A Conversation with Jerry Douglas – HuffPost 8.6.12

Mike Ragogna: Jerry Douglas, thanks for talking us on the only solar-powered radio station in the Midwest, KRUU-FM. Bam.

Jerry Douglas: I played at the Telluride bluegrass every year and they buy all their power from a solar-powered station. They run their whole festival on solar power.

MR: Excellent. Is that the only one that’s out there?

JD: That’s the only one I know of.

MR: I know a couple of groups who try to use only solar power when they’re on the road.

JD: It’s still new enough that people aren’t really hip to how you would pull that off–getting in touch with who’s selling solar power, and that kind of thing. But I think it’s a great idea and we all want to get away from fossil fuel.

MR: It would be great to get to more alternative energies as soon as possible, especially since no one can afford fossil fuels any more.

JD: We need to, we can go to the sun and get more.

MR: Yeah, and watch gas prices spike right before the election. Anyway, Jerry, let’s get into your album Traveler. You’ve released quite few albums since 1979, that you’ve been on but you’ve also played on at least 1,500-1,600 albums by others also. What do you think about that?

JD: Well, I hope I have nothing else to prove. I don’t know what the number is but at this point it’s probably somewhere around 2,000, but I don’t count that kind of stuff. Other people keep bringing up numbers and I say if you think that’s the number, by now, it’s bigger.
MR: Why, just after last week, the number is bigger.

JD: Yeah, I played a Kate Rusby session here in my studio just two days ago. So there, add another one.

MR: (laughs) 2001: A Douglas Odyssey.

JD: (laughs) I don’t know how many there are. It doesn’t really matter to me. I’m sure I had fun on most of them.

MR: Or at least the artist had fun that you played on the project. But I bet you at least had fun on a little project titled O Brother Where Art Thou?

JD: Oh yeah, that was a blast!

MR: And you, sir were a Soggy Bottom Boy. What was that like?

JD: It was a different recording situation because we recorded that record the way they would have recorded in the ’40s, which was three microphones scattered in a pattern. Instead of walking up to a microphone to play, you walked into an area. It was so that you could hear the choreography of how the record was recorded instead of just a mono recording, so you could hear people moving around.

MR: It’s closer to the live situation in that way.

JD: Yeah, you can see it, it’s more visual.

MR: Before we leave that subject, I want to ask you, of all of these recordings, you’re on Elvis Costello albums like Secret, Profane and Sugarcane. And you go way back to the days of J.D. Crowe & The New South, when you recorded as part of that unit.

JD: Yeah, this is an anniversary of that record, but I think it was thirty years ago that we were an actual band. It had to be longer ago than that…that was 1975. I’m dating myself.

MR: Yeah, like a fine wine, Jerry. Okay, another project you worked on that I wanted to throw out there was Will The Circle Be Unbroken. You’re on the second release of that trilogy as part of the band, right?

JD: Yeah, the second one. That was probably the closest thing to a real job I ever had. We clocked in every day for two weeks and would sit in our same chair with our same microphone, though we wouldn’t bring a lunchbox or anything. Then they’d film it and we’d do it with all these different artists. It was really, really fun.

MR: Nice, I can imagine. Are you aware that you’re considered to be the world’s best dobro player?

JD: Well, I’ll take it. I like some other dobro players that I listen to. Finally, there are some other dobro players. For years, there weren’t any dobro players and it’s grown a thousand-fold since I started playing. It’s nice to hear other people playing the same instrument so I don’t feel so alone.

MR: What got you into this lonely little instrument?

JD: I started playing dobro when I was eleven years old after hearing Uncle Josh Graves play with Les Flat and Earl Scruggs. He was just really such a soulful player. The instrument itself is a slide guitar, so it’s really a highly emotive instrument and goes really well with vocals and he just got me. He just stabbed me right in the heart with the thing and I wanted to play. I was a guitar player at the time. I was playing my Silvertone guitar, which was like playing a cheese grater, it was so high and hurt my fingers. I first played slide on my guitar and learned the basics of dobro playing from that.

MR: It’s really pretty wild just how many recordings and artists you backed up, one of which is Paul Simon. This slides us into your new album, Traveler. On that album, you have Mumford & Sons and Paul Simon on your cover of “The Boxer.” What’s that story?

JD: Mumford have been great friends of mine, sort of surrogate sons of mine, for four years now. I first met them at Telluride Bluegrass Festival out in Colorado. The promoter called me and asked if I’d heard of Mumford & Sons, and I said I had because my daughter and sons have turned me on to them. They keep me fresh and keep my listening to new music all the time. They’d heard of them and they played them for me and I loved them. He said, “I’m going to have them at the festival but they don’t know anybody and I would love you to be the face of the festival for them, to play with them if you would.” So I played with them for the first time there, and we’ve been great friends since then. I asked them if they would be on the record, if we could do a song on the record. They said yes. Marcus Mumford and I were talking. I was in London and he was out in the country somewhere and we were talking about what song to do and he said, “How about ‘The Boxer.'” I said, “I don’t know, Paul Simon might do ‘The Boxer,'” so he said, “Oh, we wouldn’t want to mess with that.” But I started thinking and thought maybe we should do this, so I kept “The Boxer” with them. Out in the country, after my tour with Alison Krauss was over, I stayed around in England and went out in the country in England and had the boys come out. We recorded “The Boxer” there, brought it home, played it for Paul, and he loved it. He wanted to be on it…Paul Simon wanted to be on his own song with someone else singing lead and he singing harmony. I think he heard it a different way than he heard it before with somebody else singing it.

MR: Jerry, you have a couple of other interesting guests on this album including Eric Clapton on the track “Something You Got.”

JD: I’ve known Eric for many years and we’ve talked about collaborating for a long time but the opportunity just didn’t present itself. I’ve played on both of his Crossroads festivals with different people–with him, Vince Gill, and James Taylor on one, and with Alison and the band, we played on the second festival. I played a few songs with Eric and Sheryl Crow on the second festival. So when this record came around, I thought maybe I should try having a producer and I got Russ Titelman to produce the record. Russ is really a good producer, he’s got a great track record, and has produced a few of Eric’s records, one in particular was the Unplugged record, which had “Tears From Heaven.” So it’s a really great record he’s produced. He’s done James Taylor records, Paul Simon records, Steve Winwood records, a whole pile of records by Ry Cooder. But we talked about doing something forever. I’d never been in the position to have a producer. I’d always done it myself wearing both hats and it’s a difficult thing to do. I never felt as if I’d play as well on my own records as I had on other people’s records because I was too busy trying to do too many things.

MR: Let me ask you about “Frozen Fields” with guest Alison Krauss. You and she go way back. Can you give us a little history lesson?

JD: I first met Allison when she was fourteen years old. She had just signed with Rounder Records. Ken Irwin, who was one of the three people that founded Rounder Records, brought Alison down to Nashville and was looking for someone to produce her first record for them. He brought her over to Bela Fleck’s house. Bela, Sam Bush and I were all there and I was just floored by what I heard. She was so much more interested in being a fiddle player at that point than a singer. We all said, “You’re a singer. You need to take advantage of this great gift that you have.” I ended up playing on the record, not producing the record, but playing on the whole record, and then producing the next record.

Since then, a lot of water’s gone under the bridge, but that was when she was fourteen. Twenty-six years later, I’m in the band producing records with her. I’ve been in the band for fifteen years now. I went out on the road with her. She called me to see if I could come out and do the summer with the band and I said sure, I’d come out and help out, get them out of a jam. So, I went out and about two weeks into the tour, they asked me if I would just stay. I had a talk with my wife and we decided that since I was so burned out from playing in different sessions here in town, it was time to make a change. Fifteen years later, I’m still there.

This was a song that was originally cut for the newest Alison Krauss & Union Station record. The record’s called “Paper Airplane” and it didn’t go on the eleven-song record that was released by Rounder. It was one of my favorite songs that we cut for the record, so I snatched it up for my record.

MR: You must have more stories. Give us a couple of your favorite war stories.

JD: Oh man, there are so many. First, I’ve been on the road for so many years and in the studio. Since I’ve been with Alison, the guys in the band, Dan Tyminsky and Ron Block, they all have pretty different personalities. They are outgoing mostly, but Ron Block’s a pretty quiet guy. One thing that I can think of that may be funny–not funny to Ron–is that we used to leave from the same place. When you travel on a bus, you have to all meet at one place and get on the bus. We’d meet at this supermarket, a Kroger, here, close to Nashville. We’d get on the bus, get a few things out of the store, and take off. Ron’s a pretty quiet guy, so I think five times one summer, we left Ron at that Kroger because we just didn’t notice that he wasn’t on the bus until his phone would start ringing. We’d think, “Who’s phone is that, whose phone is ringing?” And it was the only number he knew because all his phone numbers for us were stored in his phone. (laughs) He couldn’t call us, but he did know his own number, and we’d finally find out that it was his phone and answer it. He’d be at the Kroger and sixty miles later we’d turn around and go get him. So be careful when you’re on the road with a bunch of people. Always let them know where you’re going.

MR: That sounds like too much fun, I don’t know.

JD: (laughs) It became funny around the third time.

MR: Jerry, you’re a Grammy winner thirteen times over. That’s thirteen times. What do you have to say for yourself, young man?

JD: (laughs) Just the right place at the right time. They’re all for different things, they’re for different records, playing with Earl Scruggs on records, for producing different records. Grammys are a nice nod from your peers in the business, that there’s some excellence in what you do which is very nice to hear. But we don’t go out and make a record thinking this is a sure Grammy or something like that because nothing is for sure, not in that business. I make music to try to move people, to try to make their two hours that they’re there to see me play better, get them away from whatever is bothering them, whatever happened to their week, their year, if they’ve lost somebody. There are all kinds of things, whatever is going on in their lives, when they are there to see me play, I want to change their lives. I want them to feel better about who they are, what’s going on in their life. That’s what music’s about, it’s about making you feel good, changing your life a little bit.

MR: Wow. Well, now you have the opportunity to change a few more lives by answering this next question. What advice do you have for new artists?

JD: New artists? It’s tough out there. It’s tougher than it’s ever been, there are so many people out there trying to get record deals and plus there are so many ways to promote your music. The internet has opened up so many things that weren’t available to me as a new artist. There are all kinds of ways to raise money online to get a jumpstart on a recording budget to allow you to buy some equipment to record. There all these new ways you can record at home, digital equipment that wasn’t there when I started playing. The analog tape machine, which cost half a million dollars, was a little cost prohibitive. But now, the same quality studio that we were using, the same quality of recording, you can get for under $10,000. The equipment that we were working on was 2-3 million. You’ve got that, but you really need to have some belief in yourself, some real talent, and some other people. Surround yourself with who really believe in you and can help you in your endeavor. It’s really important to have a good group of people behind you that can do part of it. You can’t do everything yourself. That’s what I would start out with. There’s a lot more, but just watching some newer acts come up and fall by the wayside, some really talented people that shouldn’t disappear, but do… The reasons that they do aren’t because of them, but because they didn’t have the help they need.

MR: That’s really beautifully said. I dipped my toe into the management field for a while. Things didn’t work out, but I got to see what was coming down the pike, the barrage of things that had to be juggled.

JD: It’s a business, a cut-throat business, actually. I wouldn’t say that to discourage anyone by any means. If you’ve got talent and you want people to hear you, the thing you can do to help yourself is to surround yourself with some really nice people, but play in front of as many people as you can, as often as you can.

MR: It’s like trial by fire or better yet, molding the weapon in the fire.

JD: It is. You find out who you are while you’re out there. You don’t really know until you get out there. You can think you’re the greatest thing in the world and you might find out that it’s really not for you. But you might also come into your own while you’re standing there.

MR: Speaking of playing, you’ve also gotten the Musician of the Year award three times from the CMA. Also, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded you the National Heritage Fellowship. You’re named Artist in Residence for the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008. The AMA…no, not the American Medical Association…

JD: (laughs)

MR: The Americana Music Association honored you with a lifetime achievement award just last year.

JD: I did an operation onstage.

MR: Must have been one awesome operation.

JD: I don’t know, I just play the dobro and somebody’s listening. Those things are great and they boost your confidence level, but they make you nervous as hell. They do all kinds of things to you. It’s a mixed bag of feelings, but I’ve had a wonderful career and it’s not anywhere over. I started really early and really young, but I’ve been really lucky to play with some really great people and tried to keep myself in good shape and walk the straight and narrow. There are just so many things about life that are the same as playing music, you know? You find some of the nicest people that play music because it’s a language that crosses all barriers and you just try to be yourself. You don’t try to be what you’re not and sometimes, people give you something nice. It’s a wonderful world if they do or if they don’t, it’s all fine. But I really appreciate all those things, the nice words you said and all of those things I’ve been given. I don’t know what I would do to change anything, it’s been a great life.

MR: Thanks for that. What about your touring, what does the future look like?

JD: Well, It’s just our normal summer tour, a pretty relaxed schedule but working every week, all over the country. Then, actually, I’m going from Telluride to Brussels.

MR: That sounds like a song title.

JD: (laughs) We’ll be with Allison in Europe, in Scandinavia. We’ll be in Norway, Copenhagen, back in the UK…a pretty full summer. Then I’ll start touring Traveler in the fall.

MR: It’s really an honor speaking with you and I appreciate your time today. And I imagine before your tour, that number of projects your on 2,001 will probably be up to 2,500.

JD: I hope not, I don’t know where I’ll fit all that stuff in. I want to try to take it easy this summer as well. It’s been a pleasure being here with you and I love the whole solar-powered idea, I think it’s wonderful, and just wish everything ran on solar-power. It could, couldn’t it?

MR: It absolutely could!

JD: We’re working that way.

MR: Thanks, Jerry, and all the best in your future.

JD: Thanks for all your kind words.

Transcribed by Narayana Windenberger