, where is he today. 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:12.000 He's he's almost three years younger than me. 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:17.480 Uh, he's retired now, and he was a meter reader 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:20.760 in West Virginia down there where he moved down to 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:22.880 be kind of keep an eye on the folks. And 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:26.480 he's on the next ridge over in another loghouse that 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:29.640 he but he can see their house, and you know, 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:32.480 it's it's great that he's there, you know, because I 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:37.320 can't be but uh he and he also started playing bass, 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:40.520 uh at one point, and and became a really good 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:43.800 bass player. But he just he wasn't as interested in 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:46.520 making a living at it or doing what. 0:13:46.440 --> 0:13:49.160 I did, you know, following following what I did. 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:54.120 Okay, you come of age when the Beatles break. I 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:56.840 have close friends grew up in the exact same area. 0:13:57.440 --> 0:13:59.959 So you talk about your father listening to country music. 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:03.920 Were also exposed to the British invasion in the other 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:04.920 top forty stuff. 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:06.200 Definitely was. 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:08.760 I mean, like I said, I would listen to Flatten 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:11.280 Scrugs or something like that in the morning. But at 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:14.800 night I was close enough to Cleveland that it was 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:17.720 I would lay in my bed with my little bug, 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:19.920 you know, and put that my ear and listen to 0:14:20.400 --> 0:14:23.080 what the lightest rock and roll was coming out of Cleveland. 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:27.520 So I was really confused, you because I loved that music, 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:30.280 and I loved what I heard in the morning. I'm 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:33.680 trying to figure out, how do I marry these two things, 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:37.080 and how can I make how can I make one 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:40.600 music out of tude or you know, trying to figure 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:45.200 out that, figure that out. And I think I've done 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:48.120 it over the time. I think I've done it and 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:52.920 combined the two just by being a chameleon and being 0:14:52.960 --> 0:14:59.120 a musician that listened, and you know, doing sessions. 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:01.120 That's that's your job. 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:05.840 Listen, you listen, and you you learn the song fast, 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:09.200 you come up with a hook, and you do all 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:12.360 of these things as fast as possible in order to 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:17.240 you know, move time. And that's that's one of the 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:21.480 things that that has really helped me in my career. 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:25.200 And but but those those radio stations up there also 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:29.320 had had a cousin moved in with us when he 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:32.600 was eighteen to k He came up there to find work. 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:36.080 He brought and the first night he was there, I 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:38.280 heard for the first time, I heard the mamas and 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:42.560 the papas, I heard, I heard the birds, and I 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:45.800 heard Don't walk Away, and I remember that song. I 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:47.520 mean the first night he was there, and I just 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:50.600 my mind was blown again. You know, it was like 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:56.440 I was really I paid attention to music. You know, 0:15:56.560 --> 0:15:59.880 It's like the different music that I would hear, like 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:01.880 like what he brought in the house and what I 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:05.520 heard on the radio from Cleveland and and all of 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:10.280 these things. So it was, uh, it was quite an education, 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:13.720 you know, before I even really put the bar to 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:16.560 the strings and got serious enough about playing that. I 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:21.000 loved music before I ever really got into playing it 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:21.560 so much. 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:32.480 Okay, so you hear flatt and scrugs. You hear the 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:36.320 dough bro? What age are you you decide to play? 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:38.240 How do you get a dough bro? How do you 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:39.200 learn how to play? 0:16:40.600 --> 0:16:40.840 Yeah? 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:45.400 Good, good question. Because I had a silver tone guitar. 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:49.120 It was a pretty cheap model that I'd gotten for Christmas, 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:51.760 and and we raised the strings. 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:51.880 Up on that. 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:55.720 And one one day I came home from school and 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:58.440 my guitar was on the top of the stack of 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.760 guitars that we had, like guitars maybe. 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:04.840 And the sun had come in and hit my case. 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:08.480 And as soon as I hit the last latch on 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:10.720 the case and threw open the top of the case, 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:15.400 my guitar just folded up like that. And so we 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:19.040 had to go find something real for me to play, 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:23.240 and that's when we went on the search to find 0:17:23.240 --> 0:17:25.479 a dough Bro But there were there weren't any. I mean, 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:29.760 they had stopped building Doughbro guitars in the late thirties, 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:34.320 so there weren't any. But the company was starting up again. 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:39.400 My luck, in nineteen sixty seven, they started to produce 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:42.280 guitars again and I got one of the first ones. 0:17:42.320 --> 0:17:45.800 But I had to go to a music store and 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:47.560 every time I'd ask them, they just look at me 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:47.920 like I. 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:50.239 Had some strange disease if I say, do you have 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:54.760 any Doughbro guitars? No, So finally I got a brochure 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:58.040 and I ordered one from the brochure to the to 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:02.680 a music store in Newton Fall, Ohio. And six months 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:06.720 later that came in and I was just like, oh, 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:09.720 this is what it sounds like, you know, because I, 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:12.919 you know, I've been playing a guitar. It didn't it 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:15.679 didn't create all of that sound that comes from the 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:19.119 cover plate. And under that cover plate is a we 0:18:19.160 --> 0:18:21.720 didn't get to this before, but there's an aluminum spun 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:25.920 aluminum cone. It's like a speaker cone. And and also 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:28.960 there's a there's a bridge to connect the bridge to 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:32.480 the rest of this contraption. There's a thing I like 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:36.680 called a spider that sits down on that cone and 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:41.119 contacts that cone at eight different places and transfers the 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:44.479 sound down into the guitar back up out of the guitar. 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:49.280 It was just an ingenious invention. I mean that there 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:51.359 are two screens at the top of the guitar. 0:18:51.480 --> 0:18:52.640 They're just like they're. 0:18:52.480 --> 0:18:56.000 Screens, they're round screens, and that's where the bass of 0:18:56.240 --> 0:19:00.440 part of the guitar comes from because it's channeled in side. 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:04.960 Sound is just like it's just like light or water. 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:09.440 It bounces, it reflects, it does all of these things. 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:12.320 And these guys figured out how to create the inside 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:15.680 of the guitar so they could control the high end 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:21.320 from the low end. And it just created two sources 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:24.160 of sound in one guitar, and you could mix those 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:28.160 two together depending on where you put the microphone as 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:30.160 to how much high end or low end you get. 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:35.400 And I think they got lucky on a whole lot 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:39.679 of things. I mean, just the circumference of that metal 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:45.480 spun aluminum cone that's never changed, and the cover plates 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:49.560 never changed until I changed the design of it a 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:53.639 few years ago. And I'm the guinea pig for a 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:56.640 lot of things that come out for Dobo players, and 0:19:56.960 --> 0:19:59.200 I get them first and it works. 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:03.440 I keep it. It doesn't goes back to the whoever 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:04.199 gave it to me. 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:08.560 Okay, So what's the state of manufacture of Doughbro guitars today? 0:20:08.600 --> 0:20:11.200 How many people even make them? 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:19.520 Doughbro does not make them. Gibson Guitars bought Dobro and uh, 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:24.240 they were terrible guitars that they were making. And so 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:26.640 I stepped in and said, can I can you build 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:29.600 me a signature model? And I will. I'll come in 0:20:29.680 --> 0:20:32.760 with you. I'll go through all the pains and. 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:34.440 Everything with you to get this to be a good 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:37.639 guitar that somebody can buy as an entry level guitar 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:44.440 mahogany guitar at seventeen hundred dollars. And we all agreed 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:45.439 on we could do that. 0:20:46.200 --> 0:20:48.400 But the guitars, you know, if they have your name 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:51.480 on them anywhere, everyone who buys it thinks you built 0:20:51.480 --> 0:20:56.359 it right. So they started they started doing some really 0:20:56.440 --> 0:20:59.359 wacky things with this dough Bro like out of line, 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:03.160 or the the cone would not be or the cover 0:21:03.240 --> 0:21:05.320 plate would not be in the center of the guitar 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:07.040 and be over to the left or to the right, 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:09.560 and you can't play a guitar like that. And they 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:13.439 were just bad. They were bad guitars. So Gibson and 0:21:13.440 --> 0:21:16.480 I got a divorce. So I went to there's a 0:21:16.480 --> 0:21:21.359 phelle named Tim Sheerhorn that makes excellent, excellent, excellent, like uh, 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:27.280 the greatest uh resophonic guitars, doughbro guitars. Doughbrow has become 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:31.679 a h. The word for doughbro now is ish resophonic. 0:21:32.520 --> 0:21:32.840 Uh. 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:37.240 Doughbro was a name, like we started using it like kleenex. 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:40.240 You know, anything that looked like that was a doughbro. 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:43.760 And to me, I still call it that. I don't 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:46.239 care if they sue me or not, but you know, 0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:49.520 I'm selling more of them for them than anybody else. 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:52.399 So that was really awful. 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:57.960 But UH, I got UH and and then I got 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:01.280 into a deal here with the fellow named Paul Beard, 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:06.240 who is in Hagerstown, Maryland and makes the best, the 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:10.119 best reservantic guitars. I was with Tim Sheerhorn for a while, 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:12.359 but he didn't want to build a signature model. So 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:16.080 I got with Paul Beard and he did so we 0:22:16.200 --> 0:22:19.359 set to work on building a special one worked on 0:22:19.400 --> 0:22:22.320 the inside so the sound would move and be reflected 0:22:22.359 --> 0:22:27.080 in different ways, and the guitar sounded bigger. All the 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:30.760 new builders are building what I would consider hybrids of 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:33.840 the first of the original guitar at this point. 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:38.040 Okay, so let's assume I want to buy a Doughbro. 0:22:38.720 --> 0:22:41.920 Are these things now readily available? How many companies are 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:44.200 making them? Is it still a very limited thing. 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:46.280 It's not a limited thing. 0:22:46.359 --> 0:22:53.080 Nope, Through Paul Beard, there are several several entry level 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:56.399 guitars you can buy and not spend a lot of money, 0:22:56.440 --> 0:22:59.080 you know, until you I tell people, if you're going 0:22:59.080 --> 0:23:00.000 to buy a Doughbro. 0:22:59.760 --> 0:23:02.640 Don't don't go out and buy one like mine right away. 0:23:02.720 --> 0:23:06.040 Go out and buy, you know, a lower level guitar 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:08.680 to see if you really want to play this guitar. No, 0:23:08.880 --> 0:23:13.000 don't spend ten thousand dollars. If you can spend you know, 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:16.400 fifteen hundred dollars and get something, And they're amazing guitars. 0:23:16.800 --> 0:23:18.919 If I'd have had one of those guitars when I 0:23:19.000 --> 0:23:21.560 was learning to play, I don't know what would have happened, 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:28.480 but yeah, suddenly, suddenly dobro players can get They're readily available. 0:23:28.520 --> 0:23:31.480 You can find them all music stores. You know, you 0:23:31.560 --> 0:23:33.920 go in, you go into guitar center, you can find 0:23:33.920 --> 0:23:37.199 a dobro guitar, a resivantic guitar, and a slide and 0:23:37.400 --> 0:23:41.480