Tag: resophonic guitar

Jerry Douglas’ New Album, ‘The Set,’ Tracks His Musical Evolution

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Undefinable by a single era, genre, or instrument, Jerry Douglas’ otherworldly picking prowess on Dobro and lap steel guitar knows no bounds. Whether it’s running through Flatt & Scruggs songs with the Earls of Leicester, kicking up covers like The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” or conjuring up jazz-like improv jams, the sixteen-time GRAMMY winning musician has a way of drawing the listener in with his tasteful tunes.

That trend continues on The Set, his first studio album since 2017 – although he did stay busy producing records for Molly Tuttle, Steep Canyon Rangers, John Hiatt, Cris Jacobs, and others during the time in between. Released on September 20, the record captures the sound of Douglas’ live set with his current band – Daniel Kimbro (bass), Christian Sedelmyer (violin), and multi-instrumentalist Mike Seal – with a mix of new and original compositions, reworkings of older songs from his catalog, a couple of intriguing covers, and even a concerto.

BGS caught up with Douglas ahead of his tour dates in support of the new record – and his induction into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame this week – to discuss the motivation behind The Set, the similarities between Molly Tuttle and Alison Krauss, and much more.

This is your first album in over seven years. What was your motivation for returning to the studio after such a large gap?

Jerry Douglas: I’ve been doing records for everyone else those past seven years. [Laughs] We’d go out and play a show and people would come up afterward and ask where they could find this song or that song. It got me thinking, since the songs I play live are scattered across many different records — some of which are out of print — that it’d be a good idea to get them all into one place, one album. It’s not a compilation record by any means, it’s just how I love to hear these songs now.

Speaking of how you love to hear these songs now, you’ve recorded many of them in the past. This includes “From Ankara To Izmir,” which you first recorded on lap steel before opting for the Dobro this time. What led to that shift?

When you first write a song you don’t know it, because you haven’t lived with it yet. You need to play it about 100 times and really flesh it out to see what all’s in there. When I originally recorded “From Ankara To Izmir” in 1987 for the MCA Master Series we had a much bigger, bolder band around it. However, the more I got to playing it out live the better the Dobro felt on it. It allows me to be more dynamic with the song, which I also cut with drums in 1993 before switching things up and leaving them out this time.

We actually haven’t used drums since the record I made with John Hiatt in 2021. He didn’t want them, so we used the rest of my band… it felt great having all that space the drums usually filled back, so we just continued as a four-piece after that. It’s gone on to inform a lot of the music on this record, not just with that one song.

I love the evolution that songs can take over time, whether it’s something as simple as changing out one instrument like you’ve done a couple times here or going from a full band to something that’s solo acoustic. Different arrangements breathe completely different life into a song, and your record is a great example of that.

Even Miles Davis recorded a lot of his songs two or three times with different bands. He wanted to hear them with the band he was with at that moment, which all included different people, personalities, characteristics, and playing styles. Music is meant to evolve over time as influences and circumstances change. Songs are traveling through their life collecting little pieces to add to themselves just like the rest of us do.

That room to experiment is only expanded with your band, who you’ve been with now for eight years. How did the chemistry you have with them help to drive the sonic exploration behind The Set?

Like you said, we’ve been together for a long time now. We’ve been everywhere together and have become good at picking up nonverbal cues from one another. A lot of times I’ll just give Daniel a look and he knows what to do. That trust allows us the freedom to experiment and keep things fresh for ourselves, which in turn keeps it fresh for the audience as well, whom we don’t ever want to leave behind.

That same attention to detail can be felt in the album artwork as well, which I understand comes from a connection you made across the pond while there for the Transatlantic Sessions?

Yes. William Matthews is a famous western watercolor artist who was in Scotland with me when we started rehearsing for the Transatlantic Sessions right after COVID. We typically tour the country at the end of January and into February for 10 days playing the entire show and William was following us around painting. One day I walked into his hotel room and his paintings were all the way around the wall. One of them was of Doune Castle – seen in both Monty Python & The Holy Grail and Game Of Thrones – that, unbeknownst to us at the time, ended up becoming The Set’s cover art.

Earlier we touched on all the producing work you’ve been up to lately. One of those has been Molly Tuttle, who you’ve worked with on her past two GRAMMY-winning albums. Given your close ties to another trailblazing woman of bluegrass, Alison Krauss, do you notice any similarities between the two and the approach they have to their craft?

They’re both amazing singers. I learned a long time ago that when Alison tells me she can do better, she does, and Molly’s the same. Both have a way of exceeding my expectations on a take when I thought they couldn’t do better than the one just before it, but every time the new one turns out head and shoulders above the one that I had been satisfied with. It’s taught me to always trust the artist no matter who it is I’m working with.

In that same sense, I think about Earls of Leicester as Flatt & Scruggs – what if they’d said “wait a minute” and gone back in [to the studio] to change one little thing? When you’re recording, everything happens so fast that you can come back to it and go in a completely different direction. That’s what I love so much about my new record, even some of the mistakes that I made on it aren’t really mistakes, they’re just different directions.

What has music taught you about yourself?

I’m an introvert who can speak in front of thousands of people and have a good time at a party, but when I’m alone I’m really alone, but in a positive way. It’s like having two lives, but I’m not acting in either one of them. What a privilege it is to be true to yourself and have a full life at the same time. I get to go out and play music, then come home and fix the faucet.

Lead Image: Madison Thorn; Alternate Image: Scott Simontacchi. 

WATCH: Andy Hall Plays “Amazing Grace” on Resophonic Guitar

Posted on by Editor

Not many instruments can match the fiddle for expressive, emotive power, but a few special players have been able to conjure a similar magnetism from the steel guitar. This year, modern dobro icon and member of the Infamous Stringdusters Andy Hall released 12 Bluegrass Classics for Resophonic Guitar, interpreting songs that are pillars in the traditionalist songbook. Hall, a player associated more closely with progressive styles than conventional ones, lends his signature shred to the standards of the bluegrass repertoire.

Upon announcing the project, he stated, “I’ve always striven to push the envelope as a player, but never had the chance to put my stamp on some of the formative tunes I’ve always played at jam sessions. I chose songs that were familiar to me. These are tunes that I’ve been playing for years, and that have shaped my playing.” He told BGS all about it in an interview this fall, too. As 2020 comes to a close, we hope you enjoy Andy Hall’s performance of “Amazing Grace.”

Photo credit: Tobin Voggesser

On New Solo Album, Resophonic Guitarist Andy Hall Reaches for the Jam Songs

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Andy Hall is one of the fiercest slide guitarists we have around not just today, but probably ever. If there’s any doubt, you needn’t look further than his newest release, 12 Bluegrass Classics for Resophonic Guitar. The Denver-based singer and Dobro player of the Infamous Stringdusters has always pushed the envelope, but had never taken the time to put his own stamp on the formative tunes that all musicians of the genre play with one another. From teaching thousands of students online via ArtistWorks, to his work with Earl Scruggs, Dolly Parton, or Jack Black, it’s obvious that Hall is a master of the instrument, and the art itself.

BGS visited with Hall to talk all things pandemic, resophonic guitars, and what this record means in a time like our own. 

BGS: What was your initial inspiration for this recording?

Andy Hall: It was an interesting time in the spring when I was recording it, you know, but it’s all about taking opportunities that present themselves and making the most of the situation and what you can do. When everything stops, you have no idea what’s happening, you’re pretty quickly trying to figure out how to continue to be expressive. Our band the Stringdusters has toured so much for so long. …I don’t want to say I took it for granted, but when it all went away it was surprising — there was this withdrawal from doing the things that I love to do.

These are songs I’ve played for years and years, and I’ve always wanted to put my stamp on them, my take, you know? I totally overlooked them as anything I would record, because I always played them in jams. For most people, they don’t know these songs. So, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to get a recorded version of all these jam songs. It was really just a matter of me sitting, playing, and enjoying these tunes enough to get a good representation of them.

At the same time that you’ve put your own stamp on these tunes, you said that they were formative. I noticed the speed-up in “House of the Rising sun,” just like Mike Auldridge of the Seldom Scene would do. Are there any influences you’re drawing from, more than others, on this record?

Everyone has their own version of what their “classic” tune would be for a certain instrument. So “House of the Rising Sun,” definitely based on the Mike Auldridge version. To me, if you do that song on Dobro, that’s just how it goes. “Dixie Hoedown” was on Jerry Douglas’ first solo record, and something like “Fireball Mail” couldn’t be a more quintessential dobro song. I was always too impatient to sit and get every nuance of somebody’s playing, so I kinda gloss over it for the general idea and fill in the blanks myself. So due to my impatience I have my own style with a lot of them.

So that’s what a lot of these are like, but you can trace most of them back to an original version — like “Cherokee Shuffle,” Sally Van Meter, a great dobro player from Colorado, did that on a record called the Great Dobro Sessions. One that’s totally my own is the first one on the record, “Leather Britches.” I’d never really heard a version of that, but I wanted to try and get that repetitive, cyclical, rolling sound of the fiddle. So a lot of them are jam tunes that I never heard a Dobro version of, and wanted to develop my own thing with. 

“Foggy Mountain Rock” really comes through that way. 

I actually was fortunate enough to get to play with Earl Scruggs some, and that tune is a perfect example of how I didn’t take the time to learn it officially like Josh Graves. When I auditioned for Scruggs’ band, I went to his house and jammed with both Earl and a fiddle player named Glen Duncan. My mind was just blown, you know, we’re just sitting in Earl’s living room playing “Foggy Mountain Rock.” When we finished playing it, it was clear I hadn’t done it the way he was used to hearing it. And he complimented it! “Oh, I love how you put that four chord in there. I love when people do their own thing.” That really justified my whole approach. If Earl Scruggs says it’s cool, then I’m good. 

Do you teach many of these in your class over at ArtistWorks?

There are a couple in my school. “Panhandle Rag” is in there, “Cherokee Shuffle.” I’m about to transcribe not just the melodies, but the solos for a few of these so that the students can have a crack at them. It seems primed for that kind of thing. This is a specialty project geared at Dobro nerds. With the Stringdusters or other projects I do it’s a bit more broad, usually song-based. This record definitely ties into ArtistWorks; it’s just getting deep into the slide guitar thing… because that’s what I love! 

“I am a Pilgrim” is so woody, while “Cherokee Shuffle” has that cutting metallic ring of the Dobro… Can you talk about some of the guitars you used on this record?

“I am a Pilgrim,” “Amazing Grace,” and maybe “Foggy Mountain Rock” were all played on a 1929 Squareneck Tricone National guitar. To me it just has a super unique blues sound. So I used it on the tunes that were slower, just to get some variety. I wrestled with how much variety to put on the record in that way, because I have a bunch of different slide instruments. I’ve got a Chaturangi, which is an Indian slide guitar with all of these resonant strings, of course lap steels and things of that nature, but I decided I wanted to keep it kind of Americana sounding. The National fit into that. All the rest I did on my favorite Beard guitar.

Speaking of formative years, I’m curious if there are any younger Dobro players that stick out to you, or even influence you?

For sure. As a Dobro player, when I was in my twenties, at a certain point I kinda felt like I had heard everything, because there weren’t all that many. I’d heard all of the Jerry Douglas and Rob Ickes, Mike Auldridge and Josh Graves. There’s a lot to dig into, but compared to any other instrument, there was a much smaller pool of stuff to draw on. It’s been cool as new players come up to hear new styles. I think the first guy that was new when I first moved to Nashville was Randy Kohrs. He had a technique that nobody else had.

Out of that came a couple of younger players that I really love like Josh Swift, who played in Doyle Lawson’s band for years. His technical ability is just insane — nobody else can do what he does. There’s a young guy named Gaven Largent who I remember teaching when he was probably 12. There’s a guy named Tommy Maher, who plays in a band called Fireside Collective. Andy Dunnigan from the Lil Smokies, he uses the Dobro very lyrically, and he’s the lead singer too. I love seeing that — a lead singer Dobro player!

I’d say one of my biggest influences in recent years is Roosevelt Collier, a lap steel player. I met him in 2013, on JamCruise, and of course became fast friends with the slide guitar connection. We stayed in touch and actually did a record together a few years back. Roosevelt’s very gospel, sacred steel, very singing, very emotive style, is something I’ve really tried to absorb. It just gets you in the chest. 

What do you foresee, or hope, will be the impact of this record?

There’s something about the coronavirus, or the lockdown, that made every part of life simpler. A lot of things got stripped away and we just got down to basics, be it hanging out with our families and making food, or with the music we’re not doing big tours or big production — we’re sitting in our basements by ourselves playing. It’s certainly one of the silver linings of the whole pandemic thing, the simplicity and the sweetness, and that’s what I was feeling with this. It’s just a reflection of me sitting and playing, and hopefully people will relate to that. People have had to strip everything down to being simple, and that’s what this record is. It’s a reflection of that return to the basics that the pandemic has put on us. It’s really forced us to get back to the root of why we do what we do!

Photo credit: Tobin Voggesser