Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the one and only Jerry Douglas,
Speaker 1: dough bro and Lapskewal guitar player Extraordinarire. Jerry. What is
Speaker 1: a doughbro?
Speaker 2: Bob? Thanks for having me on today. A doughbro is
Speaker 2: a guitar. Basically, it's a guitar.
Speaker 3: It has a People would recognize it from a shiny
Speaker 3: like hubcap on top of the guitar, but that's that's
Speaker 3: all something that goes into making the sound. There were
Speaker 3: some five Slovakian brothers in the twenties who loved Hawaiian music,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't loud enough for them. They were used
Speaker 3: to hear in loud bands oompah, all kinds of crazy
Speaker 3: stuff over there. Crazy to us, not to them, But
Speaker 3: they came over here and there was a Hawaiian guitar
Speaker 3: craze going on in the United States and the twenties
Speaker 3: that had been a sort of a out you know
Speaker 3: it was. It was created by a World's exposition that
Speaker 3: had Hawaiian musicians at it, and the whole world went
Speaker 3: crazy about these Hawaiian musicians. So all these guys started
Speaker 3: selling these Hawaiian guitars door to door to all the
Speaker 3: kids and selling them, you know, little sheet music to
Speaker 3: learn how to play Hawaiian music. And so they first
Speaker 3: created the National guitar in Chicago. It was an all
Speaker 3: metal body guitar like it is on the front of
Speaker 3: the Dire Straits record Brothers in Arms, and people recognize
Speaker 3: it from that. But I play the wooden bodied version
Speaker 3: that these guys developed in the late nineteen twenties in
Speaker 3: Los Angeles, and I have pictures of whole dobro orchestra.
Speaker 3: It must have been an awful sound, but it became
Speaker 3: popular in Hawaiian music, and then blues music. Blues guy's
Speaker 3: got a hold of it because it was loud enough
Speaker 3: to compete with their voice, so they could go ahead
Speaker 3: and sing as loud as they wanted to.
Speaker 2: Uh and uh.
Speaker 3: And then it fell into the hands of Bashful Brother Oswald,
Speaker 3: who played with Roy Acuff on the grandule Opry. And
Speaker 3: he was working in a car plant in Flint, Michigan,
Speaker 3: and in UH came across this guy, this Hawaiian guy
Speaker 3: who played Hawaiian guitar, and Bashful Brother Oswald just loved
Speaker 3: the sound of it and learned how to play it,
Speaker 3: brought it back to Nashville, and then sooner or later,
Speaker 3: the guy that I really learned from and the guy
Speaker 3: that inspired me to play the guitar and the Doughbro
Speaker 3: guitar in the first place, was a fellow named Josh
Speaker 3: Graves Buck Graves, who played with Lester Flatten Earl Scrugs
Speaker 3: in the Foggy Mountain Boys. And that's what I heard
Speaker 3: that every morning getting up to go to school as
Speaker 3: my dad was getting ready to go to to the
Speaker 3: steel mill to go to work up in northeastern Ohio
Speaker 3: and Warren, Ohio. And I heard that guitar every morning,
Speaker 3: and I just fell in love with the sound of it.
Speaker 3: So I played guitar at the time and started told
Speaker 3: my dad if he would raise the action up on
Speaker 3: my guitar, that I would learn how to play like
Speaker 3: that guy that we'd seen the other night. I was
Speaker 3: about ten years old, and that's when I started playing
Speaker 3: dope row guitar.
Speaker 1: Okay, the guitar has got the resonator on it. How
Speaker 1: do you play it relative to a regular guitar.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, you start out with it on
Speaker 3: your lap, have it laying on flat on your lap
Speaker 3: and you play it with a metal slide. Instead of
Speaker 3: pushing the strings down to hit frets to stop the note,
Speaker 3: you use a slide, a metal slide on top, and
Speaker 3: the strings are raised up from the frets, so you
Speaker 3: don't hit the frets anymore. And that is your threat.
Speaker 3: That steel bar that you're you're holding in your hand,
Speaker 3: that that is, that's your threat. That's your point of
Speaker 3: of being in tune and uh and uh try and
Speaker 3: trying not to hit a bad note against a singer
Speaker 3: like Alison Krause.
Speaker 1: Okay, So in a conventional guitar, you know e a
Speaker 1: d G B, you move your fingers. How do you
Speaker 1: tune and get the different notes on a dough bro?
Speaker 3: The the the main the tuning that most Doughbro players
Speaker 3: use is from high to low. It's DBG than an
Speaker 3: octave lower dbg.
Speaker 2: Uh. But I have.
Speaker 3: Messed around with different tunings over the years, all kinds
Speaker 3: of tunings, dropping you know, to dropping my uh second
Speaker 3: string to create a create a suspension you know between
Speaker 3: there and and create create tune my B string down
Speaker 3: to an aid. So it just creates a little bit
Speaker 3: of of tension and it also uh gives you a
Speaker 3: way to. You can pull the string behind the bar
Speaker 3: and raise it to the proper pitch if you want to.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's just a it's just a you know,
Speaker 3: it's just an ornament really that tuning. But I also
Speaker 3: have a thing on my guitar. It's called a hip shot,
Speaker 3: a double hip shot that is like a looks like
Speaker 3: a bigs B pedal, palm pedal, you.
Speaker 2: Know, vibrato.
Speaker 3: But this thing, you release it and it drops the
Speaker 3: tuning to a drop D tuning, which then is from
Speaker 3: E a F sharp duh a D. So it's a
Speaker 3: dead GAD, except there's an F sharp instead of the
Speaker 3: first D.
Speaker 2: I was second D.
Speaker 1: Let's go back. Your father worked in the steel mills.
Speaker 1: How long was your family in America before he worked
Speaker 1: in the steel mills?
Speaker 3: Our first Douglas came over in seventeen forty eight, Wow,
Speaker 3: came into Pittsburgh, came into not Pittsburgh, came into Philadelphia
Speaker 3: and was put on the road south. You know, they
Speaker 3: were sort of dividing people as they came in. And
Speaker 3: my people were from Scotland and then were you know,
Speaker 3: because of the clearances where their land was given away,
Speaker 3: they were they were sent to Northern Ireland, and they
Speaker 3: didn't want them there either, so they went to America
Speaker 3: and came into Philadelphia, like I said, were put on
Speaker 3: the road south where they were trying to create a
Speaker 3: lot of Italians and Scott's Irish were sent south because
Speaker 3: they needed stone workers south to build the coke ovens
Speaker 3: in order to build foundries and get some industry going.
Speaker 3: So they were actually planning these kind of things. And
Speaker 3: my Douglases came down into Virginia and settled in this
Speaker 3: little town called Buchannan, which became West Virginia. That part
Speaker 3: of Virginia became West Virginia. So Buchan in West Virginia
Speaker 3: is where my people really settled for the first time.
Speaker 3: And my mother and father now live about forty five
Speaker 3: miles from there. So the family, that portion of the
Speaker 3: family didn't spread too far, but others, you know, William O.
Speaker 3: Douglas is a relative of mine, distant relative, and Douglas
Speaker 3: is all over the place. I mean, I've I haven't
Speaker 3: joined twenty three in meters, so I haven't tracked anybody down,
Speaker 3: and I'm scared of that thing anyway. So being a
Speaker 3: traveling musician, I don't need any other children or grandchildren.
Speaker 1: Okay, So how did they end up in Warren, Ohio?
Speaker 1: And how did your father end up working in the
Speaker 1: steel mill.
Speaker 3: My father's had some cousins that had gone north and
Speaker 3: found work in the steel mills around Warren and Youngstown, Ohio,
Speaker 3: in the northeastern part of the state, and they said, well,
Speaker 3: come on up here, we can find work for you.
Speaker 3: And in West Virginia at that point, if you it
Speaker 3: depended on which party was in power, the Republicans or
Speaker 3: the Democrats. And if you were in the Democrats, you
Speaker 3: either worked in the coal mines, you worked on the
Speaker 3: state road, or you were a farmer. And my father
Speaker 3: was looking for a better life, so he my mother
Speaker 3: got buried and moved straight up to Ohio and he
Speaker 3: went to work in the steel mills and stayed there
Speaker 3: for forty years until he retired from the mills. And
Speaker 3: then they moved back to my mother's farm, which had
Speaker 3: been in the family now for over two hundred years,
Speaker 3: and built a nice, great, big log cabin on top
Speaker 3: of a ridge, and dad's ninety two, mom's eighty nine.
Speaker 3: They lived there by themselves, and they're just amazing. I
Speaker 3: can't I know I've got those genes, and I'm scared
Speaker 3: to death what I'll be doing when I'm ninety two
Speaker 3: years old.
Speaker 1: So your father retired before the whole steel business imploded.
Speaker 2: Well, he saw it coming.
Speaker 3: I remember the day he came home and said to me,
Speaker 3: our steel days are numbered because they're buying Japanese steel now.
Speaker 3: And then it became Chinese steel, and you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: and his company was.
Speaker 2: Owned by a huge, a huge.
Speaker 3: Rich family, European family, and they weren't getting much help.
Speaker 3: So Dad took his retirement. He retired at just the
Speaker 3: right time to get out with all his benefits and
Speaker 3: his you know, everything in his retirement. It was like
Speaker 3: it was the perfect American dream at that point, you know,
Speaker 3: you could you could still get out of it and
Speaker 3: take with what they said that you were going to have,
Speaker 3: and they took it. So he, you know, just just
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago his retirement ran out. You know,
Speaker 3: so he has lived, he's lived the whole dream. He
Speaker 3: lived through his retirement and he's just you know, he's fine,
Speaker 3: he's fine.
Speaker 1: Okay. So you're growing up in Warren. How many kids
Speaker 1: in the family.
Speaker 2: My brother and I were just the two of us.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of cousins around, but most of
Speaker 3: our family was in West Virginia, so we go south
Speaker 3: for vacations, and the family never really we didn't really
Speaker 3: travel that far. We didn't travel outside Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia,
Speaker 3: you know, Pennsylvania, just surrounding high We didn't go that
Speaker 3: far on vacations. But my dad would get these five
Speaker 3: week paid vacations every year after he hit a certain
Speaker 3: amount of years in the steel mill. So he would
Speaker 3: go take us and we would just go to bluegrass
Speaker 3: festivals and just hear all this music that you know,
Speaker 3: that we loved. And he had a band. My father
Speaker 3: had a band in Warren, Ohio called the West Virginia
Speaker 3: Travelers and they were all guys from West Virginia who
Speaker 3: had work in the steel mills. And they but they
Speaker 3: when people from the south moved north, they took their
Speaker 3: music with them, you know, and and a lot of
Speaker 3: other things that maybe they shouldn't have taken. But I
Speaker 3: think back to the jd Vance to the Hillbilly Elogy,
Speaker 3: you know, those people moved to Dayton and took everything
Speaker 3: with them, their lifestyle, everything.
Speaker 2: But in up in our our part of the our
Speaker 2: part of the woods.
Speaker 3: There were so many people, so many different ethnic uh
Speaker 3: you know, it with a lot of Greek people, people
Speaker 3: from Greece, people from Italy.
Speaker 2: It was a huge Italian population and just a boiling pot.
Speaker 2: And you know, and the food was amazing up there,
Speaker 2: and uh, just all kinds of people getting along. You know.
Speaker 2: It wasn't it wasn't didn't seem to be a division.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: They all had nicknames for each other. But there was
Speaker 3: never any never any trouble or anything like that. But
Speaker 3: but Dad, he he was up there sort of on
Speaker 3: his own, uh you know, but had a band and
Speaker 3: they started working and then there create that created other bands,
Speaker 3: other bluegrass bands around there.
Speaker 2: But he was one of the first in that area. Uh.
Speaker 3: And and that because of that, I got to see
Speaker 3: a band rehearse when I was, you know, five six
Speaker 3: years old, rolling around under the kitchen table, watching these
Speaker 3: guys figure out how to create a song, and that
Speaker 3: all I was a sponge.
Speaker 2: I sooked all of that up. I learned a lot
Speaker 2: from just watching them.
Speaker 1: Okay, your brother older, younger, where is he today.
Speaker 2: He's he's almost three years younger than me.
Speaker 3: Uh, he's retired now, and he was a meter reader
Speaker 3: in West Virginia down there where he moved down to
Speaker 3: be kind of keep an eye on the folks. And
Speaker 3: he's on the next ridge over in another loghouse that
Speaker 3: he but he can see their house, and you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's great that he's there, you know, because I
Speaker 3: can't be but uh he and he also started playing bass,
Speaker 3: uh at one point, and and became a really good
Speaker 3: bass player. But he just he wasn't as interested in
Speaker 3: making a living at it or doing what.
Speaker 2: I did, you know, following following what I did.
Speaker 1: Okay, you come of age when the Beatles break. I
Speaker 1: have close friends grew up in the exact same area.
Speaker 1: So you talk about your father listening to country music.
Speaker 1: Were also exposed to the British invasion in the other
Speaker 1: top forty stuff.
Speaker 2: Definitely was.
Speaker 3: I mean, like I said, I would listen to Flatten
Speaker 3: Scrugs or something like that in the morning. But at
Speaker 3: night I was close enough to Cleveland that it was
Speaker 3: I would lay in my bed with my little bug,
Speaker 3: you know, and put that my ear and listen to
Speaker 3: what the lightest rock and roll was coming out of Cleveland.
Speaker 3: So I was really confused, you because I loved that music,
Speaker 3: and I loved what I heard in the morning. I'm
Speaker 3: trying to figure out, how do I marry these two things,
Speaker 3: and how can I make how can I make one
Speaker 3: music out of tude or you know, trying to figure
Speaker 3: out that, figure that out. And I think I've done
Speaker 3: it over the time. I think I've done it and
Speaker 3: combined the two just by being a chameleon and being
Speaker 3: a musician that listened, and you know, doing sessions.
Speaker 2: That's that's your job.
Speaker 3: Listen, you listen, and you you learn the song fast,
Speaker 3: you come up with a hook, and you do all
Speaker 3: of these things as fast as possible in order to
Speaker 3: you know, move time. And that's that's one of the
Speaker 3: things that that has really helped me in my career.
Speaker 3: And but but those those radio stations up there also
Speaker 3: had had a cousin moved in with us when he
Speaker 3: was eighteen to k He came up there to find work.
Speaker 3: He brought and the first night he was there, I
Speaker 3: heard for the first time, I heard the mamas and
Speaker 3: the papas, I heard, I heard the birds, and I
Speaker 3: heard Don't walk Away, and I remember that song. I
Speaker 3: mean the first night he was there, and I just
Speaker 3: my mind was blown again. You know, it was like
Speaker 3: I was really I paid attention to music. You know,
Speaker 3: It's like the different music that I would hear, like
Speaker 3: like what he brought in the house and what I
Speaker 3: heard on the radio from Cleveland and and all of
Speaker 3: these things. So it was, uh, it was quite an education,
Speaker 3: you know, before I even really put the bar to
Speaker 3: the strings and got serious enough about playing that. I
Speaker 3: loved music before I ever really got into playing it
Speaker 3: so much.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you hear flatt and scrugs. You hear the
Speaker 1: dough bro? What age are you you decide to play?
Speaker 1: How do you get a dough bro? How do you
Speaker 1: learn how to play?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Good, good question. Because I had a silver tone guitar.
Speaker 3: It was a pretty cheap model that I'd gotten for Christmas,
Speaker 3: and and we raised the strings.
Speaker 2: Up on that.
Speaker 3: And one one day I came home from school and
Speaker 3: my guitar was on the top of the stack of
Speaker 3: guitars that we had, like guitars maybe.
Speaker 2: And the sun had come in and hit my case.
Speaker 3: And as soon as I hit the last latch on
Speaker 3: the case and threw open the top of the case,
Speaker 3: my guitar just folded up like that. And so we
Speaker 3: had to go find something real for me to play,
Speaker 3: and that's when we went on the search to find
Speaker 3: a dough Bro But there were there weren't any. I mean,
Speaker 3: they had stopped building Doughbro guitars in the late thirties,
Speaker 3: so there weren't any. But the company was starting up again.
Speaker 3: My luck, in nineteen sixty seven, they started to produce
Speaker 3: guitars again and I got one of the first ones.
Speaker 2: But I had to go to a music store and
Speaker 2: every time I'd ask them, they just look at me
Speaker 2: like I.
Speaker 3: Had some strange disease if I say, do you have
Speaker 3: any Doughbro guitars? No, So finally I got a brochure
Speaker 3: and I ordered one from the brochure to the to
Speaker 3: a music store in Newton Fall, Ohio. And six months
Speaker 3: later that came in and I was just like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is what it sounds like, you know, because I,
Speaker 3: you know, I've been playing a guitar. It didn't it
Speaker 3: didn't create all of that sound that comes from the
Speaker 3: cover plate. And under that cover plate is a we
Speaker 3: didn't get to this before, but there's an aluminum spun
Speaker 3: aluminum cone. It's like a speaker cone. And and also
Speaker 3: there's a there's a bridge to connect the bridge to
Speaker 3: the rest of this contraption. There's a thing I like
Speaker 3: called a spider that sits down on that cone and
Speaker 3: contacts that cone at eight different places and transfers the
Speaker 3: sound down into the guitar back up out of the guitar.
Speaker 3: It was just an ingenious invention. I mean that there
Speaker 3: are two screens at the top of the guitar.
Speaker 2: They're just like they're.
Speaker 3: Screens, they're round screens, and that's where the bass of
Speaker 3: part of the guitar comes from because it's channeled in side.
Speaker 3: Sound is just like it's just like light or water.
Speaker 3: It bounces, it reflects, it does all of these things.
Speaker 3: And these guys figured out how to create the inside
Speaker 3: of the guitar so they could control the high end
Speaker 3: from the low end. And it just created two sources
Speaker 3: of sound in one guitar, and you could mix those
Speaker 3: two together depending on where you put the microphone as
Speaker 3: to how much high end or low end you get.
Speaker 3: And I think they got lucky on a whole lot
Speaker 3: of things. I mean, just the circumference of that metal
Speaker 3: spun aluminum cone that's never changed, and the cover plates
Speaker 3: never changed until I changed the design of it a
Speaker 3: few years ago. And I'm the guinea pig for a
Speaker 3: lot of things that come out for Dobo players, and
Speaker 3: I get them first and it works.
Speaker 2: I keep it. It doesn't goes back to the whoever
Speaker 2: gave it to me.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what's the state of manufacture of Doughbro guitars today?
Speaker 1: How many people even make them?
Speaker 3: Doughbro does not make them. Gibson Guitars bought Dobro and uh,
Speaker 3: they were terrible guitars that they were making. And so
Speaker 3: I stepped in and said, can I can you build
Speaker 3: me a signature model? And I will. I'll come in
Speaker 3: with you. I'll go through all the pains and.
Speaker 2: Everything with you to get this to be a good
Speaker 2: guitar that somebody can buy as an entry level guitar
Speaker 2: mahogany guitar at seventeen hundred dollars. And we all agreed
Speaker 2: on we could do that.
Speaker 3: But the guitars, you know, if they have your name
Speaker 3: on them anywhere, everyone who buys it thinks you built
Speaker 3: it right. So they started they started doing some really
Speaker 3: wacky things with this dough Bro like out of line,
Speaker 3: or the the cone would not be or the cover
Speaker 3: plate would not be in the center of the guitar
Speaker 3: and be over to the left or to the right,
Speaker 3: and you can't play a guitar like that. And they
Speaker 3: were just bad. They were bad guitars. So Gibson and
Speaker 3: I got a divorce. So I went to there's a
Speaker 3: phelle named Tim Sheerhorn that makes excellent, excellent, excellent, like uh,
Speaker 3: the greatest uh resophonic guitars, doughbro guitars. Doughbrow has become
Speaker 3: a h. The word for doughbro now is ish resophonic.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Doughbro was a name, like we started using it like kleenex.
Speaker 3: You know, anything that looked like that was a doughbro.
Speaker 3: And to me, I still call it that. I don't
Speaker 3: care if they sue me or not, but you know,
Speaker 3: I'm selling more of them for them than anybody else.
Speaker 2: So that was really awful.
Speaker 3: But UH, I got UH and and then I got
Speaker 3: into a deal here with the fellow named Paul Beard,
Speaker 3: who is in Hagerstown, Maryland and makes the best, the
Speaker 3: best reservantic guitars. I was with Tim Sheerhorn for a while,
Speaker 3: but he didn't want to build a signature model. So
Speaker 3: I got with Paul Beard and he did so we
Speaker 3: set to work on building a special one worked on
Speaker 3: the inside so the sound would move and be reflected
Speaker 3: in different ways, and the guitar sounded bigger. All the
Speaker 3: new builders are building what I would consider hybrids of
Speaker 3: the first of the original guitar at this point.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's assume I want to buy a Doughbro.
Speaker 1: Are these things now readily available? How many companies are
Speaker 1: making them? Is it still a very limited thing.
Speaker 2: It's not a limited thing.
Speaker 3: Nope, Through Paul Beard, there are several several entry level
Speaker 3: guitars you can buy and not spend a lot of money,
Speaker 3: you know, until you I tell people, if you're going
Speaker 3: to buy a Doughbro.
Speaker 2: Don't don't go out and buy one like mine right away.
Speaker 3: Go out and buy, you know, a lower level guitar
Speaker 3: to see if you really want to play this guitar. No,
Speaker 3: don't spend ten thousand dollars. If you can spend you know,
Speaker 3: fifteen hundred dollars and get something, And they're amazing guitars.
Speaker 3: If I'd have had one of those guitars when I
Speaker 3: was learning to play, I don't know what would have happened,
Speaker 3: but yeah, suddenly, suddenly dobro players can get They're readily available.
Speaker 3: You can find them all music stores. You know, you
Speaker 3: go in, you go into guitar center, you can find
Speaker 3: a dobro guitar, a resivantic guitar, and a slide and
Speaker 3: picks and all everything. And I've been in situations in
Speaker 3: the last couple of years. I had to fly from
Speaker 3: Charlotte to Portland, Oregon to open for Shock Tea. I
Speaker 3: was like one of the three people that got to
Speaker 3: open for John McLaughlin and Zakir Hussein and all of
Speaker 3: these amazing musicians. I mean, any of us in any
Speaker 3: genre of music, will we sort of bow down to
Speaker 3: what those guys have done because it's incredible music and
Speaker 3: no one else can play it like they can. So
Speaker 3: they were doing they're doing their fiftieth anniversary and probably
Speaker 3: the last run. I get out to Portland and I
Speaker 3: have no guitar, and I don't have a guitar the
Speaker 3: next day either when I'm supposed to play. So I
Speaker 3: put out an APB found another guitar that was my
Speaker 3: signature model that showed up that had everything on it
Speaker 3: that my guitar had. It was exact, you know, almost
Speaker 3: exact copy mine's been played for three years, so it
Speaker 3: sounded a little different. But that's happened to me about
Speaker 3: four or five times over the last two years. So
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, why do I even carry a guitar? Why
Speaker 3: don't I just announce where I'm going to be and
Speaker 3: have people show up and bring me one to play.
Speaker 2: But nothing like playing your own guitar. But it's.
Speaker 3: I don't know, you have to depend on so many
Speaker 3: people to get from A to B anymore. It's kind
Speaker 3: of it's a tough world out there for us traveling
Speaker 3: with one in one instrument.
Speaker 1: Okay, how'd you end up in the Pacific Northwest without
Speaker 1: a guitar?
Speaker 2: Airlines?
Speaker 3: They just left it somewhere they you know, I have
Speaker 3: air tags and everything. I knew exactly where it was.
Speaker 3: It left, never left Charlotte, you know. And I needed
Speaker 3: it in Portland, Oregon like now, And so two hours
Speaker 3: before the show, my guitar showed up to so I
Speaker 3: was covered.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, So now you get a guitar, how do you
Speaker 1: learn how to play it?
Speaker 3: That was when I was learning how to play. There
Speaker 3: was no one, I mean, there was no internet. There
Speaker 3: was the only way you could learn how to play
Speaker 3: something was listen to the person that played it, you know,
Speaker 3: and and find somebody who knows how to tune it.
Speaker 3: And I got lucky there. My dad's banjo player said,
Speaker 3: I think it's the first four strings of the banjo,
Speaker 3: and then I don't know.
Speaker 2: What's up after that.
Speaker 3: So we just went with what the tuning that I have,
Speaker 3: and I got lucky, you know, And I just started
Speaker 3: listening to Flatt and Scrugs records and trying to copy everything.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I couldn't slow my my record player would not slow
Speaker 3: down any farther than thirty three, so I had to
Speaker 3: put something heavy on it to slow it down so
Speaker 3: I could hear the intervals between notes and what notes
Speaker 3: they were and try to figure out where they were.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm totally self taught. I had nobody to
Speaker 3: tell me anything ever, And and it wasn't until much
Speaker 3: later in the eighties when there were started to become
Speaker 3: homespundings and stuff like that, and teaching teaching tools to
Speaker 3: teach all instruments, and Dobro was included in those. But
Speaker 3: it was it was hard because there were plenty of
Speaker 3: people could tell you how to play guitar or manlin
Speaker 3: or benjo or a violin, but dobro nobody, and uh
Speaker 3: so we were all just kind of listening to each other.
Speaker 3: And then you'd meet to another dobro player and it
Speaker 3: was like you'd learned a foreign language, gone to that
Speaker 3: country and tried it out on them and they actually
Speaker 3: understood you.
Speaker 2: You know. It was that kind of a great feeling.
Speaker 3: And and the dobro community was a very very close
Speaker 3: knit community because there weren't that many of us, but
Speaker 3: now there are. There are like one thousand percent more
Speaker 3: Doughbro players now than there were when I first went
Speaker 3: on the road.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're learning how to play the conventional stream
Speaker 1: for people from your demo. My demo is They then
Speaker 1: formed bands, They played high school gigs, et cetera. What
Speaker 1: did you do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I played it.
Speaker 3: I played in bars with my dad's bluegrass band. I
Speaker 3: you know, we didn't play behind chicken wire, but we
Speaker 3: needed it a few times. We were playing in in
Speaker 3: bars around around Warren, Ohio where uh we played in
Speaker 3: one bar that was right across the street from Alcoa,
Speaker 3: And when the midnight shift from Alcoa let out, those
Speaker 3: guys all came in that bar right across the street,
Speaker 3: and we already had our our regular clientele in there, dancing,
Speaker 3: you know, and and uh and making them so much
Speaker 3: noise we could barely hear ourselves.
Speaker 2: That was it.
Speaker 3: And but uh, yeah, I I when they my friends
Speaker 3: didn't know what I was doing. I didn't tell anybody
Speaker 3: that I was a musician. I didn't tell anybody that
Speaker 3: I played bluegrass music, country music, rock and roll. Didn't
Speaker 3: tell them anything until my senior year, a bunch of
Speaker 3: my pals found out where I was playing. They knew
Speaker 3: I played. In fact, one of my friends told me,
Speaker 3: he said, show and tell. One time you brought your
Speaker 3: dough brow to school and the teacher gave you a
Speaker 3: c And I thought, well, I just don't think she
Speaker 3: understood what I was about. And but yeah, there was
Speaker 3: nobody and and the band teacher for the high school
Speaker 3: found out that I was a musician after that.
Speaker 2: They told him and he said, why didn't you want to?
Speaker 2: Why could Why didn't you play in the band?
Speaker 3: And I said, it's not the same it's not the
Speaker 3: same kind of music, and it's it's a completely different
Speaker 3: world from what you guys are doing. Marching on a
Speaker 3: football field and stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm not. I don't do that. I play for I
Speaker 2: play for live people, and who.
Speaker 3: Are you know, applauding and and you know, I'm playing
Speaker 3: for fun.
Speaker 2: Really, I'm playing for fun.
Speaker 3: And and it was all fun until I got up
Speaker 3: to be about fifteen sixteen years old, and then it
Speaker 3: was then I got scouted by a professional bluegrass band.
Speaker 1: Okay, going sideways for a second. Not everybody got sophisticated.
Speaker 1: Please define bluegrass music.
Speaker 3: To define bluegrass music is a tough thing to do.
Speaker 3: I mean, nobody agrees. But one thing that I think
Speaker 3: we can all agree on is there was no bluegrass
Speaker 3: music until Bill Monroe stepped on stage with Earl Scruggs.
Speaker 2: And Lester Flat And that's the night bluegrass was born.
Speaker 3: It was right here at the Grand Ole Opry in
Speaker 3: Nashville in nineteen forty seven, and Earl Scruggs stepped up
Speaker 3: to the microphone and played something so fast nobody had
Speaker 3: ever heard anything like that before, and he got I
Speaker 3: think they got five standing ovations, and they played the
Speaker 3: song like five times, and that had never been done
Speaker 3: at the Opry, you know, other than Hank Williams doing
Speaker 3: something like that, nobody had ever done anything like that before.
Speaker 3: But bluegrass music is basically a basic bluegrass band is
Speaker 3: comprised of a guitar, a banjo, a violin, fiddle, mandolin,
Speaker 3: and a bass and then Dobro is sort of the
Speaker 3: stepchild of all of that. Josh Graves made it work
Speaker 3: for Flatten Scruggs, gave them a broader audience than they
Speaker 3: had because.
Speaker 2: Of his blues influence.
Speaker 3: Just the instrument sort of inspires a blues atmosphere, you
Speaker 3: know when he and he was from an area of
Speaker 3: the country that that and he learned from an old
Speaker 3: African American man who hung out around around Knoxville, Tennessee,
Speaker 3: And so when he joined Flatten Scruggs, there was this
Speaker 3: whole blues thing that happened to them that had never
Speaker 3: happened before, and they used it and that's why they
Speaker 3: were such a popular band with so many people. But
Speaker 3: bluegrass they didn't they didn't even say they were a
Speaker 3: bluegrass band because Bill Monroe was a bluegrass band, and
Speaker 3: it was just they didn't want to be called bluegrass
Speaker 3: because they thought it was limiting Bill Monroe and the vocals.
Speaker 3: In bluegrass, the vocals are pitched kind of high because
Speaker 3: Bill Monroe sang everything in it, mostly in B and
Speaker 3: in higher keys than most men did so, And so
Speaker 3: I think that that kind of explains bluegrass is different
Speaker 3: than country music in that it's mostly acoustic as well.
Speaker 3: We've all adapted pickups and all kinds of things to
Speaker 3: our acoustic instruments at this point, so it's no longer
Speaker 3: purely purely acoustic. But that was the only way we
Speaker 3: could play in great, big places without feedback and things
Speaker 3: like that was to sort of, you know, make our instruments,
Speaker 3: adapt our instruments to the situation. But bluegrass music, I
Speaker 3: don't that that's pretty much how I could explain bluegrass
Speaker 3: music is the parts, and it comes from it comes
Speaker 3: from the South, it comes from gospel music, comes from
Speaker 3: rag time, it comes from the blues, comes from the
Speaker 3: field hollers. Gospel music is a huge, huge part of
Speaker 3: bluegrass music. And and just the sentiment, more of the
Speaker 3: sentiment than that, like I believe and you must believe,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's there are songs that have been sung
Speaker 3: for a long time, and and bluegrass music is a
Speaker 3: music that's very stays true to its roots as true
Speaker 3: to its roots as it possible, and when it goes
Speaker 3: out of bounds once in a while, and then it'll
Speaker 3: get pulled back.
Speaker 1: Okay for the uneducated, Where is the line between bluegrass
Speaker 1: and traditional country.
Speaker 3: There's a very fine line between bluegrass music and traditional country.
Speaker 3: Traditional country, you know that was played in the fifties
Speaker 3: and sixties was very much related to bluegrass music other
Speaker 3: than they introduced electric instruments and drums, and that's pretty
Speaker 3: much the difference. That's the difference. They were singing about
Speaker 3: the same they were all singing about the same subject
Speaker 3: matter pretty much, you know. But bluegrass music is a
Speaker 3: music that came from porches, you know, and people just
Speaker 3: playing in the country just to pass the time. So
Speaker 3: did old time country music. But country music is a
Speaker 3: more and has always been more of a commercial has
Speaker 3: more of a commercial side to it, and bluegrass, you know,
Speaker 3: because it came from a you know, a poor, poor background,
Speaker 3: didn't really I don't think it expected much for a
Speaker 3: long time and until it learned how to play the
Speaker 3: country music game, you know, until we actually monetized our music.
Speaker 1: So tell me about getting scouted.
Speaker 2: I was playing with my dad's band.
Speaker 3: In nineteen seventy two, playing at a festival with it
Speaker 3: with my dad's band. And also there was a band
Speaker 3: there who was sort of the cream of the bluegrass
Speaker 3: crop at that point, was called the Country Gentleman, And
Speaker 3: they were based out of Washington, d C. And there
Speaker 3: was this whole white collar bluegrass situation going on in
Speaker 3: the Seldom scene and bands like that around Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: But the Country Gentlemen. I looked out we were playing.
Speaker 3: I was playing with my dad. We were playing the set,
Speaker 3: and I looked out and I saw one of the guys,
Speaker 3: Charlie Waller over to my left. I saw Bill Emerson,
Speaker 3: the banjo player to my out in the center, and
Speaker 3: I mean, it was like being scouted as a baseball player.
Speaker 3: And they came up to me like right after that
Speaker 3: show and ask if I could leave with them that
Speaker 3: night and go to the next show. And I said, guys,
Speaker 3: I gotta I gotta go back to school. I mean,
Speaker 3: I need to go to I need to go to
Speaker 3: It'll be my junior year in high school. I need
Speaker 3: to go back to school. So the next summer after that,
Speaker 3: after my junior year, I went with them. I went
Speaker 3: out on the road for that summer and I missed.
Speaker 3: I missed my last my senior year of football because
Speaker 3: I was out running around with the bluegrass band all
Speaker 3: over the country instead of having my spring training with
Speaker 3: my football team. So I didn't play football that year.
Speaker 3: And but I think it all worked out.
Speaker 2: Okay. Uh.
Speaker 3: I don't think I was going to be a professional
Speaker 3: football player anyway. But I had a chance to go
Speaker 3: to as a as an English major, to go to
Speaker 3: the University of Maryland, and I and I, I was
Speaker 3: out on the road with country gentlemen, walking through a
Speaker 3: field and listen to all of these people play. After this,
Speaker 3: after the concerts were all over, and people would camp
Speaker 3: at these big bluegrass festivals and they and at night
Speaker 3: bonfires rose up and there were jam sessions everywhere. You
Speaker 3: could just walk around and listen to different bands play,
Speaker 3: people play.
Speaker 2: And I thought, you know, this is this. I love this.
Speaker 3: I want to do this forever. I wanted to be
Speaker 3: like this forever. Well it hasn't been but.
Speaker 2: Music. It was just music.
Speaker 3: It just made me, made me whole, It finished me,
Speaker 3: and it uh and I and I thought, you know,
Speaker 3: I I think I would rather do this. I think
Speaker 3: I'm better at this than then I would be as
Speaker 3: an English teacher or you know, reading late literature for
Speaker 3: the rest of my life. So I made a choice
Speaker 3: to stay on the road and become a musician, a
Speaker 3: road musician, and hopefully a recording musician someday.
Speaker 1: Okay, you said you hoped that it would be like
Speaker 1: this festival with bonfires and jam sessions, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1: What was it like?
Speaker 3: For a long time, it was, and there was a
Speaker 3: there was There was a sort of a just an
Speaker 3: era where the festivals were more family oriented and people
Speaker 3: would go there to meet other people that played bluegrass
Speaker 3: because it was still a sort of a rare commodity
Speaker 3: to run across somebody who even knew what it was.
Speaker 3: And as it as it built, you know, and then
Speaker 3: that you know, things things like the nitty gritty dirt
Speaker 3: bands Circle, the Unbroken Record made a big difference. Then
Speaker 3: later on, oh, brother made a big difference. And but uh,
Speaker 3: it didn't. When I say it didn't stay that way,
Speaker 3: was because it became the festivals got bigger, they got
Speaker 3: more harder to manage the people, you know, and and
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, you know, every festival thought
Speaker 3: it should be Woodstock, and so there would be thousands
Speaker 3: of people the motorcycle gang, the Pagans, whoever showed up
Speaker 3: would be the security for the festival.
Speaker 2: And that just got it got too crazy, he got
Speaker 2: out of hand, and uh.
Speaker 3: And anymore, you can go to festivals, and there are
Speaker 3: some festivals that still you can find people jamming out
Speaker 3: in the after at night after after dark, but they're
Speaker 3: very far a few and far between anymore. And the
Speaker 3: festivals really aren't set up that way anymore either. There's
Speaker 3: still a lot of camping, but there's you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know. Uh, we've just changed as a society. We've
Speaker 3: we've changed. We're more private, I guess, I don't know. Uh,
Speaker 3: but there's less jamming in the campground. But I don't know. Uh,
Speaker 3: it's it's just a different time. People more When it
Speaker 3: was more of a family event, you saw a lot
Speaker 3: more people get out, and you saw a lot more
Speaker 3: people get out and jam, you know, and it was
Speaker 3: it was more local, felt more local.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you take the path to be a musician
Speaker 1: as opposed to continue your education. So what happens are
Speaker 1: you on the road with the band, do you switch bands?
Speaker 1: How does your career ensue?
Speaker 3: Well, I played with the country Gentlemen, for a couple
Speaker 3: of years, and uh, after my after my junior year
Speaker 3: of high school, I went out and played the summer
Speaker 3: with him. Then I came back, finished my scene your
Speaker 3: year of high school, turned eighteen, graduated from high school, and.
Speaker 2: Moved to Washington, d c. All in the same week.
Speaker 3: And that's that's when I was you know, it's not
Speaker 3: it wasn't too late to turn back now, but it
Speaker 3: was like I decided this is what I was going
Speaker 3: to do, and moved down there, got an apartment and
Speaker 3: started working full time music, being on the road, you know,
Speaker 3: traveling in a bus and being on the road, and
Speaker 3: I met other musicians, you know, through through the course
Speaker 3: of just playing festivals and and just you know, meeting
Speaker 3: other musicians. And I started working with this guitar player
Speaker 3: named Tony Rice who was just a phenomena, and Ricky
Speaker 3: Skagg's the same, and we I got into a band.
Speaker 3: I was hired by a fello named J. D. Crowe,
Speaker 3: banjo player in Lexington, Kentucky, who just he had this
Speaker 3: band with Ricky and Tony, and it was like it
Speaker 3: was like a step up for me. It was a
Speaker 3: musical step up. And I followed those things. I followed
Speaker 3: those opportunities where I thought, I can be a better
Speaker 3: musician here, I can learn something here, you know. And
Speaker 3: it wasn't about money to me. It was about it
Speaker 3: was about learning. It was about learning to be a
Speaker 3: musician in all aspects of it.
Speaker 2: And these guys.
Speaker 3: Gave me a real foot up and it just opened
Speaker 3: my mind to a lot of other different kinds of music.
Speaker 3: Even I heard Weather Report and Chick Korea the same day,
Speaker 3: and that blew my mind. I thought, WHOA. I thought
Speaker 3: I knew music pretty well, but this is something I've
Speaker 3: never heard before.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is brand news.
Speaker 3: So I started, you know, my forays into that area
Speaker 3: with David Grisman on the West Coast and meeting all
Speaker 3: these different musicians all over the country. And that's when music,
Speaker 3: the bluegrass music started to change, started to take in
Speaker 3: a lot of jazz elements, a lot of blues elements.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It allowed itself for these things to pour in because
Speaker 3: we have these renaissance periods. All music does, but I
Speaker 3: notice some more in bluegrass music because right now we're
Speaker 3: in one right where Chris Deely and Molly Tuttle and
Speaker 3: Sierra Hull, Sierra Farrell, Meuni it's an explosion of brand
Speaker 3: new talent. And I think that happens every fifteen twenty years.
Speaker 3: I was in one of those classes. You know, it's
Speaker 3: like it happens.
Speaker 2: Music is.
Speaker 3: Like all music starts at twelve o'clock. If you go
Speaker 3: around the dial, it starts. It starts with roots music.
Speaker 3: You know, something terrible happens in the world roots music
Speaker 3: twelve o'clock, and then it goes around the dial and
Speaker 3: it gets shinier and shinier, and by the time it
Speaker 3: gets back around about eleven o'clock, everybody's going, oh man,
Speaker 3: this is too much. We can't deal with this anymore.
Speaker 3: And then something happens and we're back fruits music start over.
Speaker 3: And if you I've been here for in Nashville for
Speaker 3: at least three of those occasions.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: When I first moved to town, we were leaving what
Speaker 3: was called the uh was it called the uh uh
Speaker 3: oh it was. It was Mickey Gilly and every and
Speaker 3: when everybody had everybody had a mechanical bull. It was
Speaker 3: the urban Cowboys scare. That's what we called it. It
Speaker 3: was like the folk scare that happened in the sixties
Speaker 3: and then and then the urban Cowboys scare, and then
Speaker 3: we had the Broe Country scare and we you know,
Speaker 3: but but when I came to town is about the time.
Speaker 3: Uh then Ricky, when I moved to Nashville, Ricky Ricky
Speaker 3: Skaggs hit, uh, uh Randy Travis hit and uh, Emmy
Speaker 3: Lou was hitting. And it was the traditional country movement.
Speaker 3: And I was here at the perfect time to belong
Speaker 3: to that, to be part of that, and that really
Speaker 3: gave me, gave me a foot up on becoming a
Speaker 3: more of a musician, you know. Then then I went
Speaker 3: out on the road with Emmy Lou Harris, and I
Speaker 3: saw how these huge shows move buses, trucks, you know,
Speaker 3: lots of musicians, you know, lots of guests, you know,
Speaker 3: all these things had all works and and that was
Speaker 3: a different time, you know, and then that saw its
Speaker 3: time go away, you know. And there have been different
Speaker 3: scares of Barbara Mandrel scare or the you know, all
Speaker 3: of these different times in country music where we're in
Speaker 3: one right now. We're in one right now where I
Speaker 3: went to fill out my CMA ballot the other.
Speaker 2: Day and I didn't know who anybody was.
Speaker 3: I mean, and at one point I was doing you know,
Speaker 3: fifteen sessions a week, playing with everybody and knew who
Speaker 3: everyone was. Now I barely know who anybody is because
Speaker 3: I'm just not doing that anymore, not playing on it
Speaker 3: all as many sessions.
Speaker 2: You know, it's more pick and choose.
Speaker 1: Let's go back. Graduate from high school, you moved to
Speaker 1: d C. You're eighteen years old, you go on the road.
Speaker 1: In the rock world, it's sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Speaker 1: What was it like in the bluegrass world for you?
Speaker 2: It was pretty much sex, drugs and bluegrass.
Speaker 3: But it was, uh, you know, we're young. We were
Speaker 3: doing everything we're supposed to do, and we're young, and
Speaker 3: as we got older.
Speaker 2: We watched the other people do the same thing. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it was wild out there.
Speaker 3: And and you know, bluegrass went through a drug period,
Speaker 3: just like rock and roll did. It's just like it
Speaker 3: was everywhere. And I don't know what it's like now
Speaker 3: because I've I'm out of that. I'm not taking drugs,
Speaker 3: so I don't know what they've got, But I think
Speaker 3: that I think they they I think they pretty much
Speaker 3: hoopooed the drugs and and and a lot of them
Speaker 3: just no, I don't want drugs, you know, it was.
Speaker 3: It was the period of the kids were going to
Speaker 3: say no to drugs, and so everyone did. And uh,
Speaker 3: I know Chris Deely uh never touched anything.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I remember when he turned eighteen and he and he
Speaker 3: saw his first movie that wasn't a G rated movie.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: He was telling me about all these movies and and
Speaker 3: and uh, it was fun to watch these guys who
Speaker 3: were our you know who we had generated these people,
Speaker 3: Uh through them watching Bayla Fleck and Sam Bush and
Speaker 3: Tony Rice and and me and Mark O'Connor play.
Speaker 2: They they went to school on us. Man. They they
Speaker 2: learned everything that we did.
Speaker 3: And and uh, you know the only thing they don't
Speaker 3: have that we have our old souls.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you talk about switching from the country gentleman
Speaker 1: to Ricky Skaggs Tony Rice. Everybody's humble, But what's the
Speaker 1: real situation you see? Are you taking advantage of the
Speaker 1: situation or are you is it just dumb luck You're
Speaker 1: sitting there and someone says, hey, come play with me.
Speaker 3: It's a combination of both. Really, I I I Uh,
Speaker 3: the way I joined Alison Kraus and Union Station was
Speaker 3: just a phone call, you know, it was like I
Speaker 3: had produced one of her records and played on just
Speaker 3: about every record she had that she'd made, but I
Speaker 3: wasn't expecting that call and and.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it was like, yeah it was I was.
Speaker 3: I was playing the game. I was watching where my
Speaker 3: next musical step could be. Uh, As I say, it
Speaker 3: wasn't financial, but you know, things things were better, I
Speaker 3: mean because I was, you know, more identifiable and and
Speaker 3: playing on lots of records and everything like that, and
Speaker 3: showing up with lots of shows. But it wasn't It wasn't.
Speaker 3: Uh that's I wasn't doing it for the money. I
Speaker 3: was doing it for the for the music. But but uh,
Speaker 3: I don't know. These these these new kids cropping up
Speaker 3: billy strings is amazing, I mean, And that's that's way.
Speaker 3: That's another phenomena that we could talk about. But you know,
Speaker 3: I did a show with him the other night, and
Speaker 3: and it's the same songs my father was singing to
Speaker 3: those steel workers, is what he's singing to that audience,
Speaker 3: and plus writing his own material too. But it's a
Speaker 3: phenomena to watch the audience reaction. And I would I
Speaker 3: was going from from one gig to another, from I
Speaker 3: went from the country Gentleman to JD. Crow to the Whites,
Speaker 3: Buck White and his two daughters, Sharon and Cheryl, and
Speaker 3: we had top ten records, country records. Then from there
Speaker 3: I was doing so many sessions that I had to
Speaker 3: get off the road with them and just take care
Speaker 3: of my recording career. But then I got bored.
Speaker 2: And I needed I needed the crowd reaction. I needed.
Speaker 3: I needed people, you know, to give me new ideas
Speaker 3: and to try things out on me, because that's a
Speaker 3: great place to try try new things in front of
Speaker 3: an audience, if you get a reaction there, and then
Speaker 3: take it back to the studio with you and use it.
Speaker 2: You know, in some way. But just.
Speaker 3: I just loved I just loved playing. So I would
Speaker 3: go from one one gig to another, and worked a
Speaker 3: lot with Peter Rowan, who was gave me a very
Speaker 3: worldly view of not just bluegrass, but you know, traveling
Speaker 3: through Europe and doing a lot more of that. Seeing
Speaker 3: the world a little bit more opened up, opened up
Speaker 3: things a little more for me as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're working with Ricky Skaggs, working with Tony Rice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: does someone say in the world of doughbro are there
Speaker 1: other people who were the first call. How do you
Speaker 1: get noticed in how many other people are in the world.
Speaker 3: I was pretty I was pretty alone in that world.
Speaker 3: I mean, there was Josh Graves who played who was
Speaker 3: getting older, but it wasn't with flattened scrugs anymore, didn't
Speaker 3: have quite the notoriety anymore. But still just he's my
Speaker 3: man to look to if I want to remember something
Speaker 3: good and hear something good. And Mike Aldridge was another
Speaker 3: Doughbro player from the DC area that was just amazing
Speaker 3: and and had taken the doughbro into a different subject
Speaker 3: matter with a seldom scene mean, and was wasn't playing
Speaker 3: so fast all the time, but but very his tone
Speaker 3: was so good.
Speaker 2: So that so here's speed.
Speaker 3: And then tone, you know, and uh, I'm trying to
Speaker 3: have both at the same time. It depends on the song.
Speaker 3: So it depends on the subject matter, you know. I've
Speaker 3: dived deep into these things and to try to figure
Speaker 3: out what to play because I want to be as
Speaker 3: as uh empathetic as the singer. I feel like I
Speaker 3: am another singer and and so I that's that's how
Speaker 3: I go at it. But but moving from one band
Speaker 3: to another was not a not a decision about money.
Speaker 3: It was a conscious decision about becoming a better musician.
Speaker 3: And uh, the final one, you know, with with Alison,
Speaker 3: I have my own band. Who you you saw, you
Speaker 3: saw us and we're.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gave us a bunch of love of jazz Fest.
Speaker 2: You made my day.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was raining, it was cold, I was miserable,
Speaker 3: and then I saw that it was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: all right, it was a good day after all.
Speaker 2: But I had my own band.
Speaker 3: And and love playing that stuff, you know, playing with
Speaker 3: my own band, because I those are all my songs
Speaker 3: and I get to hear their take on what my
Speaker 3: on my songs. So it's good. But working with Alison
Speaker 3: is like the pinnacle.
Speaker 2: Of all these worlds.
Speaker 3: You know, You're you're playing on a big stages, huge crowds,
Speaker 3: great sound systems, everything is everything is state of the art,
Speaker 3: you know. And and to walk out on that stage
Speaker 3: and hear that voice every night, and and all of
Speaker 3: those players, all those guys, my friends for more than
Speaker 3: twenty years now, it's it's just a it's it's the
Speaker 3: culmination of a long a lot of work for me,
Speaker 3: for me, and uh, I feel so at home in it.
Speaker 3: And it's like it's like part of my legacy at
Speaker 3: this point.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're playing with these varying things. How do
Speaker 1: you end up in Nashville as a studio musician.
Speaker 3: I moved here to work with the Whites, with Buck
Speaker 3: White and his daughters, and we started We had a
Speaker 3: we had a record deal with curb Uh and then
Speaker 3: we had a record deal with Capital. But we were
Speaker 3: pumping out these you know, number ten, number nine songs
Speaker 3: and we never made it to number one or anything
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: But that's when.
Speaker 3: It got really busy for me because we were right
Speaker 3: in the middle of the traditional country movement and I
Speaker 3: was playing on all kinds of records, you know, just
Speaker 3: just you know, anybody.
Speaker 2: Called I was just jumping. I was I was doing
Speaker 2: anything I was called for.
Speaker 3: And it got to where it happens to a lot
Speaker 3: of musicians that way, you get you know, there was
Speaker 3: different scales and there, and they're different session times you
Speaker 3: know there at we do session times at ten, two,
Speaker 3: and six, and I was doing all three of those,
Speaker 3: you know, every day and kind of getting burnt out
Speaker 3: on it. You know, you you start to wonder if
Speaker 3: you had just played this song with some other artists
Speaker 3: two three days ago. You don't know, you can't remember
Speaker 3: because it's all getting mixed up in there, worried about
Speaker 3: if you had just played the same solo or something
Speaker 3: like it, you know, last week or something, because it was, uh,
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It was just burnout time for me.
Speaker 3: I needed to do I needed to get away from
Speaker 3: it for a little while and and uh too to
Speaker 3: realize how wonderful it really was. And uh but that's
Speaker 3: when I took the job with Alison. I was right
Speaker 3: at the end of a of a really tired of
Speaker 3: doing what I'm doing kind of session. I was actually
Speaker 3: producing a band when she called and and so I
Speaker 3: started doing that, but I kept my own band at
Speaker 3: the same time for just you know, to be able
Speaker 3: to roll into that and know exactly what I was doing.
Speaker 3: And uh but but playing with Alison was like you're
Speaker 3: part of an ensemble, You're part of You're You're a
Speaker 3: puzzle piece.
Speaker 2: And I like that. I really like that, really like
Speaker 2: being part of a puzzle.
Speaker 1: So how long did you do the studio thing?
Speaker 3: About ten twelve years? Ten twelve years. I was I
Speaker 3: was just running down. I was home most of the time,
Speaker 3: and I was running downtown with a doughbro and going
Speaker 3: in and playing on two or three songs and then
Speaker 3: going to the next studio, you know.
Speaker 2: And that was that was my job. That's what I did.
Speaker 3: I replaced saxophones, a lot of saxophones, to bring a
Speaker 3: song back to country instead of you know, if they decided,
Speaker 3: if if they cut the record and they played it
Speaker 3: for somebody and they went, that's no, it needs to
Speaker 3: be more country. They called me to replace the the
Speaker 3: saxophone part, bring it back to country music. It's not
Speaker 3: just me, but you know, things that would make it
Speaker 3: more country.
Speaker 2: Uh So, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's it's uh, it's it's it's hard to it's hard
Speaker 3: to remember. Uh why I actually, you know, shied away
Speaker 3: from it. I just stopped when I got the gig
Speaker 3: with Alison. I stopped doing a lot of the sessions
Speaker 3: that I didn't really want to do, you know, that
Speaker 3: were worked for me. I started being a little more
Speaker 3: choosy than what I did. And that's the way it's been.
Speaker 3: So that's why it's remained up to now.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you start to pull back, is there somebody
Speaker 1: to fill your shoes or does the phone keep ringing,
Speaker 1: Hey Jerry, we need you.
Speaker 2: The phone keeps ringing.
Speaker 3: But there are also guys that can fill my shoes.
Speaker 3: But also there are you know, there for for that
Speaker 3: many dobro players, new dobro players, there are ten times
Speaker 3: that many bands, you know, so the whole thing was
Speaker 3: growing exponentially.
Speaker 2: But dobro players there are so many good ones now.
Speaker 3: I mean I love hearing other Doughbro players because I
Speaker 3: went so long for and not didn't hear any, you know,
Speaker 3: I was it was just me and two or three
Speaker 3: other guys at a festival, and you know, we were
Speaker 3: like the lost tribe, you know when somebody would meet.
Speaker 2: When I'd meet a.
Speaker 3: Dobro player, was like, whoa. You know, you don't have
Speaker 3: to show me everything, you know, I'm just glad to
Speaker 3: meet you. You know, I'm just glad to meet another
Speaker 3: dobro player. We're a rare bunch.
Speaker 1: Okay. You also play the lap steel guitar. Tell us
Speaker 1: exactly what that is.
Speaker 3: It's it's the forerunner of the pedal steel guitar. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's sort of between dobroh was the first slide slide
Speaker 3: guitar like that, and then then lap steals came out
Speaker 3: and they're just a board with strings, you know, and uh,
Speaker 3: it's a pretty simple, simple instrument that got keys on it,
Speaker 3: but the strand the strings are high and has pickup
Speaker 3: on it, so it's an electric instrument and uh, but
Speaker 3: there are so many different things you can do with it.
Speaker 3: There was a guy named Little Roy Wiggins that was
Speaker 3: here in the in the UH in the forties and
Speaker 3: fifties who uh just revolutionized country music with this the steel.
Speaker 3: And then Buddy Emmons and Shot Jackson and these guys
Speaker 3: started working on pedals, putting pedals on it to raise
Speaker 3: and lower strings and do all kinds of things, and
Speaker 3: it became a lot.
Speaker 2: It became a pedal steel guitar. So that's the three
Speaker 2: steps sort of this. So the lap steel is between those,
Speaker 2: but lap steel now is used. David Linley was.
Speaker 3: One of the greatest examples I can think of of
Speaker 3: of what I think lap steels should be used for.
Speaker 3: And they're just like they're rock and roll instruments, and
Speaker 3: they can be they can be really sweet and old
Speaker 3: time country music. But lap steels are used as overdrive.
Speaker 3: You know that the sound is overdriven and and it's
Speaker 3: sort of a harder, meaner sounding instrument, you know, but.
Speaker 2: There are really pretty things you can do with it.
Speaker 3: But it to me, it gave me license to be
Speaker 3: to be a little more ferocious, you know, to be
Speaker 3: a little more ferocious, to start using some of that
Speaker 3: stuff I learned when I was laying in my bed
Speaker 3: listening to Cleveland stations, you know, to sort of take
Speaker 3: on a Joe Walsh attitude all of a sudden instead
Speaker 3: of instead of laying back in bluegrass world.
Speaker 1: Well, you mentioned Linterley, you mentioned Walsh. To what degree
Speaker 1: have you intersected with these rock musicians, these rock guitarists,
Speaker 1: and what has that experience been like? Have they been
Speaker 1: wanting to learn your lessons you've been learning their lessons
Speaker 1: or just treating stories.
Speaker 3: But David Linley and I were really good friends and
Speaker 3: we would trade We would trade stories. And I remember
Speaker 3: having a slide. There was a brand new slide, and
Speaker 3: I was a Winnipeg at a big festival, big folk
Speaker 3: festival in Winnipeg, and I was running across this field
Speaker 3: to surprise David with this brand new slide. And I
Speaker 3: got about ten feet from him and I held up
Speaker 3: the slide and he held up one exactly like it.
Speaker 3: And Ry Cooter there's another one that they say, never
Speaker 3: meet your heroes, right. I mean, the first time I
Speaker 3: met Ry Cooter, I said, I, Ry, I'm I'm a
Speaker 3: doughbro player and he said gee.
Speaker 2: And just melted me. I just you know, shattered me.
Speaker 3: I just like they almost had to pick me up
Speaker 3: off the rug and with a you know, vacuum cleaner.
Speaker 3: I was in pieces. I was so shattered, uh that.
Speaker 3: But then I met later on met his brother in law,
Speaker 3: Russ Teidelman, who produced a record for me and I
Speaker 3: and I explained to him. I said, he said, well,
Speaker 3: what did Rye say? And I said that he said gee,
Speaker 3: and he said, yeah, doughbro ge And I went.
Speaker 2: Oh, is that what he meant? And he says yeah.
Speaker 3: So the next call I get from Ry Cooter is
Speaker 3: inviting me to one of his concerts. So I felt
Speaker 3: better after that. You know, we we healed and we're
Speaker 3: we're friends now.
Speaker 2: So but Derek Trucks is another guy.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like you talk about slide players these days,
Speaker 3: Derek Truck's name is going to come up because he's
Speaker 3: probably the greatest living.
Speaker 2: Slide guitar player there is out there.
Speaker 3: I mean all the you know, straight out of Dwayne
Speaker 3: omen you know, he played with the Alvin Brothers. He's
Speaker 3: just he's just got this thing. And the first time
Speaker 3: I heard him, I I thought, God, this is if
Speaker 3: I played that guitar. This is what I would want
Speaker 3: to sound like, this is what I would this is
Speaker 3: how I would play. I heard him play, and we
Speaker 3: just had this, you know, this great link to each other.
Speaker 2: And we're good friends. And we talked. We talked, you know,
Speaker 2: fairly off and and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of a lot of the people that
Speaker 3: I admired, and uh like David and and Derek and
Speaker 3: uh and Eric Clapton, you know who I've worked with
Speaker 3: now and produced produced a cut with for Eric Clapton,
Speaker 3: which sounds crazy but true. It's we're all. We all
Speaker 3: kind of I was surprised they knew who I was.
Speaker 3: I was just shocked that they knew me. But uh,
Speaker 3: you know, and and I was just doing I was
Speaker 3: in hero worship world, you know, and uh, I didn't
Speaker 3: know they they kind.
Speaker 2: Of were too. It was it was it's it's shocking.
Speaker 1: How do you end up producing a record for Eric Clapton?
Speaker 1: What's that experience like?
Speaker 2: Well, I I do this. I do this show.
Speaker 3: I'm a co music director for this show called the
Speaker 3: Transatlantic Sessions that we do. We start in Scotland. This
Speaker 3: whole thing was we filmed. We filmed six years of it,
Speaker 3: isn't it And a couple of years ago we started
Speaker 3: touring the show. So we played two nights and Glad
Speaker 3: School at the Grand Concert Hall. And then it's like
Speaker 3: a seventeen piece band plus five guests who's who may
Speaker 3: speak Gaelic, may sing in Gaelic or uh, you know whatever,
Speaker 3: but they're they're all people. We bring people from America
Speaker 3: and just put them together with people over there they've
Speaker 3: never met people and you know, reg who are on
Speaker 3: the same level as them, and just kind of it's
Speaker 3: a collaboration show and we just see what comes out
Speaker 3: of it. And it's a it's a different show every year,
Speaker 3: and the last show is the last show. It never
Speaker 3: happens again, and it's just it's it's amazing this music.
Speaker 3: But but the way I got to Eric to produce
Speaker 3: an a a song on Eric was he wanted to
Speaker 3: he wanted to play on the show. He wanted to
Speaker 3: he wanted to play play with us on the show.
Speaker 3: He'd been to the show five or six times in
Speaker 3: in London when we play there, and and I'd gotten
Speaker 3: to know him through Crossroads and a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: things like that, and he wanted to know if.
Speaker 2: Get up play with us. I said, I'm playing this
Speaker 2: song every night.
Speaker 3: Called uh when my while my guitar gently weeps.
Speaker 2: I said, I think you know that one.
Speaker 3: And he said he said, He said, do you play
Speaker 3: the chorus? And I said, yeah, yeah, I played the chorus.
Speaker 3: And he said, I've never played the chorus. And I said,
Speaker 3: you never played the chorus?
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So but he got up and played with us that night,
Speaker 3: and he also did this other song called sam Hall,
Speaker 3: and he and I kind of arranged it backstage and
Speaker 3: then treated it, gave it a Transatlantic Sessions treatment where
Speaker 3: at the end of it, the big crescendo and the
Speaker 3: big end is alien pipes take the take the the melody,
Speaker 3: and so all of a sudden there's this you know,
Speaker 3: wild animal loose in the room. A lot of people
Speaker 3: don't know what that sound is, you know what they
Speaker 3: hear it when they hear it.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And but he really liked the mixture of all the
Speaker 3: instruments you know, there's two violins, pipes, guitar, bass and drums,
Speaker 3: piano and an accordion, and and it's all of these
Speaker 3: guys who play Celtic music are all in the band,
Speaker 3: but they're they're having to adapt to some American country
Speaker 3: music at the same time. And and and we're playing
Speaker 3: We're playing uh old tunes, you know, two hundred year
Speaker 3: old fiddle tunes. You know that just make your will
Speaker 3: boil blood. You know, it's just that kind of you
Speaker 3: feel like you're sitting in a room full of vikings
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, and then uh it's just beautiful, beautiful,
Speaker 3: uplifting music. And Eric really loved it, and so he said,
Speaker 3: why don't we record this?
Speaker 2: And I said that'd be great. When do you want
Speaker 2: to do it? When I go, can we should? I
Speaker 2: have everybody stand down?
Speaker 3: He said no, we'll wait a month or so, and
Speaker 3: so I had to fly back. Most of the guys
Speaker 3: are there are from the UK or or Ireland. And
Speaker 3: uh so everybody convened at Abbey Road in the same
Speaker 3: in the in the Beatles in the Beatles room. And Eric,
Speaker 3: you know, he was trying to he's trying to do
Speaker 3: everything to just kind of completely blow our minds.
Speaker 2: And he did.
Speaker 3: And so we're in there playing in the Beatles room
Speaker 3: and hanging out in the you know, in the cafeteria
Speaker 3: where the Beatles ate every day, and nothing's changed in there.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's all the same. It's just an amazing
Speaker 3: week of box checking for me. He said, Okay, we're
Speaker 3: going to Abbey Road. All I get to take the
Speaker 3: transit Land guys with me. Great, Eric Clapton, you kidding, Yeah,
Speaker 3: this this is You can't.
Speaker 2: I can't. I couldn't have made this up. You know.
Speaker 3: It's like, this is so good and he's and he's, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, we have a lot of things in common.
Speaker 3: We talked about a lot of things, and he's he's
Speaker 3: a pretty wide open guy at this point in his life.
Speaker 3: I don't think he's always been, but he is right now.
Speaker 3: And you know, there's some there's been some bumps lately.
Speaker 3: I just you know, him voicing his opinions about things,
Speaker 3: you know, but uh, when we get together, we don't
Speaker 3: talk about any of that stuff. We're we're all music.
Speaker 3: It's all music, and and it's it's amazing to be
Speaker 3: uh me and to meet Eric Clapton, to meet Eric,
Speaker 3: to meet to play with Eric Clapton, to play with
Speaker 3: Earl Scruggs, to play with Bill Monroe, to play with
Speaker 3: all these guys in between, Vince Gill, you know, all
Speaker 3: these you know, Eagles records, whatever. It's an amazing life.
Speaker 3: I couldn't have I couldn't have ever guessed at anything
Speaker 3: like any of this would have ever happened.
Speaker 1: So how'd you end up working with Russ Titelman and
Speaker 1: what'd you learn from him in terms of producing records.
Speaker 3: Russ was one of those spellows. I used to meet
Speaker 3: all the time at places in New York and we go,
Speaker 3: we should do something together someday, you know, you do
Speaker 3: that with a thousand people, and it never happens. But
Speaker 3: I got to this point where I wanted to make
Speaker 3: a record, but I didn't want I didn't want to
Speaker 3: be the producer. I wanted to play. I wanted to
Speaker 3: pay more attention to what I was doing and uh.
Speaker 3: And then so I called Russ and he said, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'd love to do that. So we made we made
Speaker 3: a deal and he started making calls and we made
Speaker 3: this record called Traveler, uh, and it had Mumford and sons.
Speaker 2: I did a cut of.
Speaker 3: Of uh the the the boxer couldn't think of it
Speaker 3: and Uh we did that out in the middle of
Speaker 3: nowhere in a studio outside London and had a great time.
Speaker 3: And those guys were big friends of mine and uh
Speaker 3: and then uh keV Moo came in.
Speaker 2: Uh just like it was.
Speaker 3: It was fun and he and uh and he knew Clapton.
Speaker 3: That's how I That's how I was. That's that was
Speaker 3: My first meeting with with Eric was uh uh Russ saying, Hey,
Speaker 3: Jerry Douglas would like for you to sing this song
Speaker 3: and he says, I would like to do it and
Speaker 3: be flat. So it's like, okay, all right, I guess
Speaker 3: we're on the road.
Speaker 2: And we were.
Speaker 3: We were in New Orleans cutting this record. So I
Speaker 3: had Doctor John playing piano on one side of me
Speaker 3: and this whole, you know, this whole these great musicians
Speaker 3: from New Orleans playing and it was just another another
Speaker 3: world of another feel, another way.
Speaker 2: To do this.
Speaker 3: You know, there's so many ways to make to make
Speaker 3: great music, and I'm I'm lucky. I'm getting to find
Speaker 3: out a few of them down along the way.
Speaker 1: So how did you end up producing records? And when
Speaker 1: someone hire you what are they getting.
Speaker 2: On the radio.
Speaker 3: I could listen to, uh, you know, there would be
Speaker 3: a cut, a country music cut, and then there'd be
Speaker 3: a bluegrass music cut come on the radio for some reason,
Speaker 3: you know, probably on Exam or Sirius where they could
Speaker 3: still mix the genres and uh, and it just didn't
Speaker 3: stand up, you know, it just didn't stand up. It
Speaker 3: didn't sound as good. I mean, I don't think they
Speaker 3: paid as much attention to recording. They were happy to
Speaker 3: be recording, but they didn't have bluegrass bands. Most of
Speaker 3: them did not have the blue the studio savvy when
Speaker 3: they went in.
Speaker 2: They didn't know.
Speaker 3: Where to place the microphone on their instrument to get
Speaker 3: the best to get the best performance, and or how
Speaker 3: to maybe leave this maybe instead of going to this verse,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe something else happens here.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Just just keeping the songs interesting was what people hired
Speaker 3: me for. I had, I had, I got a good
Speaker 3: track record with bluegrass albums, different bands, producing different bands,
Speaker 3: And then I then I started getting called for that
Speaker 3: because I was, uh, you know, I was doing okay
Speaker 3: and and and plus I never thought you could hear
Speaker 3: the bass on bluegrass records. So I made sure there
Speaker 3: was enough bass, you know, I just I kind of
Speaker 3: brought the sound of was trying to bring the sound
Speaker 3: of bluegrass up to the next level.
Speaker 2: You know, uh.
Speaker 3: In in in in treating, uh in treating the studio,
Speaker 3: you know, really using the really using the everything that
Speaker 3: was in.
Speaker 2: The studio to make the music better.
Speaker 3: Let these guys play and put the microphones in the
Speaker 3: right places, and just give them an idea once in
Speaker 3: a while. Sometimes you're a referee, you know. Sometimes a
Speaker 3: producer is just a referee between people. But this was
Speaker 3: I like to sit down with the bands and find
Speaker 3: out what the songs are about and and see how
Speaker 3: they play them, and then make suggestions from there, you know,
Speaker 3: trying not to completely reinvent the wheel, because these people
Speaker 3: have a sound, and I want to I want to.
Speaker 2: I want to.
Speaker 3: I want to keep their sound. I want to keep
Speaker 3: the sound of this band. But I want to make it.
Speaker 3: I want to make it. I want it to be
Speaker 3: big enough to be heard.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: So what about your band, the Earls of Leicester.
Speaker 3: I always wanted to Flatten Scrugs band. I always wanted
Speaker 3: to be in that band and heard them all my life,
Speaker 3: and I just over the years, I've been keeping my
Speaker 3: eye on the on everybody that played out there on
Speaker 3: the road, and I was looking, I was casting, I
Speaker 3: was casting Lester, I was casting Earl. I was casting
Speaker 3: everybody down to the slap and bass, and uh, finally
Speaker 3: got time to do that, and uh when I'm working
Speaker 3: with Alice and we took some time off and I
Speaker 3: and I just went, yeah, this is as good a
Speaker 3: time as any to go ahead and just get this
Speaker 3: band together that I've always wanted to get.
Speaker 2: So the last I got.
Speaker 3: You know, Charlie Charlie Cushman, the banjo player, and Johnny
Speaker 3: Johnny Warren Uh to play the fiddle. Johnny Warren's father,
Speaker 3: Paul played the fiddle with flatt and scrugs, and he
Speaker 3: played the fiddle exactly like his dad. So that was
Speaker 3: a no brainer. I mean, those two guys were like
Speaker 3: they were. They were Lester and uh or they were
Speaker 3: Earl and Paul.
Speaker 2: I had that.
Speaker 3: So I got Tim O'Brien to be Curly Vey or
Speaker 3: Curly Seckler, who was the tenor singer mandlin player, and
Speaker 3: there weren't a lot of mandolin solos in flatt and
Speaker 3: scrugs songs. If you've ever paid attention to that. Well,
Speaker 3: they they they kind of had a deal with Bill
Speaker 3: Monroe that they would not be a mandolin driven band,
Speaker 3: that they would be a banjo driven band. And so
Speaker 3: the mandolin players that they got were not didn't have
Speaker 3: to be a great manlin player.
Speaker 2: They had to be a good tenor singer.
Speaker 3: And even Lester said early, he's not that great a
Speaker 3: mandlin player, but he looks good holding one. So I
Speaker 3: so I cast and got this band together, and then
Speaker 3: we went. They all came over here, and the last
Speaker 3: guy to cast was was Sean Camp. I didn't know
Speaker 3: who Lester was going to be. I thought about Del McCurry,
Speaker 3: but then I thought, no, that's Del McCurry. Can only
Speaker 3: be Del McCurry. He's Del McCurry. That would not be right.
Speaker 2: So my wife said, what about Sean Camp?
Speaker 3: And I said really? So I called him up. I
Speaker 3: said would you be interested in doing anything like this?
Speaker 3: And he said yes he. I said, well, we're going
Speaker 3: to have rehearse tomorrow evening. If you want to come over,
Speaker 3: we're going to run through a couple of songs and
Speaker 3: just see what it sounds like. And he showed up
Speaker 3: in a blue pinstriped suit with a boat with a
Speaker 3: with a tie with the flattened scrugs tie and the
Speaker 3: hat everything, and we started we we got we got
Speaker 3: to the middle of the first chorus of the first song,
Speaker 3: and I just threw up my hands and I went.
Speaker 2: This is it. This is this is it.
Speaker 3: This is as close as anyone's ever going to get
Speaker 3: to sounding like flattened scrugs. So we need to do
Speaker 3: something with this. And I checked my schedule and we
Speaker 3: had I had ten days in the middle of July,
Speaker 3: and I said, we're going to record in the middle
Speaker 3: of July. So we did all this studying, you know,
Speaker 3: and down to the week, we wrote notes, we we
Speaker 3: we wrote notes on who backed up when, on what song,
Speaker 3: and we got as close as we possibly could. And
Speaker 3: the record won a Grammy, you know. But the main
Speaker 3: reason I wanted to do the band was, you know,
Speaker 3: other than to play with flatten scrugs, was uh, flattened
Speaker 3: scrugs and that and that whole part of bluegrass music
Speaker 3: had disappeared from the landscape out there, you know. People
Speaker 3: weren't doing people had forgotten about them, left them so
Speaker 3: far behind, and I and I just thought, there are
Speaker 3: a lot of fundamentals.
Speaker 2: That you can learn here.
Speaker 3: These guys, these guys did it right. We're all trying
Speaker 3: to do it this way. And and I we just
Speaker 3: sort of reinjected flattened scrugs back into bluegrass world. And
Speaker 3: we we we made our point, you know, we made
Speaker 3: our point. We we won everything but that the IBM as,
Speaker 3: We won everything but female vocalists that.
Speaker 2: But it was, it was, it was. It was just
Speaker 2: a we got.
Speaker 3: Their attention and and then all of a sudden, there
Speaker 3: were more ties, there were more suits, there were more
Speaker 3: you know hats. You know, these guys doing more choreography
Speaker 3: on stage with less microphones, because that's what we did.
Speaker 3: We we did that too. We really wanted the full
Speaker 3: effect and the choreography. You can hear it on the records.
Speaker 3: You can hear these guys move into microphones, and uh,
Speaker 3: it's something that's just gone. It's it's gone from the
Speaker 3: landscape of bluegrass music. So I thought, well, let's let's
Speaker 3: let's see if we can see if we can put
Speaker 3: this back in. And I think we've been pretty successful
Speaker 3: at that. And the band has slowed down just because
Speaker 3: everybody's gotten so busy. And uh, but I think we're
Speaker 3: going to record again, and uh, there's only so many.
Speaker 2: Times you can do Flatten scrug songs. You know. I
Speaker 2: don't really want to do that. I want to I
Speaker 2: want to write our.
Speaker 3: Own material and and produce it into in the way
Speaker 3: Flattened Scrugs would have would have laid it out. That's
Speaker 3: what I wanted to do. And I want to see
Speaker 3: if people know the difference in an old song and
Speaker 3: a new song. It's done by the same band, it's
Speaker 3: done by you know. I think of us as as
Speaker 3: Lester Flat and Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys
Speaker 3: the next day, you know, like we could have done
Speaker 3: it just a little bit different, you know, if we'd
Speaker 3: had one more run. Earl Scruggs was so mad still
Speaker 3: to this day because he had recorded a version of
Speaker 3: Earl's Breakdown in a radio station back in the forties
Speaker 3: and he'd only missed he'd only flubbed just the just
Speaker 3: the end of the song, and thought he would go
Speaker 3: back and just fix that. So they did another take
Speaker 3: and then when it wasn't as good, and he said,
Speaker 3: when he went back to just fix to put the
Speaker 3: ending of the news song of the new cut on
Speaker 3: the old cut, the guy had erased the original his
Speaker 3: original cut. Oh he was, he was, he's still I
Speaker 3: guarantee you he's still mad about that.
Speaker 2: And he's been dead for ten years.
Speaker 3: But I bet he's still mad about that.
Speaker 2: And and that's you know, that's another thing.
Speaker 3: You know, we we have to be careful, uh, in
Speaker 3: the studio with.
Speaker 2: You know, save save, save, save save, you know, like
Speaker 2: I'm doing right now. And uh, it's just it's it
Speaker 2: was wacky.
Speaker 3: It was wacky, and he being him, conjuring up that
Speaker 3: same feeling from all those years ago that was part
Speaker 3: of his legacy. Everybody plays Earl's Breakdown, but they don't
Speaker 3: know how good it could be. Only Earl knew how
Speaker 3: good it could be.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have your first new album in seven years,
Speaker 1: The Set. It's titled the Set, just to make that clear.
Speaker 1: Why now, I.
Speaker 3: Had so many people coming up to me after concerts
Speaker 3: going where can I find.
Speaker 2: This song and this song and this song?
Speaker 3: And I'm going, well, that song is on a record,
Speaker 3: is on a is on vinyl, and you can't get
Speaker 3: it anymore. So there were a lot of these things
Speaker 3: that I kept hearing that so much and so many
Speaker 3: record companies, you know, that I've dealt with over the
Speaker 3: years and had contracts with and made a record, and
Speaker 3: then that record would be shelved or or you know,
Speaker 3: hard to.
Speaker 2: Find or whatever.
Speaker 3: So I just went back in the studio and I'd
Speaker 3: cut the songs that people had been asking me where
Speaker 3: they could find them.
Speaker 2: I recut a lot.
Speaker 3: I recut some of my old songs, but I like
Speaker 3: them better now because when you go in the studio
Speaker 3: with a brand new song and you let it down
Speaker 3: and you play it the best you can, you still
Speaker 3: don't know it.
Speaker 2: You don't know the insides and the outsides of it.
Speaker 3: You have to you have to play it. You have
Speaker 3: to play it with these other musicians for a while
Speaker 3: for it to really, you know, to really come into
Speaker 3: its own. So it had been years since i'd cut
Speaker 3: for instance, a song I wrote called from Ankara to
Speaker 3: Ismir that I wrote while I was in Turkey a
Speaker 3: long time ago and doing uh I was doing playing embassies,
Speaker 3: actually just playing in embassies, and.
Speaker 2: And so I wanted to do those songs. And but
Speaker 2: I love the way this band plays things. I love
Speaker 2: this band. This is this is the best band I've
Speaker 2: ever had.
Speaker 3: I love playing with them all the way around, great personalities,
Speaker 3: they're just really good fellas, and uh they play so good.
Speaker 2: There's there's so good. And so I just.
Speaker 3: Thought, let's go in and cut. Let's cut our set list.
Speaker 3: Let's cut our set list, and you know, and add
Speaker 3: we have we had a concerto that we had never recorded.
Speaker 2: We put that on there the fifth season, and then.
Speaker 3: Just some other things. I made sure that each guy
Speaker 3: in the band had a song on the record, so they,
Speaker 3: you know, have more input from them. And uh, I mean,
Speaker 3: this is it's a band record, but uh, you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's different if you put your name in
Speaker 3: like for Spotify or all these other things, if you
Speaker 3: put your if I just put my name, I'll get
Speaker 3: more hits than if I put band beside it.
Speaker 2: You know, that's a crazy it's true. But uh so
Speaker 2: I cut it and I put just my name on it.
Speaker 3: And but it is a band record. I really consider
Speaker 3: it a band record. But for for uh, you know,
Speaker 3: for for reasons of algorithms, I had to do it
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 2: Crazy sounds crazy, but it's true.
Speaker 1: Are you a student of the game or did the
Speaker 1: person who made the record have to tell.
Speaker 3: You that I'm a student of the game, and uh
Speaker 3: I had I knew. I knew that from from other
Speaker 3: people that had had this same thing came up, you know, And.
Speaker 2: And so I do.
Speaker 3: I do study the game, and I think the game's unfair.
Speaker 3: And I've been to the Capitol a couple of times
Speaker 3: with Naris to try to get these guys to come
Speaker 3: to the table and talk about paying us what they
Speaker 3: should be paying us.
Speaker 2: But they don't and they won't. And I don't know
Speaker 2: we're gonna do about those people. We need to we
Speaker 2: need to go in.
Speaker 3: There with like four or five bands playing at the
Speaker 3: same time to get their attention.
Speaker 2: I think, I don't know what we have to do.
Speaker 3: But I got to play. I got to play my
Speaker 3: doughbro all the way through the Capitol building one day.
Speaker 3: And the rotunda is the best sound in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I loved it in there.
Speaker 2: That was so wonderful.
Speaker 1: Well, you've been in the game long enough to see
Speaker 1: it change. So today they put out as many records,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a day as they used to
Speaker 1: put out forty years ago. So to what degree is
Speaker 1: this a disincentive to record? The old days? It was
Speaker 1: expensive to record. Few people could make records. If you
Speaker 1: reach a certain hurdle, people were aware of you. Your
Speaker 1: record might be listened to today. No matter how fantastic
Speaker 1: you are, you might get lost in the tsunami of product.
Speaker 1: So do you say, hey, not even make a record
Speaker 1: at all, or you put it out there and have
Speaker 1: low expectations, or don't spend that much. Where's your head at?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: I loved the days when we when when recording was expensive,
Speaker 3: when you went into a big sound stage and everybody
Speaker 3: was there and every everything went down at the same time,
Speaker 3: and it was and it was amazing because the the real,
Speaker 3: the real music that counts is the music that meets
Speaker 3: in the air. It's not it's not the you know,
Speaker 3: it's not the music that comes right off of one instruments.
Speaker 2: It's all of it that mixes in the air.
Speaker 3: And I'm I don't think we should cut ten song
Speaker 3: albums anymore. I think it's a waste of money. I
Speaker 3: think it's a I mean, the Beatles would go in
Speaker 3: and cut singles and they didn't put it just put
Speaker 3: an album out. They waited until they saw what hit,
Speaker 3: what would sell the most albums, and then they put
Speaker 3: them out and and we're now we're doing you know,
Speaker 3: up to ten songs.
Speaker 2: And you know, and even even in.
Speaker 3: You know, satellite studios, not going into a big soundstages,
Speaker 3: going into a studio like I have here, you just
Speaker 3: don't you don't get the same quality of recording.
Speaker 2: I don't think.
Speaker 3: And plus we're a streaming society now, And to cut
Speaker 3: ten songs when people are going to take one off
Speaker 3: of that, they're gonna they're gonna download one song. I
Speaker 3: think I think making I think EPs are a better
Speaker 3: idea going in and cutting five songs, you know, getting
Speaker 3: five songs you really really like, and not getting five
Speaker 3: more songs that you don't like as much as the
Speaker 3: first five. Why cut those songs? You know, wait until
Speaker 3: you know them better, or wait until they show you
Speaker 3: that they should.
Speaker 2: Be out there.
Speaker 3: But I I I think that uh, and so many
Speaker 3: people are doing it, just cutting the EPs to see
Speaker 3: what lands.
Speaker 2: Because cutting a whole ten song.
Speaker 3: CD and and bringing in the players and and uh.
Speaker 2: The equipment that you need.
Speaker 3: On the floor, you know, to cut a to cut
Speaker 3: a great big to cut cut a band, to cut
Speaker 3: a whole band.
Speaker 2: Uh, it can be.
Speaker 3: Done in a home studio, but man, there's just something
Speaker 3: missing to me. I mean that there's a you know,
Speaker 3: you can tell, you can hear a record that's.
Speaker 2: Been done in pieces.
Speaker 3: You know, somebody, they'll call somebody, they'll come in, you know,
Speaker 3: three days later and put a part down. Well, it's
Speaker 3: to me, it's not it's not the same. It's not
Speaker 3: it's not gonna equal what was put down the day
Speaker 3: of when all the original ideas were flying around, and
Speaker 3: and all the sounds were there, and everybody was bleeding
Speaker 3: onto other everybody else's microphone. And you know, there are
Speaker 3: some bad parts about that if you have to replace things.
Speaker 3: But boy, you get a really good band, you put
Speaker 3: them in one room and turn it on, let them
Speaker 3: go that that's that's the way music sounds the best,
Speaker 3: and and and and it's cheaper.
Speaker 2: It's uh.
Speaker 3: I mean, I remember when the twenty four track tape
Speaker 3: machine costs half a million dollars, you know, and now
Speaker 3: we can do a whole record on something that costs
Speaker 3: you know, four hundred dollars. And so you got to
Speaker 3: figure something's lost somewhere.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's it's not just technology, it's the way we treat it.
Speaker 3: And uh, I think that I think that. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm I'm working them with a band right now. Then
Speaker 3: we're going to do an EP first and if we
Speaker 3: and if we uh we get some traction, we'll we'll
Speaker 3: do more. But I think we take our best five
Speaker 3: and we throw them. We throw those first. You know,
Speaker 3: if I could get away with three, I'd do it.
Speaker 1: So how much do you work on the road at
Speaker 1: this point?
Speaker 3: I probably did one hundred and twenty five days this
Speaker 3: year and plus so you can double that, you know,
Speaker 3: as far as with travel. So yeah, and I'm sixty
Speaker 3: eight years old. It's not as much fun as it
Speaker 3: was when I was twenty thirty years old. Uh there,
Speaker 3: you know it's I'm slower. I'm uh, I'm slower to
Speaker 3: get up. I'm slower to uh to to want to
Speaker 3: go out and do anything. Yeah, I don't know, it's just, uh,
Speaker 3: I'm on the road enough. I want to cut that back.
Speaker 3: Next year, I'm going out with Alison Krause again for
Speaker 3: the next two years and those will those will probably
Speaker 3: be eighty to one hundred and one hundred show years.
Speaker 2: And I want to cut that back.
Speaker 3: After after all the Alison stuff, I want to cut
Speaker 3: it back to like twenty five. You know, it's just
Speaker 3: I've seen the world. I've seen the road, I've seen
Speaker 3: most of this country at night. But I feel I
Speaker 3: feel I feel.
Speaker 2: Like i've I feel like i've seen it. I feel
Speaker 2: like I've seen it.
Speaker 3: I feel like I've done a fair amount of things
Speaker 3: that a lot of people don't get to do. And
Speaker 3: I feel very fortunate about that part. But I'm getting tired.
Speaker 3: I'm getting a little tired.
Speaker 1: Okay. There are some people go on the road. They
Speaker 1: got tapes, they got click tracks. It's the same every night.
Speaker 1: I don't know how they do it. It's gig one.
Speaker 1: They got one hundred to do. You go out with
Speaker 1: these acts. How do you keep it interesting for yourself?
Speaker 1: And what's it like for you at every gig?
Speaker 3: Well with I will try to mix up that, mix
Speaker 3: up the set list, you know, I'll take a look
Speaker 3: at the audience. It's one way that I'll try to
Speaker 3: keep myself interested in. And I love the songs. It's
Speaker 3: not that I don't start off not, you know, in
Speaker 3: a negative mood or anything like that. I'll take a
Speaker 3: look at the audience and I'll mix up this, mix
Speaker 3: up the show, you know, put some other songs in
Speaker 3: there that might be it. Maybe a lot few more
Speaker 3: bluegrass people in there than there were the night before,
Speaker 3: so I will I might lean on the bluegrass a
Speaker 3: little bit more. But our audience, my band audience, seems
Speaker 3: like it's it it it. The people know that they
Speaker 3: know I'm I'm there. They don't know what they don't
Speaker 3: know what I might play, so they're okay with that.
Speaker 3: But UH, with Alison, like I think, we went two
Speaker 3: years playing pretty much the same set list. Like you say,
Speaker 3: we didn't have any we didn't have any click tracks
Speaker 3: or anything like that, so we were we were able
Speaker 3: to move to move the uh, the tempo a little
Speaker 3: bit into you know however we felt that night. But
Speaker 3: there's still things when you're playing in a band like that,
Speaker 3: and and and to UH audience like that, they expect
Speaker 3: to hear certain things and you've got to give them those.
Speaker 3: But I remember when when I was out on the
Speaker 3: was out on the last couple of years with Alison
Speaker 3: on Tuesday nights, I wouldn't play the same solos that
Speaker 3: I played.
Speaker 2: On the records.
Speaker 3: That was just for me, that was just for that
Speaker 3: was just for me. I don't know if they they
Speaker 3: paid it. I don't know if they paid attention to
Speaker 3: that and heard what I was doing or not. But
Speaker 3: I played different that night. I had to or I
Speaker 3: was going to go crazy. You know, I can't do
Speaker 3: the same I can't play the same solo twice. And
Speaker 3: but if it's on a record and people know it
Speaker 3: that way, I'll try. And Uh, I could do it,
Speaker 3: but I just don't want to. I don't want to.
Speaker 3: I want I like the I like I like playing
Speaker 3: off of something I heard somebody else. Do you know
Speaker 3: somebody else might do something and trigger trigger a response
Speaker 3: for me, and uh, it's going to be different than
Speaker 3: it was the night before.
Speaker 2: I just that's just me. I can't.
Speaker 3: If I have to, I can play the same thing twice,
Speaker 3: and I will, but I don't want to.
Speaker 1: So how have you balanced home life and relationships with
Speaker 1: all this work on the road.
Speaker 2: It's tough. It's tough. I mean. The last thing I
Speaker 2: have left this year is is a a gig at
Speaker 2: BlackBerry Farm in East Tennessee.
Speaker 3: It's a really nice resort. Tommy, Emmanuel and I are
Speaker 3: going to go play for an hour over there. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna take my wife and we're gonna spend three days
Speaker 3: over there, just relaxing.
Speaker 2: But there's.
Speaker 3: My daughter is about to have a baby, like any day. So,
Speaker 3: you know, I've missed so many birthdays. I've missed so
Speaker 3: many birthdays. I've missed weddings. I've missed you know, things,
Speaker 3: my kids stuff.
Speaker 2: And you know, it breaks my heart to go back
Speaker 2: and read my daughter's third grade paper, little paper she wrote,
Speaker 2: you know, something that happened. Daddy was gone, Daddy was
Speaker 2: Daddy was not home. You know, it just kills me
Speaker 2: and I and.
Speaker 3: You know, there's no way around it unless it's your band.
Speaker 3: You go, it's my son's birthday. Were not working that day,
Speaker 3: you know, or whatever. But we can't really do that.
Speaker 3: We're we're at the mercy of what the people want,
Speaker 3: you know. And so I've been I've missed so many birthdays,
Speaker 3: and it's been hard to balance it. It's been really
Speaker 3: hard to balance it. I'd say I have a very very.
Speaker 2: My wife is so I don't know, We'll just say
Speaker 2: she's she's put up with it.
Speaker 3: She's she's a good person. I want to I want
Speaker 3: to be like her when I grow up. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like, but she's put up for thirty seven years
Speaker 3: now she's put up with me and all of this stuff.
Speaker 3: And we have four children. Now we have almost seven grandchildren.
Speaker 3: So I'm feeling the need to be around here a
Speaker 3: little bit more, you know, and and be part of
Speaker 3: my I'm feeling part of like being part of the
Speaker 3: family more than ever.
Speaker 2: I don't know if.
Speaker 3: I I don't know if it was that I didn't
Speaker 3: want to be I don't know. I don't think so
Speaker 3: I wanted to be here. It was just, man, that
Speaker 3: was my job, and that's what I went to do.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter if you're sick, if you're about to
Speaker 3: black out on stage, You've got to play, you know,
Speaker 3: And some of those can be some of your best gigs,
Speaker 3: less distractions. So yeah, it's been hard to balance that
Speaker 3: and and friends, you know. And some of my best friends,
Speaker 3: you know. One of them lives right around the corner
Speaker 3: from me, but Sam Bush, but I don't see him
Speaker 3: unless we're five hundred miles from home, you know. And
Speaker 3: it's not a it's not a normal lifestyle, but it's
Speaker 3: a it's suited me. It's done well for me, and
Speaker 3: I have no complaints about I just wish I had
Speaker 3: seen a few more.
Speaker 2: Of those birthdays and been here for a couple more berths. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, so sometimes the stars align, sometimes they don't. You
Speaker 1: talked earlier about the clock metaphor, which was brilliant, but
Speaker 1: up until now, maybe with Billie's strings, for the last
Speaker 1: few decades, there has not been a moment where bluegrass
Speaker 1: was literally at the top. We've had other things. We've
Speaker 1: had the Mumfort and Sun Sound. We've even had Chris
Speaker 1: Stapleton in Americana slash country, but there wasn't a moment
Speaker 1: where everybody looked around and said, bluegrass that's as big
Speaker 1: as anything. To what degree do you feel upset that
Speaker 1: you and your music didn't have that moment at the peak?
Speaker 1: Do you think this is a moment with Billy Strings
Speaker 1: for just a momentary thing.
Speaker 3: I'm first, I'm I'm not upset that our music is
Speaker 3: not that bluegrass music has not been.
Speaker 2: At the you know, like in a like a pop chart.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm I'm okay with that because it's not
Speaker 3: that kind of music.
Speaker 2: I mean, it doesn't it mean it it's a it's
Speaker 2: a it's a music that that does get to more people.
Speaker 3: I mean, there there are certain what am I trying
Speaker 3: to say it's not popular amongst the African American audience.
Speaker 2: Uh, but it.
Speaker 3: It's it's like grown exponentially over the years. And uh
Speaker 3: but but it's not an international snow music as much
Speaker 3: as I mean, there are people that that are playing
Speaker 3: in Europe and all over the world that are playing
Speaker 3: bluegrass music. But it's their version, you know, with their musical,
Speaker 3: with their with their musical, uh other other genres mixed
Speaker 3: into it, you know, and their their cultural music mixed in.
Speaker 3: But uh, I'm not I've never been I've never been
Speaker 3: upset that it wasn't as big as country. I kind
Speaker 3: of like, I kind of think that we've we've dodged
Speaker 3: the bullet in a way that we didn't have to
Speaker 3: get to that point and then have you know, when
Speaker 3: you like it's when you have a single out and
Speaker 3: you find out on Thursday that your single has tanked
Speaker 3: and you need to start it. You need to go
Speaker 3: back to the dwell and get another single. We don't
Speaker 3: have that problem.
Speaker 2: We don't have that problem. We we uh, we are a.
Speaker 3: Genre and and and we're not a splinter of a genre.
Speaker 3: Uh and and I don't I think that you know,
Speaker 3: maybe you know, we'd like to sell as many records
Speaker 3: as as Beyonce, But I I don't know how it
Speaker 3: would change my life, you know, and uh, it's it's
Speaker 3: I don't feel I don't feel bad about it not
Speaker 3: being it's more popular than it is. I don't because
Speaker 3: there I've watched it grow from almost nothing to you know,
Speaker 3: taken off again. But I think Billy strings Is is
Speaker 3: a phenomenon.
Speaker 2: Uh. I've played out there.
Speaker 3: I've gone out there and been on that stage and
Speaker 3: watched that audience, and that audience loves everything that he
Speaker 3: does everything, and it just never stops. I mean, it
Speaker 3: starts before he goes on stage, and and he is
Speaker 3: up there and the band is doing its thing, and
Speaker 3: Billy Is is in his toy box, you know, he's
Speaker 3: got all kinds of things going on stage and and
Speaker 3: he's he's.
Speaker 2: Become this entertainer.
Speaker 3: But he has a he has a drive like I've
Speaker 3: never seen, I mean, and it comes from him growing
Speaker 3: up in a in a in a really really uh
Speaker 3: depressing kind of world where he had a choice, he said,
Speaker 3: he said, I had a choice.
Speaker 2: I got to this fork in the road. I can
Speaker 2: either be a meth addict or I could try this
Speaker 2: music thing. I try, any ie.
Speaker 3: I went to the music route and saved his life,
Speaker 3: gave us all this great music from him, and uh
Speaker 3: and and and it also gave gave another generation another
Speaker 3: another direction to go, you know, and and believing that
Speaker 3: they can they can achieve the same things he he has.
Speaker 3: I think that's important to have that to aim for.
Speaker 3: And he gets us up. I mean, I'm so polaed.
Speaker 3: I'm thrilled that he asked me to get up there.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm one of the old guys, you know,
Speaker 3: but but he has a lot of reverence for for
Speaker 3: all of us that came before him.
Speaker 2: He has a he has a deep, deep feeling about that.
Speaker 2: And he's, uh, he's just this guy. He wants to
Speaker 2: pay back.
Speaker 3: He wants to pay back, he wants to for music
Speaker 3: saving his life. He wants to give everything to everybody.
Speaker 2: You know. He's he's that kind of guy. He's a
Speaker 2: good kid.
Speaker 3: I've known him for you know, ten years now, and
Speaker 3: uh just watched his meteoric rise.
Speaker 2: It's just amazing. It's many. All the ducks are in
Speaker 2: a row. You know. The management's great, booking agents are great,
Speaker 2: the venues are great. His team is like I haven't.
Speaker 3: I haven't been out on the road with A with
Speaker 3: A with you know, I don't think the roll Rolling
Speaker 3: Stones can rival his his team on the road.
Speaker 2: I mean all the.
Speaker 3: People that he's got to do whatever he needs, and
Speaker 3: the great sound people, the great lighting.
Speaker 2: The lights are amazing. And that's another thing you have
Speaker 2: to have. Now. Uh, you can't go out on the
Speaker 2: stage and bowl people over with your musical ability.
Speaker 3: You better have something. You better have a kicker ready
Speaker 3: to go, you know you need. The light show is great.
Speaker 3: The light show. Bring out a guest once in a while,
Speaker 3: you know, mix it up, make it interesting all the
Speaker 3: way through. And nobody wants to just watch, you know,
Speaker 3: watch five men stand on stage and just play into
Speaker 3: microphones and not move.
Speaker 2: That's boring.
Speaker 3: I want to see people running around. I want to
Speaker 3: see people enjoying what they're doing. And when you go
Speaker 3: see a Billy Strings concert, just just joy from the
Speaker 3: beginning to the end. And he's he's the main source
Speaker 3: of it. And he's just all over the place doing
Speaker 3: crazy things. He started the second set out the other
Speaker 3: night with a He had a loop and he had
Speaker 3: a bong and he blew into the bong and he
Speaker 3: and he recorded that, and then he then he so
Speaker 3: he had so he had a sound. So then he
Speaker 3: set up a ding on the side of it and
Speaker 3: another ding to to frame in what the beats were.
Speaker 2: And then they.
Speaker 3: Sang a total as they sang a whole song to that,
Speaker 3: to that loop of the bonging.
Speaker 2: It was great.
Speaker 3: It was so incredible. You mean, who else comes up
Speaker 3: with stuff like that? You know, it's like this guy's
Speaker 3: got a he's got a brand new handle on things
Speaker 3: that we never thought about before. And uh, I've been
Speaker 3: watching this stuff for so long and it was just
Speaker 3: thrilling for me to see that happening too. I see
Speaker 3: it going up, and I see him helping bluegrass music.
Speaker 3: But I think that you know, people, the people that
Speaker 3: go to his concerts, they know what bluegrass music is,
Speaker 3: but they're gone to see billy strings. They want to
Speaker 3: see the phenomena. And he doesn't disappoint.
Speaker 1: Okay, you've accomplished so much, you're still working. One of
Speaker 1: the goals in the future.
Speaker 2: I'd like to keep on working.
Speaker 3: I don't want to have to go out on the
Speaker 3: road and beat the road anymore, but I want to
Speaker 3: keep on working. And suddenly I can draw this thing
Speaker 3: called social security and but you know, I know that's
Speaker 3: not going to save me. But I just want to
Speaker 3: keep my head above water and and my family happy,
Speaker 3: and my musical friends happy, and play whenever I want
Speaker 3: to and not when I don't want to.
Speaker 2: That's what I want to do.
Speaker 1: Jerry, it's been fabulous talking to you. You can really do.
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Your clock metaphor was great. You're everywhere, everybody knows you
Speaker 1: and they know more about you now. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for taking this time to speak with my audience.
Speaker 3: I appreciate so much being able to speak to your audience. Bob,
Speaker 3: Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I had a great time.
Speaker 1: How's good on until next time. This is Bob left
Speaker 1: sets