Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Jerry Douglas

Transcript

Jerry Douglas · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Set podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My guest today is the one and only Jerry Douglas,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: dough bro and Lapskewal guitar player Extraordinarire. Jerry. What is
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: a doughbro?
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Bob? Thanks for having me on today. A doughbro is
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: a guitar. Basically, it's a guitar.
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: It has a People would recognize it from a shiny
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: like hubcap on top of the guitar, but that's that's
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: all something that goes into making the sound. There were
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: some five Slovakian brothers in the twenties who loved Hawaiian music,
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: but it wasn't loud enough for them. They were used
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: to hear in loud bands oompah, all kinds of crazy
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: stuff over there. Crazy to us, not to them, But
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: they came over here and there was a Hawaiian guitar
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: craze going on in the United States and the twenties
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: that had been a sort of a out you know
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: it was. It was created by a World's exposition that
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: had Hawaiian musicians at it, and the whole world went
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: crazy about these Hawaiian musicians. So all these guys started
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: selling these Hawaiian guitars door to door to all the
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: kids and selling them, you know, little sheet music to
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: learn how to play Hawaiian music. And so they first
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: created the National guitar in Chicago. It was an all
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: metal body guitar like it is on the front of
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: the Dire Straits record Brothers in Arms, and people recognize
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: it from that. But I play the wooden bodied version
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: that these guys developed in the late nineteen twenties in
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Los Angeles, and I have pictures of whole dobro orchestra.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: It must have been an awful sound, but it became
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: popular in Hawaiian music, and then blues music. Blues guy's
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: got a hold of it because it was loud enough
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: to compete with their voice, so they could go ahead
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: and sing as loud as they wanted to.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Uh and uh.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: And then it fell into the hands of Bashful Brother Oswald,
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: who played with Roy Acuff on the grandule Opry. And
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: he was working in a car plant in Flint, Michigan,
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: and in UH came across this guy, this Hawaiian guy
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: who played Hawaiian guitar, and Bashful Brother Oswald just loved
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: the sound of it and learned how to play it,
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: brought it back to Nashville, and then sooner or later,
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: the guy that I really learned from and the guy
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: that inspired me to play the guitar and the Doughbro
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: guitar in the first place, was a fellow named Josh
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: Graves Buck Graves, who played with Lester Flatten Earl Scrugs
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: in the Foggy Mountain Boys. And that's what I heard
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: that every morning getting up to go to school as
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: my dad was getting ready to go to to the
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: steel mill to go to work up in northeastern Ohio
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: and Warren, Ohio. And I heard that guitar every morning,
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: and I just fell in love with the sound of it.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: So I played guitar at the time and started told
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: my dad if he would raise the action up on
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: my guitar, that I would learn how to play like
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: that guy that we'd seen the other night. I was
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: about ten years old, and that's when I started playing
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: dope row guitar.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, the guitar has got the resonator on it. How
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: do you play it relative to a regular guitar.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: Well, first of all, you start out with it on
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: your lap, have it laying on flat on your lap
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: and you play it with a metal slide. Instead of
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: pushing the strings down to hit frets to stop the note,
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: you use a slide, a metal slide on top, and
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: the strings are raised up from the frets, so you
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: don't hit the frets anymore. And that is your threat.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: That steel bar that you're you're holding in your hand,
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: that that is, that's your threat. That's your point of
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: of being in tune and uh and uh try and
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: trying not to hit a bad note against a singer
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: like Alison Krause.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, So in a conventional guitar, you know e a
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: d G B, you move your fingers. How do you
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: tune and get the different notes on a dough bro?
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: The the the main the tuning that most Doughbro players
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: use is from high to low. It's DBG than an
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: octave lower dbg.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Uh. But I have.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: Messed around with different tunings over the years, all kinds
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: of tunings, dropping you know, to dropping my uh second
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: string to create a create a suspension you know between
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: there and and create create tune my B string down
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: to an aid. So it just creates a little bit
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: of of tension and it also uh gives you a
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: way to. You can pull the string behind the bar
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: and raise it to the proper pitch if you want to.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: But you know, it's just a it's just a you know,
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: it's just an ornament really that tuning. But I also
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: have a thing on my guitar. It's called a hip shot,
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: a double hip shot that is like a looks like
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: a bigs B pedal, palm pedal, you.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: Know, vibrato.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: But this thing, you release it and it drops the
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: tuning to a drop D tuning, which then is from
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: E a F sharp duh a D. So it's a
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: dead GAD, except there's an F sharp instead of the
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: first D.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: I was second D.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Let's go back. Your father worked in the steel mills.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: How long was your family in America before he worked
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: in the steel mills?
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: Our first Douglas came over in seventeen forty eight, Wow,
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: came into Pittsburgh, came into not Pittsburgh, came into Philadelphia
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: and was put on the road south. You know, they
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: were sort of dividing people as they came in. And
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: my people were from Scotland and then were you know,
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: because of the clearances where their land was given away,
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: they were they were sent to Northern Ireland, and they
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: didn't want them there either, so they went to America
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: and came into Philadelphia, like I said, were put on
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: the road south where they were trying to create a
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: lot of Italians and Scott's Irish were sent south because
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: they needed stone workers south to build the coke ovens
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: in order to build foundries and get some industry going.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: So they were actually planning these kind of things. And
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: my Douglases came down into Virginia and settled in this
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: little town called Buchannan, which became West Virginia. That part
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: of Virginia became West Virginia. So Buchan in West Virginia
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: is where my people really settled for the first time.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: And my mother and father now live about forty five
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: miles from there. So the family, that portion of the
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: family didn't spread too far, but others, you know, William O.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: Douglas is a relative of mine, distant relative, and Douglas
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: is all over the place. I mean, I've I haven't
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: joined twenty three in meters, so I haven't tracked anybody down,
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: and I'm scared of that thing anyway. So being a
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: traveling musician, I don't need any other children or grandchildren.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, So how did they end up in Warren, Ohio?
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: And how did your father end up working in the
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: steel mill.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: My father's had some cousins that had gone north and
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: found work in the steel mills around Warren and Youngstown, Ohio,
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: in the northeastern part of the state, and they said, well,
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: come on up here, we can find work for you.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: And in West Virginia at that point, if you it
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: depended on which party was in power, the Republicans or
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: the Democrats. And if you were in the Democrats, you
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: either worked in the coal mines, you worked on the
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: state road, or you were a farmer. And my father
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: was looking for a better life, so he my mother
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: got buried and moved straight up to Ohio and he
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: went to work in the steel mills and stayed there
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: for forty years until he retired from the mills. And
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: then they moved back to my mother's farm, which had
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: been in the family now for over two hundred years,
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: and built a nice, great, big log cabin on top
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: of a ridge, and dad's ninety two, mom's eighty nine.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: They lived there by themselves, and they're just amazing. I
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: can't I know I've got those genes, and I'm scared
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: to death what I'll be doing when I'm ninety two
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: years old.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: So your father retired before the whole steel business imploded.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Well, he saw it coming.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: I remember the day he came home and said to me,
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: our steel days are numbered because they're buying Japanese steel now.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: And then it became Chinese steel, and you know, yeah,
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: and his company was.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Owned by a huge, a huge.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: Rich family, European family, and they weren't getting much help.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: So Dad took his retirement. He retired at just the
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: right time to get out with all his benefits and
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: his you know, everything in his retirement. It was like
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: it was the perfect American dream at that point, you know,
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: you could you could still get out of it and
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: take with what they said that you were going to have,
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: and they took it. So he, you know, just just
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: a couple of years ago his retirement ran out. You know,
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: so he has lived, he's lived the whole dream. He
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: lived through his retirement and he's just you know, he's fine,
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: he's fine.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Okay. So you're growing up in Warren. How many kids
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: in the family.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: My brother and I were just the two of us.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: There were a lot of cousins around, but most of
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: our family was in West Virginia, so we go south
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: for vacations, and the family never really we didn't really
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: travel that far. We didn't travel outside Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia,
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: you know, Pennsylvania, just surrounding high We didn't go that
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: far on vacations. But my dad would get these five
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: week paid vacations every year after he hit a certain
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: amount of years in the steel mill. So he would
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: go take us and we would just go to bluegrass
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: festivals and just hear all this music that you know,
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: that we loved. And he had a band. My father
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: had a band in Warren, Ohio called the West Virginia
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: Travelers and they were all guys from West Virginia who
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: had work in the steel mills. And they but they
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: when people from the south moved north, they took their
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: music with them, you know, and and a lot of
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: other things that maybe they shouldn't have taken. But I
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: think back to the jd Vance to the Hillbilly Elogy,
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: you know, those people moved to Dayton and took everything
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: with them, their lifestyle, everything.
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  Speaker 2: But in up in our our part of the our
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: part of the woods.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: There were so many people, so many different ethnic uh
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: you know, it with a lot of Greek people, people
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: from Greece, people from Italy.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: It was a huge Italian population and just a boiling pot.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: And you know, and the food was amazing up there,
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: and uh, just all kinds of people getting along. You know.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: It wasn't it wasn't didn't seem to be a division.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: They all had nicknames for each other. But there was
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: never any never any trouble or anything like that. But
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: but Dad, he he was up there sort of on
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: his own, uh you know, but had a band and
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: they started working and then there create that created other bands,
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: other bluegrass bands around there.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: But he was one of the first in that area. Uh.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: And and that because of that, I got to see
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: a band rehearse when I was, you know, five six
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: years old, rolling around under the kitchen table, watching these
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: guys figure out how to create a song, and that
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: all I was a sponge.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: I sooked all of that up. I learned a lot
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: from just watching them.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, your brother older, younger, where is he today.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: He's he's almost three years younger than me.
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: Uh, he's retired now, and he was a meter reader
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: in West Virginia down there where he moved down to
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: be kind of keep an eye on the folks. And
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: he's on the next ridge over in another loghouse that
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: he but he can see their house, and you know,
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: it's it's great that he's there, you know, because I
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: can't be but uh he and he also started playing bass,
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: uh at one point, and and became a really good
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: bass player. But he just he wasn't as interested in
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: making a living at it or doing what.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: I did, you know, following following what I did.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, you come of age when the Beatles break. I
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: have close friends grew up in the exact same area.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: So you talk about your father listening to country music.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Were also exposed to the British invasion in the other
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: top forty stuff.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Definitely was.
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: I mean, like I said, I would listen to Flatten
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Scrugs or something like that in the morning. But at
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: night I was close enough to Cleveland that it was
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: I would lay in my bed with my little bug,
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: you know, and put that my ear and listen to
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: what the lightest rock and roll was coming out of Cleveland.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: So I was really confused, you because I loved that music,
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: and I loved what I heard in the morning. I'm
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: trying to figure out, how do I marry these two things,
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: and how can I make how can I make one
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: music out of tude or you know, trying to figure
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: out that, figure that out. And I think I've done
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: it over the time. I think I've done it and
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: combined the two just by being a chameleon and being
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: a musician that listened, and you know, doing sessions.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: That's that's your job.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: Listen, you listen, and you you learn the song fast,
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: you come up with a hook, and you do all
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: of these things as fast as possible in order to
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: you know, move time. And that's that's one of the
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: things that that has really helped me in my career.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: And but but those those radio stations up there also
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: had had a cousin moved in with us when he
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: was eighteen to k He came up there to find work.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: He brought and the first night he was there, I
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: heard for the first time, I heard the mamas and
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: the papas, I heard, I heard the birds, and I
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: heard Don't walk Away, and I remember that song. I
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: mean the first night he was there, and I just
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: my mind was blown again. You know, it was like
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: I was really I paid attention to music. You know,
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: It's like the different music that I would hear, like
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: like what he brought in the house and what I
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: heard on the radio from Cleveland and and all of
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: these things. So it was, uh, it was quite an education,
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: you know, before I even really put the bar to
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: the strings and got serious enough about playing that. I
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: loved music before I ever really got into playing it
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: so much.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you hear flatt and scrugs. You hear the
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: dough bro? What age are you you decide to play?
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: How do you get a dough bro? How do you
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: learn how to play?
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: Good, good question. Because I had a silver tone guitar.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: It was a pretty cheap model that I'd gotten for Christmas,
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: and and we raised the strings.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Up on that.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: And one one day I came home from school and
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: my guitar was on the top of the stack of
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: guitars that we had, like guitars maybe.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: And the sun had come in and hit my case.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: And as soon as I hit the last latch on
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: the case and threw open the top of the case,
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: my guitar just folded up like that. And so we
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: had to go find something real for me to play,
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: and that's when we went on the search to find
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: a dough Bro But there were there weren't any. I mean,
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: they had stopped building Doughbro guitars in the late thirties,
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: so there weren't any. But the company was starting up again.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: My luck, in nineteen sixty seven, they started to produce
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: guitars again and I got one of the first ones.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: But I had to go to a music store and
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: every time I'd ask them, they just look at me
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: like I.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: Had some strange disease if I say, do you have
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: any Doughbro guitars? No, So finally I got a brochure
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: and I ordered one from the brochure to the to
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: a music store in Newton Fall, Ohio. And six months
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: later that came in and I was just like, oh,
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: this is what it sounds like, you know, because I,
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: you know, I've been playing a guitar. It didn't it
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: didn't create all of that sound that comes from the
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: cover plate. And under that cover plate is a we
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: didn't get to this before, but there's an aluminum spun
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: aluminum cone. It's like a speaker cone. And and also
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: there's a there's a bridge to connect the bridge to
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: the rest of this contraption. There's a thing I like
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: called a spider that sits down on that cone and
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: contacts that cone at eight different places and transfers the
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: sound down into the guitar back up out of the guitar.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: It was just an ingenious invention. I mean that there
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: are two screens at the top of the guitar.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: They're just like they're.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: Screens, they're round screens, and that's where the bass of
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: part of the guitar comes from because it's channeled in side.
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: Sound is just like it's just like light or water.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: It bounces, it reflects, it does all of these things.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: And these guys figured out how to create the inside
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: of the guitar so they could control the high end
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: from the low end. And it just created two sources
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: of sound in one guitar, and you could mix those
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: two together depending on where you put the microphone as
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: to how much high end or low end you get.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: And I think they got lucky on a whole lot
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: of things. I mean, just the circumference of that metal
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: spun aluminum cone that's never changed, and the cover plates
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: never changed until I changed the design of it a
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: few years ago. And I'm the guinea pig for a
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: lot of things that come out for Dobo players, and
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: I get them first and it works.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: I keep it. It doesn't goes back to the whoever
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: gave it to me.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, So what's the state of manufacture of Doughbro guitars today?
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: How many people even make them?
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: Doughbro does not make them. Gibson Guitars bought Dobro and uh,
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: they were terrible guitars that they were making. And so
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: I stepped in and said, can I can you build
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: me a signature model? And I will. I'll come in
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: with you. I'll go through all the pains and.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: Everything with you to get this to be a good
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: guitar that somebody can buy as an entry level guitar
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: mahogany guitar at seventeen hundred dollars. And we all agreed
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: on we could do that.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: But the guitars, you know, if they have your name
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: on them anywhere, everyone who buys it thinks you built
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: it right. So they started they started doing some really
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: wacky things with this dough Bro like out of line,
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: or the the cone would not be or the cover
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: plate would not be in the center of the guitar
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: and be over to the left or to the right,
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: and you can't play a guitar like that. And they
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: were just bad. They were bad guitars. So Gibson and
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: I got a divorce. So I went to there's a
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: phelle named Tim Sheerhorn that makes excellent, excellent, excellent, like uh,
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: the greatest uh resophonic guitars, doughbro guitars. Doughbrow has become
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: a h. The word for doughbro now is ish resophonic.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: Doughbro was a name, like we started using it like kleenex.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: You know, anything that looked like that was a doughbro.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: And to me, I still call it that. I don't
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: care if they sue me or not, but you know,
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: I'm selling more of them for them than anybody else.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: So that was really awful.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: But UH, I got UH and and then I got
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: into a deal here with the fellow named Paul Beard,
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: who is in Hagerstown, Maryland and makes the best, the
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: best reservantic guitars. I was with Tim Sheerhorn for a while,
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: but he didn't want to build a signature model. So
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: I got with Paul Beard and he did so we
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: set to work on building a special one worked on
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: the inside so the sound would move and be reflected
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: in different ways, and the guitar sounded bigger. All the
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: new builders are building what I would consider hybrids of
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: the first of the original guitar at this point.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's assume I want to buy a Doughbro.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Are these things now readily available? How many companies are
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: making them? Is it still a very limited thing.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: It's not a limited thing.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: Nope, Through Paul Beard, there are several several entry level
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: guitars you can buy and not spend a lot of money,
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: you know, until you I tell people, if you're going
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: to buy a Doughbro.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Don't don't go out and buy one like mine right away.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: Go out and buy, you know, a lower level guitar
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: to see if you really want to play this guitar. No,
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: don't spend ten thousand dollars. If you can spend you know,
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: fifteen hundred dollars and get something, And they're amazing guitars.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: If I'd have had one of those guitars when I
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: was learning to play, I don't know what would have happened,
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: but yeah, suddenly, suddenly dobro players can get They're readily available.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: You can find them all music stores. You know, you
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: go in, you go into guitar center, you can find
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: a dobro guitar, a resivantic guitar, and a slide and
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: picks and all everything. And I've been in situations in
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: the last couple of years. I had to fly from
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: Charlotte to Portland, Oregon to open for Shock Tea. I
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: was like one of the three people that got to
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: open for John McLaughlin and Zakir Hussein and all of
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: these amazing musicians. I mean, any of us in any
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: genre of music, will we sort of bow down to
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: what those guys have done because it's incredible music and
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: no one else can play it like they can. So
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: they were doing they're doing their fiftieth anniversary and probably
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: the last run. I get out to Portland and I
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: have no guitar, and I don't have a guitar the
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: next day either when I'm supposed to play. So I
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: put out an APB found another guitar that was my
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: signature model that showed up that had everything on it
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: that my guitar had. It was exact, you know, almost
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: exact copy mine's been played for three years, so it
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: sounded a little different. But that's happened to me about
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: four or five times over the last two years. So
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking, why do I even carry a guitar? Why
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: don't I just announce where I'm going to be and
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: have people show up and bring me one to play.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: But nothing like playing your own guitar. But it's.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: I don't know, you have to depend on so many
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: people to get from A to B anymore. It's kind
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: of it's a tough world out there for us traveling
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: with one in one instrument.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, how'd you end up in the Pacific Northwest without
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: a guitar?
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: Airlines?
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: They just left it somewhere they you know, I have
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: air tags and everything. I knew exactly where it was.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: It left, never left Charlotte, you know. And I needed
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: it in Portland, Oregon like now, And so two hours
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: before the show, my guitar showed up to so I
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: was covered.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, So now you get a guitar, how do you
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: learn how to play it?
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: That was when I was learning how to play. There
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: was no one, I mean, there was no internet. There
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: was the only way you could learn how to play
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: something was listen to the person that played it, you know,
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: and and find somebody who knows how to tune it.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: And I got lucky there. My dad's banjo player said,
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: I think it's the first four strings of the banjo,
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: and then I don't know.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: What's up after that.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: So we just went with what the tuning that I have,
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: and I got lucky, you know, And I just started
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: listening to Flatt and Scrugs records and trying to copy everything.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: I couldn't slow my my record player would not slow
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: down any farther than thirty three, so I had to
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: put something heavy on it to slow it down so
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: I could hear the intervals between notes and what notes
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: they were and try to figure out where they were.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm totally self taught. I had nobody to
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: tell me anything ever, And and it wasn't until much
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: later in the eighties when there were started to become
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: homespundings and stuff like that, and teaching teaching tools to
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: teach all instruments, and Dobro was included in those. But
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: it was it was hard because there were plenty of
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: people could tell you how to play guitar or manlin
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: or benjo or a violin, but dobro nobody, and uh
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: so we were all just kind of listening to each other.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: And then you'd meet to another dobro player and it
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: was like you'd learned a foreign language, gone to that
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: country and tried it out on them and they actually
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: understood you.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: You know. It was that kind of a great feeling.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: And and the dobro community was a very very close
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: knit community because there weren't that many of us, but
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: now there are. There are like one thousand percent more
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: Doughbro players now than there were when I first went
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: on the road.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're learning how to play the conventional stream
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: for people from your demo. My demo is They then
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: formed bands, They played high school gigs, et cetera. What
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: did you do?
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I played it.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: I played in bars with my dad's bluegrass band. I
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: you know, we didn't play behind chicken wire, but we
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: needed it a few times. We were playing in in
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: bars around around Warren, Ohio where uh we played in
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: one bar that was right across the street from Alcoa,
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: And when the midnight shift from Alcoa let out, those
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: guys all came in that bar right across the street,
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: and we already had our our regular clientele in there, dancing,
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: you know, and and uh and making them so much
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: noise we could barely hear ourselves.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: That was it.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: And but uh, yeah, I I when they my friends
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: didn't know what I was doing. I didn't tell anybody
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: that I was a musician. I didn't tell anybody that
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: I played bluegrass music, country music, rock and roll. Didn't
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: tell them anything until my senior year, a bunch of
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: my pals found out where I was playing. They knew
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: I played. In fact, one of my friends told me,
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: he said, show and tell. One time you brought your
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: dough brow to school and the teacher gave you a
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: c And I thought, well, I just don't think she
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: understood what I was about. And but yeah, there was
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: nobody and and the band teacher for the high school
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: found out that I was a musician after that.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: They told him and he said, why didn't you want to?
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Why could Why didn't you play in the band?
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: And I said, it's not the same it's not the
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: same kind of music, and it's it's a completely different
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: world from what you guys are doing. Marching on a
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: football field and stuff.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: I'm not. I don't do that. I play for I
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: play for live people, and who.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: Are you know, applauding and and you know, I'm playing
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: for fun.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: Really, I'm playing for fun.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: And and it was all fun until I got up
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: to be about fifteen sixteen years old, and then it
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: was then I got scouted by a professional bluegrass band.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, going sideways for a second. Not everybody got sophisticated.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Please define bluegrass music.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: To define bluegrass music is a tough thing to do.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, nobody agrees. But one thing that I think
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: we can all agree on is there was no bluegrass
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: music until Bill Monroe stepped on stage with Earl Scruggs.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: And Lester Flat And that's the night bluegrass was born.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: It was right here at the Grand Ole Opry in
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: Nashville in nineteen forty seven, and Earl Scruggs stepped up
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: to the microphone and played something so fast nobody had
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: ever heard anything like that before, and he got I
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: think they got five standing ovations, and they played the
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: song like five times, and that had never been done
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: at the Opry, you know, other than Hank Williams doing
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: something like that, nobody had ever done anything like that before.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: But bluegrass music is basically a basic bluegrass band is
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: comprised of a guitar, a banjo, a violin, fiddle, mandolin,
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: and a bass and then Dobro is sort of the
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: stepchild of all of that. Josh Graves made it work
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: for Flatten Scruggs, gave them a broader audience than they
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: had because.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Of his blues influence.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: Just the instrument sort of inspires a blues atmosphere, you
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: know when he and he was from an area of
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: the country that that and he learned from an old
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: African American man who hung out around around Knoxville, Tennessee,
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: And so when he joined Flatten Scruggs, there was this
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: whole blues thing that happened to them that had never
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: happened before, and they used it and that's why they
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: were such a popular band with so many people. But
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: bluegrass they didn't they didn't even say they were a
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: bluegrass band because Bill Monroe was a bluegrass band, and
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: it was just they didn't want to be called bluegrass
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: because they thought it was limiting Bill Monroe and the vocals.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: In bluegrass, the vocals are pitched kind of high because
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: Bill Monroe sang everything in it, mostly in B and
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: in higher keys than most men did so, And so
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: I think that that kind of explains bluegrass is different
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: than country music in that it's mostly acoustic as well.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: We've all adapted pickups and all kinds of things to
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: our acoustic instruments at this point, so it's no longer
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: purely purely acoustic. But that was the only way we
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: could play in great, big places without feedback and things
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: like that was to sort of, you know, make our instruments,
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: adapt our instruments to the situation. But bluegrass music, I
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: don't that that's pretty much how I could explain bluegrass
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: music is the parts, and it comes from it comes
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: from the South, it comes from gospel music, comes from
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: rag time, it comes from the blues, comes from the
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: field hollers. Gospel music is a huge, huge part of
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: bluegrass music. And and just the sentiment, more of the
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: sentiment than that, like I believe and you must believe,
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: it's it's it's there are songs that have been sung
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: for a long time, and and bluegrass music is a
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: music that's very stays true to its roots as true
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: to its roots as it possible, and when it goes
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: out of bounds once in a while, and then it'll
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: get pulled back.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Okay for the uneducated, Where is the line between bluegrass
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: and traditional country.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: There's a very fine line between bluegrass music and traditional country.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: Traditional country, you know that was played in the fifties
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: and sixties was very much related to bluegrass music other
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: than they introduced electric instruments and drums, and that's pretty
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: much the difference. That's the difference. They were singing about
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: the same they were all singing about the same subject
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: matter pretty much, you know. But bluegrass music is a
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: music that came from porches, you know, and people just
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: playing in the country just to pass the time. So
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: did old time country music. But country music is a
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: more and has always been more of a commercial has
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: more of a commercial side to it, and bluegrass, you know,
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: because it came from a you know, a poor, poor background,
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: didn't really I don't think it expected much for a
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: long time and until it learned how to play the
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: country music game, you know, until we actually monetized our music.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: So tell me about getting scouted.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: I was playing with my dad's band.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: In nineteen seventy two, playing at a festival with it
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: with my dad's band. And also there was a band
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: there who was sort of the cream of the bluegrass
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: crop at that point, was called the Country Gentleman, And
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: they were based out of Washington, d C. And there
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: was this whole white collar bluegrass situation going on in
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: the Seldom scene and bands like that around Washington, d C.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: But the Country Gentlemen. I looked out we were playing.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: I was playing with my dad. We were playing the set,
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: and I looked out and I saw one of the guys,
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: Charlie Waller over to my left. I saw Bill Emerson,
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: the banjo player to my out in the center, and
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, it was like being scouted as a baseball player.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: And they came up to me like right after that
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: show and ask if I could leave with them that
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: night and go to the next show. And I said, guys,
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: I gotta I gotta go back to school. I mean,
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: I need to go to I need to go to
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: It'll be my junior year in high school. I need
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: to go back to school. So the next summer after that,
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: after my junior year, I went with them. I went
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: out on the road for that summer and I missed.
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: I missed my last my senior year of football because
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: I was out running around with the bluegrass band all
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: over the country instead of having my spring training with
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: my football team. So I didn't play football that year.
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: And but I think it all worked out.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: Okay. Uh.
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: I don't think I was going to be a professional
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: football player anyway. But I had a chance to go
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: to as a as an English major, to go to
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: the University of Maryland, and I and I, I was
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: out on the road with country gentlemen, walking through a
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: field and listen to all of these people play. After this,
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: after the concerts were all over, and people would camp
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: at these big bluegrass festivals and they and at night
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: bonfires rose up and there were jam sessions everywhere. You
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: could just walk around and listen to different bands play,
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: people play.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: And I thought, you know, this is this. I love this.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: I want to do this forever. I wanted to be
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: like this forever. Well it hasn't been but.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: Music. It was just music.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: It just made me, made me whole, It finished me,
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: and it uh and I and I thought, you know,
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: I I think I would rather do this. I think
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: I'm better at this than then I would be as
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: an English teacher or you know, reading late literature for
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: the rest of my life. So I made a choice
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: to stay on the road and become a musician, a
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: road musician, and hopefully a recording musician someday.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, you said you hoped that it would be like
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: this festival with bonfires and jam sessions, but it wasn't.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: What was it like?
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: For a long time, it was, and there was a
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: there was There was a sort of a just an
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: era where the festivals were more family oriented and people
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: would go there to meet other people that played bluegrass
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: because it was still a sort of a rare commodity
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: to run across somebody who even knew what it was.
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: And as it as it built, you know, and then
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: that you know, things things like the nitty gritty dirt
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: bands Circle, the Unbroken Record made a big difference. Then
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: later on, oh, brother made a big difference. And but uh,
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: it didn't. When I say it didn't stay that way,
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: was because it became the festivals got bigger, they got
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: more harder to manage the people, you know, and and
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, you know, every festival thought
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: it should be Woodstock, and so there would be thousands
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: of people the motorcycle gang, the Pagans, whoever showed up
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: would be the security for the festival.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: And that just got it got too crazy, he got
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: out of hand, and uh.
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: And anymore, you can go to festivals, and there are
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: some festivals that still you can find people jamming out
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: in the after at night after after dark, but they're
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: very far a few and far between anymore. And the
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: festivals really aren't set up that way anymore either. There's
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: still a lot of camping, but there's you know, I
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: don't know. Uh, we've just changed as a society. We've
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: we've changed. We're more private, I guess, I don't know. Uh,
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: but there's less jamming in the campground. But I don't know. Uh,
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: it's it's just a different time. People more When it
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: was more of a family event, you saw a lot
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: more people get out, and you saw a lot more
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: people get out and jam, you know, and it was
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: it was more local, felt more local.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, So you take the path to be a musician
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: as opposed to continue your education. So what happens are
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: you on the road with the band, do you switch bands?
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: How does your career ensue?
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: Well, I played with the country Gentlemen, for a couple
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: of years, and uh, after my after my junior year
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: of high school, I went out and played the summer
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: with him. Then I came back, finished my scene your
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: year of high school, turned eighteen, graduated from high school, and.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: Moved to Washington, d c. All in the same week.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: And that's that's when I was you know, it's not
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: it wasn't too late to turn back now, but it
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: was like I decided this is what I was going
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: to do, and moved down there, got an apartment and
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: started working full time music, being on the road, you know,
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: traveling in a bus and being on the road, and
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: I met other musicians, you know, through through the course
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: of just playing festivals and and just you know, meeting
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: other musicians. And I started working with this guitar player
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: named Tony Rice who was just a phenomena, and Ricky
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: Skagg's the same, and we I got into a band.
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: I was hired by a fello named J. D. Crowe,
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: banjo player in Lexington, Kentucky, who just he had this
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: band with Ricky and Tony, and it was like it
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: was like a step up for me. It was a
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: musical step up. And I followed those things. I followed
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: those opportunities where I thought, I can be a better
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: musician here, I can learn something here, you know. And
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: it wasn't about money to me. It was about it
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: was about learning. It was about learning to be a
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: musician in all aspects of it.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: And these guys.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: Gave me a real foot up and it just opened
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: my mind to a lot of other different kinds of music.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: Even I heard Weather Report and Chick Korea the same day,
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: and that blew my mind. I thought, WHOA. I thought
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: I knew music pretty well, but this is something I've
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: never heard before.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is brand news.
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: So I started, you know, my forays into that area
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: with David Grisman on the West Coast and meeting all
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: these different musicians all over the country. And that's when music,
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: the bluegrass music started to change, started to take in
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: a lot of jazz elements, a lot of blues elements.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: It allowed itself for these things to pour in because
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: we have these renaissance periods. All music does, but I
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: notice some more in bluegrass music because right now we're
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: in one right where Chris Deely and Molly Tuttle and
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: Sierra Hull, Sierra Farrell, Meuni it's an explosion of brand
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: new talent. And I think that happens every fifteen twenty years.
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: I was in one of those classes. You know, it's
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: like it happens.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: Music is.
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: Like all music starts at twelve o'clock. If you go
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: around the dial, it starts. It starts with roots music.
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: You know, something terrible happens in the world roots music
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: twelve o'clock, and then it goes around the dial and
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: it gets shinier and shinier, and by the time it
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: gets back around about eleven o'clock, everybody's going, oh man,
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: this is too much. We can't deal with this anymore.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: And then something happens and we're back fruits music start over.
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: And if you I've been here for in Nashville for
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: at least three of those occasions.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: When I first moved to town, we were leaving what
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: was called the uh was it called the uh uh
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: oh it was. It was Mickey Gilly and every and
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: when everybody had everybody had a mechanical bull. It was
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: the urban Cowboys scare. That's what we called it. It
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: was like the folk scare that happened in the sixties
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: and then and then the urban Cowboys scare, and then
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: we had the Broe Country scare and we you know,
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: but but when I came to town is about the time.
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: Uh then Ricky, when I moved to Nashville, Ricky Ricky
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: Skaggs hit, uh, uh Randy Travis hit and uh, Emmy
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: Lou was hitting. And it was the traditional country movement.
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: And I was here at the perfect time to belong
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: to that, to be part of that, and that really
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: gave me, gave me a foot up on becoming a
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: more of a musician, you know. Then then I went
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: out on the road with Emmy Lou Harris, and I
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: saw how these huge shows move buses, trucks, you know,
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: lots of musicians, you know, lots of guests, you know,
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: all these things had all works and and that was
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: a different time, you know, and then that saw its
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: time go away, you know. And there have been different
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: scares of Barbara Mandrel scare or the you know, all
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: of these different times in country music where we're in
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: one right now. We're in one right now where I
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: went to fill out my CMA ballot the other.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Day and I didn't know who anybody was.
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, and at one point I was doing you know,
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: fifteen sessions a week, playing with everybody and knew who
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: everyone was. Now I barely know who anybody is because
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: I'm just not doing that anymore, not playing on it
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: all as many sessions.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: You know, it's more pick and choose.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Let's go back. Graduate from high school, you moved to
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: d C. You're eighteen years old, you go on the road.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: In the rock world, it's sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: What was it like in the bluegrass world for you?
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: It was pretty much sex, drugs and bluegrass.
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: But it was, uh, you know, we're young. We were
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: doing everything we're supposed to do, and we're young, and
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: as we got older.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: We watched the other people do the same thing. But yeah,
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: it was wild out there.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: And and you know, bluegrass went through a drug period,
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: just like rock and roll did. It's just like it
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: was everywhere. And I don't know what it's like now
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: because I've I'm out of that. I'm not taking drugs,
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: so I don't know what they've got, But I think
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: that I think they they I think they pretty much
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: hoopooed the drugs and and and a lot of them
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: just no, I don't want drugs, you know, it was.
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: It was the period of the kids were going to
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: say no to drugs, and so everyone did. And uh,
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: I know Chris Deely uh never touched anything.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: I remember when he turned eighteen and he and he
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: saw his first movie that wasn't a G rated movie.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: He was telling me about all these movies and and
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: and uh, it was fun to watch these guys who
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: were our you know who we had generated these people,
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: Uh through them watching Bayla Fleck and Sam Bush and
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: Tony Rice and and me and Mark O'Connor play.
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: They they went to school on us. Man. They they
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: learned everything that we did.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: And and uh, you know the only thing they don't
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: have that we have our old souls.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you talk about switching from the country gentleman
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: to Ricky Skaggs Tony Rice. Everybody's humble, But what's the
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: real situation you see? Are you taking advantage of the
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: situation or are you is it just dumb luck You're
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: sitting there and someone says, hey, come play with me.
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: It's a combination of both. Really, I I I Uh,
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: the way I joined Alison Kraus and Union Station was
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: just a phone call, you know, it was like I
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: had produced one of her records and played on just
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: about every record she had that she'd made, but I
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: wasn't expecting that call and and.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: And yeah, it was like, yeah it was I was.
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: I was playing the game. I was watching where my
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: next musical step could be. Uh, As I say, it
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: wasn't financial, but you know, things things were better, I
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: mean because I was, you know, more identifiable and and
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: playing on lots of records and everything like that, and
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: showing up with lots of shows. But it wasn't It wasn't.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: Uh that's I wasn't doing it for the money. I
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: was doing it for the for the music. But but uh,
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: I don't know. These these these new kids cropping up
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: billy strings is amazing, I mean, And that's that's way.
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: That's another phenomena that we could talk about. But you know,
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: I did a show with him the other night, and
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: and it's the same songs my father was singing to
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: those steel workers, is what he's singing to that audience,
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: and plus writing his own material too. But it's a
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: phenomena to watch the audience reaction. And I would I
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: was going from from one gig to another, from I
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: went from the country Gentleman to JD. Crow to the Whites,
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: Buck White and his two daughters, Sharon and Cheryl, and
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: we had top ten records, country records. Then from there
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: I was doing so many sessions that I had to
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: get off the road with them and just take care
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: of my recording career. But then I got bored.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: And I needed I needed the crowd reaction. I needed.
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: I needed people, you know, to give me new ideas
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: and to try things out on me, because that's a
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: great place to try try new things in front of
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: an audience, if you get a reaction there, and then
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: take it back to the studio with you and use it.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: You know, in some way. But just.
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: I just loved I just loved playing. So I would
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: go from one one gig to another, and worked a
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: lot with Peter Rowan, who was gave me a very
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: worldly view of not just bluegrass, but you know, traveling
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: through Europe and doing a lot more of that. Seeing
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: the world a little bit more opened up, opened up
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: things a little more for me as well.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're working with Ricky Skaggs, working with Tony Rice. Yeah,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: does someone say in the world of doughbro are there
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: other people who were the first call. How do you
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: get noticed in how many other people are in the world.
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: I was pretty I was pretty alone in that world.
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, there was Josh Graves who played who was
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: getting older, but it wasn't with flattened scrugs anymore, didn't
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: have quite the notoriety anymore. But still just he's my
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: man to look to if I want to remember something
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: good and hear something good. And Mike Aldridge was another
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: Doughbro player from the DC area that was just amazing
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: and and had taken the doughbro into a different subject
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: matter with a seldom scene mean, and was wasn't playing
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: so fast all the time, but but very his tone
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: was so good.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: So that so here's speed.
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: And then tone, you know, and uh, I'm trying to
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: have both at the same time. It depends on the song.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: So it depends on the subject matter, you know. I've
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: dived deep into these things and to try to figure
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: out what to play because I want to be as
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: as uh empathetic as the singer. I feel like I
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: am another singer and and so I that's that's how
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: I go at it. But but moving from one band
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: to another was not a not a decision about money.
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: It was a conscious decision about becoming a better musician.
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: And uh, the final one, you know, with with Alison,
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: I have my own band. Who you you saw, you
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: saw us and we're.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, gave us a bunch of love of jazz Fest.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: You made my day.
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: I mean, it was raining, it was cold, I was miserable,
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: and then I saw that it was like, oh, okay,
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: all right, it was a good day after all.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: But I had my own band.
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: And and love playing that stuff, you know, playing with
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: my own band, because I those are all my songs
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: and I get to hear their take on what my
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: on my songs. So it's good. But working with Alison
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: is like the pinnacle.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: Of all these worlds.
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: You know, You're you're playing on a big stages, huge crowds,
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: great sound systems, everything is everything is state of the art,
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: you know. And and to walk out on that stage
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: and hear that voice every night, and and all of
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: those players, all those guys, my friends for more than
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: twenty years now, it's it's just a it's it's the
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: culmination of a long a lot of work for me,
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: for me, and uh, I feel so at home in it.
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: And it's like it's like part of my legacy at
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: this point.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're playing with these varying things. How do
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: you end up in Nashville as a studio musician.
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: I moved here to work with the Whites, with Buck
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: White and his daughters, and we started We had a
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: we had a record deal with curb Uh and then
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: we had a record deal with Capital. But we were
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: pumping out these you know, number ten, number nine songs
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: and we never made it to number one or anything
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: like that.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: But that's when.
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: It got really busy for me because we were right
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: in the middle of the traditional country movement and I
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: was playing on all kinds of records, you know, just
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: just you know, anybody.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: Called I was just jumping. I was I was doing
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: anything I was called for.
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: And it got to where it happens to a lot
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: of musicians that way, you get you know, there was
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: different scales and there, and they're different session times you
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: know there at we do session times at ten, two,
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: and six, and I was doing all three of those,
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: you know, every day and kind of getting burnt out
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: on it. You know, you you start to wonder if
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: you had just played this song with some other artists
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: two three days ago. You don't know, you can't remember
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: because it's all getting mixed up in there, worried about
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: if you had just played the same solo or something
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: like it, you know, last week or something, because it was, uh,
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: It was just burnout time for me.
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: I needed to do I needed to get away from
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: it for a little while and and uh too to
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: realize how wonderful it really was. And uh but that's
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: when I took the job with Alison. I was right
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: at the end of a of a really tired of
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: doing what I'm doing kind of session. I was actually
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: producing a band when she called and and so I
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: started doing that, but I kept my own band at
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: the same time for just you know, to be able
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: to roll into that and know exactly what I was doing.
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: And uh but but playing with Alison was like you're
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: part of an ensemble, You're part of You're You're a
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: puzzle piece.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: And I like that. I really like that, really like
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: being part of a puzzle.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: So how long did you do the studio thing?
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: About ten twelve years? Ten twelve years. I was I
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: was just running down. I was home most of the time,
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: and I was running downtown with a doughbro and going
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: in and playing on two or three songs and then
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: going to the next studio, you know.
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: And that was that was my job. That's what I did.
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: I replaced saxophones, a lot of saxophones, to bring a
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: song back to country instead of you know, if they decided,
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: if if they cut the record and they played it
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: for somebody and they went, that's no, it needs to
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: be more country. They called me to replace the the
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: saxophone part, bring it back to country music. It's not
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: just me, but you know, things that would make it
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: more country.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: Uh So, I don't know.
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: It's it's uh, it's it's it's hard to it's hard
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: to remember. Uh why I actually, you know, shied away
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: from it. I just stopped when I got the gig
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: with Alison. I stopped doing a lot of the sessions
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: that I didn't really want to do, you know, that
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: were worked for me. I started being a little more
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: choosy than what I did. And that's the way it's been.
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: So that's why it's remained up to now.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, when you start to pull back, is there somebody
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: to fill your shoes or does the phone keep ringing,
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: Hey Jerry, we need you.
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: The phone keeps ringing.
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: But there are also guys that can fill my shoes.
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: But also there are you know, there for for that
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: many dobro players, new dobro players, there are ten times
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: that many bands, you know, so the whole thing was
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: growing exponentially.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: But dobro players there are so many good ones now.
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: I mean I love hearing other Doughbro players because I
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: went so long for and not didn't hear any, you know,
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: I was it was just me and two or three
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: other guys at a festival, and you know, we were
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: like the lost tribe, you know when somebody would meet.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: When I'd meet a.
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: Dobro player, was like, whoa. You know, you don't have
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: to show me everything, you know, I'm just glad to
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: meet you. You know, I'm just glad to meet another
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: dobro player. We're a rare bunch.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: Okay. You also play the lap steel guitar. Tell us
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: exactly what that is.
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: It's it's the forerunner of the pedal steel guitar. I mean,
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: it's sort of between dobroh was the first slide slide
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: guitar like that, and then then lap steals came out
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: and they're just a board with strings, you know, and uh,
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: it's a pretty simple, simple instrument that got keys on it,
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: but the strand the strings are high and has pickup
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: on it, so it's an electric instrument and uh, but
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: there are so many different things you can do with it.
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: There was a guy named Little Roy Wiggins that was
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: here in the in the UH in the forties and
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: fifties who uh just revolutionized country music with this the steel.
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: And then Buddy Emmons and Shot Jackson and these guys
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: started working on pedals, putting pedals on it to raise
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: and lower strings and do all kinds of things, and
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: it became a lot.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: It became a pedal steel guitar. So that's the three
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: steps sort of this. So the lap steel is between those,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: but lap steel now is used. David Linley was.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: One of the greatest examples I can think of of
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: of what I think lap steels should be used for.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: And they're just like they're rock and roll instruments, and
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: they can be they can be really sweet and old
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: time country music. But lap steels are used as overdrive.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: You know that the sound is overdriven and and it's
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: sort of a harder, meaner sounding instrument, you know, but.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: There are really pretty things you can do with it.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: But it to me, it gave me license to be
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: to be a little more ferocious, you know, to be
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: a little more ferocious, to start using some of that
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: stuff I learned when I was laying in my bed
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: listening to Cleveland stations, you know, to sort of take
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: on a Joe Walsh attitude all of a sudden instead
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: of instead of laying back in bluegrass world.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: Well, you mentioned Linterley, you mentioned Walsh. To what degree
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: have you intersected with these rock musicians, these rock guitarists,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: and what has that experience been like? Have they been
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: wanting to learn your lessons you've been learning their lessons
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: or just treating stories.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: But David Linley and I were really good friends and
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: we would trade We would trade stories. And I remember
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: having a slide. There was a brand new slide, and
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: I was a Winnipeg at a big festival, big folk
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: festival in Winnipeg, and I was running across this field
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: to surprise David with this brand new slide. And I
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: got about ten feet from him and I held up
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: the slide and he held up one exactly like it.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: And Ry Cooter there's another one that they say, never
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: meet your heroes, right. I mean, the first time I
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: met Ry Cooter, I said, I, Ry, I'm I'm a
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: doughbro player and he said gee.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: And just melted me. I just you know, shattered me.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: I just like they almost had to pick me up
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: off the rug and with a you know, vacuum cleaner.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: I was in pieces. I was so shattered, uh that.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: But then I met later on met his brother in law,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: Russ Teidelman, who produced a record for me and I
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: and I explained to him. I said, he said, well,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: what did Rye say? And I said that he said gee,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: and he said, yeah, doughbro ge And I went.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, is that what he meant? And he says yeah.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: So the next call I get from Ry Cooter is
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: inviting me to one of his concerts. So I felt
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: better after that. You know, we we healed and we're
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: we're friends now.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: So but Derek Trucks is another guy.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: You know, it's like you talk about slide players these days,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: Derek Truck's name is going to come up because he's
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: probably the greatest living.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: Slide guitar player there is out there.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: I mean all the you know, straight out of Dwayne
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: omen you know, he played with the Alvin Brothers. He's
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: just he's just got this thing. And the first time
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: I heard him, I I thought, God, this is if
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: I played that guitar. This is what I would want
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: to sound like, this is what I would this is
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: how I would play. I heard him play, and we
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: just had this, you know, this great link to each other.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: And we're good friends. And we talked. We talked, you know,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: fairly off and and.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of a lot of the people that
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: I admired, and uh like David and and Derek and
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: uh and Eric Clapton, you know who I've worked with
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: now and produced produced a cut with for Eric Clapton,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: which sounds crazy but true. It's we're all. We all
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: kind of I was surprised they knew who I was.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: I was just shocked that they knew me. But uh,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: you know, and and I was just doing I was
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: in hero worship world, you know, and uh, I didn't
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: know they they kind.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: Of were too. It was it was it's it's shocking.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: How do you end up producing a record for Eric Clapton?
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: What's that experience like?
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: Well, I I do this. I do this show.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: I'm a co music director for this show called the
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: Transatlantic Sessions that we do. We start in Scotland. This
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: whole thing was we filmed. We filmed six years of it,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: isn't it And a couple of years ago we started
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: touring the show. So we played two nights and Glad
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: School at the Grand Concert Hall. And then it's like
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: a seventeen piece band plus five guests who's who may
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: speak Gaelic, may sing in Gaelic or uh, you know whatever,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: but they're they're all people. We bring people from America
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: and just put them together with people over there they've
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: never met people and you know, reg who are on
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: the same level as them, and just kind of it's
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: a collaboration show and we just see what comes out
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: of it. And it's a it's a different show every year,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: and the last show is the last show. It never
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: happens again, and it's just it's it's amazing this music.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: But but the way I got to Eric to produce
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: an a a song on Eric was he wanted to
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: he wanted to play on the show. He wanted to
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: he wanted to play play with us on the show.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: He'd been to the show five or six times in
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: in London when we play there, and and I'd gotten
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: to know him through Crossroads and a whole bunch of
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: things like that, and he wanted to know if.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: Get up play with us. I said, I'm playing this
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: song every night.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: Called uh when my while my guitar gently weeps.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: I said, I think you know that one.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: And he said he said, He said, do you play
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: the chorus? And I said, yeah, yeah, I played the chorus.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: And he said, I've never played the chorus. And I said,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: you never played the chorus?
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: So but he got up and played with us that night,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: and he also did this other song called sam Hall,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: and he and I kind of arranged it backstage and
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: then treated it, gave it a Transatlantic Sessions treatment where
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: at the end of it, the big crescendo and the
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: big end is alien pipes take the take the the melody,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: and so all of a sudden there's this you know,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: wild animal loose in the room. A lot of people
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: don't know what that sound is, you know what they
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: hear it when they hear it.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: And but he really liked the mixture of all the
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: instruments you know, there's two violins, pipes, guitar, bass and drums,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: piano and an accordion, and and it's all of these
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: guys who play Celtic music are all in the band,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: but they're they're having to adapt to some American country
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: music at the same time. And and and we're playing
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: We're playing uh old tunes, you know, two hundred year
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: old fiddle tunes. You know that just make your will
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: boil blood. You know, it's just that kind of you
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: feel like you're sitting in a room full of vikings
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden, and then uh it's just beautiful, beautiful,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: uplifting music. And Eric really loved it, and so he said,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: why don't we record this?
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: And I said that'd be great. When do you want
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: to do it? When I go, can we should? I
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: have everybody stand down?
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: He said no, we'll wait a month or so, and
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: so I had to fly back. Most of the guys
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: are there are from the UK or or Ireland. And
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: uh so everybody convened at Abbey Road in the same
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: in the in the Beatles in the Beatles room. And Eric,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 3: you know, he was trying to he's trying to do
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: everything to just kind of completely blow our minds.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: And he did.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: And so we're in there playing in the Beatles room
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: and hanging out in the you know, in the cafeteria
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: where the Beatles ate every day, and nothing's changed in there.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's all the same. It's just an amazing
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: week of box checking for me. He said, Okay, we're
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: going to Abbey Road. All I get to take the
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: transit Land guys with me. Great, Eric Clapton, you kidding, Yeah,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: this this is You can't.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: I can't. I couldn't have made this up. You know.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: It's like, this is so good and he's and he's, uh,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: you know, we have a lot of things in common.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: We talked about a lot of things, and he's he's
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: a pretty wide open guy at this point in his life.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: I don't think he's always been, but he is right now.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: And you know, there's some there's been some bumps lately.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: I just you know, him voicing his opinions about things,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: you know, but uh, when we get together, we don't
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: talk about any of that stuff. We're we're all music.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: It's all music, and and it's it's amazing to be
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: uh me and to meet Eric Clapton, to meet Eric,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: to meet to play with Eric Clapton, to play with
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: Earl Scruggs, to play with Bill Monroe, to play with
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: all these guys in between, Vince Gill, you know, all
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: these you know, Eagles records, whatever. It's an amazing life.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: I couldn't have I couldn't have ever guessed at anything
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: like any of this would have ever happened.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: So how'd you end up working with Russ Titelman and
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: what'd you learn from him in terms of producing records.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: Russ was one of those spellows. I used to meet
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: all the time at places in New York and we go,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: we should do something together someday, you know, you do
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: that with a thousand people, and it never happens. But
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: I got to this point where I wanted to make
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: a record, but I didn't want I didn't want to
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: be the producer. I wanted to play. I wanted to
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: pay more attention to what I was doing and uh.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: And then so I called Russ and he said, yeah,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: I'd love to do that. So we made we made
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: a deal and he started making calls and we made
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: this record called Traveler, uh, and it had Mumford and sons.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: I did a cut of.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: Of uh the the the boxer couldn't think of it
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: and Uh we did that out in the middle of
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: nowhere in a studio outside London and had a great time.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: And those guys were big friends of mine and uh
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: and then uh keV Moo came in.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: Uh just like it was.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: It was fun and he and uh and he knew Clapton.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: That's how I That's how I was. That's that was
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: My first meeting with with Eric was uh uh Russ saying, Hey,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: Jerry Douglas would like for you to sing this song
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 3: and he says, I would like to do it and
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: be flat. So it's like, okay, all right, I guess
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: we're on the road.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: And we were.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: We were in New Orleans cutting this record. So I
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: had Doctor John playing piano on one side of me
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: and this whole, you know, this whole these great musicians
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: from New Orleans playing and it was just another another
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: world of another feel, another way.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: To do this.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: You know, there's so many ways to make to make
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: great music, and I'm I'm lucky. I'm getting to find
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: out a few of them down along the way.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: So how did you end up producing records? And when
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: someone hire you what are they getting.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: On the radio.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: I could listen to, uh, you know, there would be
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: a cut, a country music cut, and then there'd be
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: a bluegrass music cut come on the radio for some reason,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: you know, probably on Exam or Sirius where they could
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: still mix the genres and uh, and it just didn't
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: stand up, you know, it just didn't stand up. It
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: didn't sound as good. I mean, I don't think they
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: paid as much attention to recording. They were happy to
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: be recording, but they didn't have bluegrass bands. Most of
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: them did not have the blue the studio savvy when
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: they went in.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: They didn't know.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: Where to place the microphone on their instrument to get
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: the best to get the best performance, and or how
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: to maybe leave this maybe instead of going to this verse,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: you know, maybe something else happens here.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: Just just keeping the songs interesting was what people hired
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: me for. I had, I had, I got a good
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: track record with bluegrass albums, different bands, producing different bands,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: And then I then I started getting called for that
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: because I was, uh, you know, I was doing okay
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: and and and plus I never thought you could hear
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: the bass on bluegrass records. So I made sure there
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: was enough bass, you know, I just I kind of
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: brought the sound of was trying to bring the sound
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: of bluegrass up to the next level.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: You know, uh.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: In in in in treating, uh in treating the studio,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: you know, really using the really using the everything that
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: was in.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: The studio to make the music better.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: Let these guys play and put the microphones in the
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: right places, and just give them an idea once in
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: a while. Sometimes you're a referee, you know. Sometimes a
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: producer is just a referee between people. But this was
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: I like to sit down with the bands and find
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: out what the songs are about and and see how
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: they play them, and then make suggestions from there, you know,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: trying not to completely reinvent the wheel, because these people
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: have a sound, and I want to I want to.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: I want to.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: I want to keep their sound. I want to keep
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 3: the sound of this band. But I want to make it.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: I want to make it. I want it to be
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: big enough to be heard.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: So what about your band, the Earls of Leicester.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: I always wanted to Flatten Scrugs band. I always wanted
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: to be in that band and heard them all my life,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: and I just over the years, I've been keeping my
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: eye on the on everybody that played out there on
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: the road, and I was looking, I was casting, I
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: was casting Lester, I was casting Earl. I was casting
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: everybody down to the slap and bass, and uh, finally
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: got time to do that, and uh when I'm working
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: with Alice and we took some time off and I
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: and I just went, yeah, this is as good a
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: time as any to go ahead and just get this
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: band together that I've always wanted to get.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: So the last I got.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: You know, Charlie Charlie Cushman, the banjo player, and Johnny
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: Johnny Warren Uh to play the fiddle. Johnny Warren's father,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: Paul played the fiddle with flatt and scrugs, and he
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: played the fiddle exactly like his dad. So that was
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: a no brainer. I mean, those two guys were like
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: they were. They were Lester and uh or they were
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: Earl and Paul.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: I had that.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: So I got Tim O'Brien to be Curly Vey or
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: Curly Seckler, who was the tenor singer mandlin player, and
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: there weren't a lot of mandolin solos in flatt and
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: scrugs songs. If you've ever paid attention to that. Well,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 3: they they they kind of had a deal with Bill
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: Monroe that they would not be a mandolin driven band,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: that they would be a banjo driven band. And so
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: the mandolin players that they got were not didn't have
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: to be a great manlin player.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: They had to be a good tenor singer.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: And even Lester said early, he's not that great a
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: mandlin player, but he looks good holding one. So I
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: so I cast and got this band together, and then
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: we went. They all came over here, and the last
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: guy to cast was was Sean Camp. I didn't know
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: who Lester was going to be. I thought about Del McCurry,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: but then I thought, no, that's Del McCurry. Can only
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: be Del McCurry. He's Del McCurry. That would not be right.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: So my wife said, what about Sean Camp?
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: And I said really? So I called him up. I
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: said would you be interested in doing anything like this?
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: And he said yes he. I said, well, we're going
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: to have rehearse tomorrow evening. If you want to come over,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: we're going to run through a couple of songs and
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 3: just see what it sounds like. And he showed up
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: in a blue pinstriped suit with a boat with a
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: with a tie with the flattened scrugs tie and the
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: hat everything, and we started we we got we got
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: to the middle of the first chorus of the first song,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: and I just threw up my hands and I went.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: This is it. This is this is it.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: This is as close as anyone's ever going to get
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: to sounding like flattened scrugs. So we need to do
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: something with this. And I checked my schedule and we
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: had I had ten days in the middle of July,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: and I said, we're going to record in the middle
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: of July. So we did all this studying, you know,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: and down to the week, we wrote notes, we we
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: we wrote notes on who backed up when, on what song,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: and we got as close as we possibly could. And
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: the record won a Grammy, you know. But the main
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: reason I wanted to do the band was, you know,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: other than to play with flatten scrugs, was uh, flattened
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: scrugs and that and that whole part of bluegrass music
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: had disappeared from the landscape out there, you know. People
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: weren't doing people had forgotten about them, left them so
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: far behind, and I and I just thought, there are
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: a lot of fundamentals.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: That you can learn here.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: These guys, these guys did it right. We're all trying
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: to do it this way. And and I we just
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: sort of reinjected flattened scrugs back into bluegrass world. And
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: we we we made our point, you know, we made
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: our point. We we won everything but that the IBM as,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: We won everything but female vocalists that.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: But it was, it was, it was. It was just
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: a we got.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: Their attention and and then all of a sudden, there
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: were more ties, there were more suits, there were more
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: you know hats. You know, these guys doing more choreography
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: on stage with less microphones, because that's what we did.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 3: We we did that too. We really wanted the full
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: effect and the choreography. You can hear it on the records.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: You can hear these guys move into microphones, and uh,
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: it's something that's just gone. It's it's gone from the
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: landscape of bluegrass music. So I thought, well, let's let's
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: let's see if we can see if we can put
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: this back in. And I think we've been pretty successful
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: at that. And the band has slowed down just because
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: everybody's gotten so busy. And uh, but I think we're
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: going to record again, and uh, there's only so many.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: Times you can do Flatten scrug songs. You know. I
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: don't really want to do that. I want to I
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: want to write our.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: Own material and and produce it into in the way
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 3: Flattened Scrugs would have would have laid it out. That's
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: what I wanted to do. And I want to see
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: if people know the difference in an old song and
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: a new song. It's done by the same band, it's
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: done by you know. I think of us as as
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: Lester Flat and Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: the next day, you know, like we could have done
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: it just a little bit different, you know, if we'd
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 3: had one more run. Earl Scruggs was so mad still
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: to this day because he had recorded a version of
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: Earl's Breakdown in a radio station back in the forties
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: and he'd only missed he'd only flubbed just the just
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: the end of the song, and thought he would go
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: back and just fix that. So they did another take
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: and then when it wasn't as good, and he said,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: when he went back to just fix to put the
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: ending of the news song of the new cut on
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: the old cut, the guy had erased the original his
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: original cut. Oh he was, he was, he's still I
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: guarantee you he's still mad about that.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: And he's been dead for ten years.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: But I bet he's still mad about that.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: And and that's you know, that's another thing.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: You know, we we have to be careful, uh, in
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: the studio with.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: You know, save save, save, save save, you know, like
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: I'm doing right now. And uh, it's just it's it
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: was wacky.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: It was wacky, and he being him, conjuring up that
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 3: same feeling from all those years ago that was part
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: of his legacy. Everybody plays Earl's Breakdown, but they don't
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: know how good it could be. Only Earl knew how
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: good it could be.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, you have your first new album in seven years,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: The Set. It's titled the Set, just to make that clear.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: Why now, I.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: Had so many people coming up to me after concerts
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: going where can I find.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: This song and this song and this song?
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: And I'm going, well, that song is on a record,
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 3: is on a is on vinyl, and you can't get
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: it anymore. So there were a lot of these things
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: that I kept hearing that so much and so many
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 3: record companies, you know, that I've dealt with over the
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 3: years and had contracts with and made a record, and
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: then that record would be shelved or or you know,
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 3: hard to.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: Find or whatever.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: So I just went back in the studio and I'd
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: cut the songs that people had been asking me where
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: they could find them.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: I recut a lot.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: I recut some of my old songs, but I like
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: them better now because when you go in the studio
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: with a brand new song and you let it down
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: and you play it the best you can, you still
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: don't know it.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: You don't know the insides and the outsides of it.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 3: You have to you have to play it. You have
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: to play it with these other musicians for a while
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 3: for it to really, you know, to really come into
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 3: its own. So it had been years since i'd cut
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 3: for instance, a song I wrote called from Ankara to
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: Ismir that I wrote while I was in Turkey a
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 3: long time ago and doing uh I was doing playing embassies,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: actually just playing in embassies, and.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: And so I wanted to do those songs. And but
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: I love the way this band plays things. I love
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: this band. This is this is the best band I've
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: ever had.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: I love playing with them all the way around, great personalities,
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 3: they're just really good fellas, and uh they play so good.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: There's there's so good. And so I just.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 3: Thought, let's go in and cut. Let's cut our set list.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 3: Let's cut our set list, and you know, and add
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: we have we had a concerto that we had never recorded.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: We put that on there the fifth season, and then.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 3: Just some other things. I made sure that each guy
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: in the band had a song on the record, so they,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: you know, have more input from them. And uh, I mean,
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: this is it's a band record, but uh, you know,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 3: it's it's it's different if you put your name in
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: like for Spotify or all these other things, if you
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: put your if I just put my name, I'll get
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 3: more hits than if I put band beside it.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: You know, that's a crazy it's true. But uh so
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: I cut it and I put just my name on it.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: And but it is a band record. I really consider
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 3: it a band record. But for for uh, you know,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 3: for for reasons of algorithms, I had to do it
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 3: that way.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: Crazy sounds crazy, but it's true.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: Are you a student of the game or did the
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: person who made the record have to tell.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 3: You that I'm a student of the game, and uh
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: I had I knew. I knew that from from other
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: people that had had this same thing came up, you know, And.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: And so I do.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: I do study the game, and I think the game's unfair.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: And I've been to the Capitol a couple of times
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: with Naris to try to get these guys to come
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 3: to the table and talk about paying us what they
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 3: should be paying us.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: But they don't and they won't. And I don't know
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: we're gonna do about those people. We need to we
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: need to go in.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: There with like four or five bands playing at the
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 3: same time to get their attention.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: I think, I don't know what we have to do.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: But I got to play. I got to play my
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 3: doughbro all the way through the Capitol building one day.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 3: And the rotunda is the best sound in the world. Yeah,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 3: I loved it in there.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: That was so wonderful.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: Well, you've been in the game long enough to see
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: it change. So today they put out as many records,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: and I think it's a day as they used to
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: put out forty years ago. So to what degree is
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: this a disincentive to record? The old days? It was
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: expensive to record. Few people could make records. If you
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: reach a certain hurdle, people were aware of you. Your
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: record might be listened to today. No matter how fantastic
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: you are, you might get lost in the tsunami of product.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: So do you say, hey, not even make a record
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: at all, or you put it out there and have
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: low expectations, or don't spend that much. Where's your head at?
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: Well?
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: I loved the days when we when when recording was expensive,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: when you went into a big sound stage and everybody
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: was there and every everything went down at the same time,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 3: and it was and it was amazing because the the real,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 3: the real music that counts is the music that meets
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: in the air. It's not it's not the you know,
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: it's not the music that comes right off of one instruments.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: It's all of it that mixes in the air.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 3: And I'm I don't think we should cut ten song
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: albums anymore. I think it's a waste of money. I
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: think it's a I mean, the Beatles would go in
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 3: and cut singles and they didn't put it just put
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 3: an album out. They waited until they saw what hit,
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 3: what would sell the most albums, and then they put
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: them out and and we're now we're doing you know,
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: up to ten songs.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: And you know, and even even in.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 3: You know, satellite studios, not going into a big soundstages,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 3: going into a studio like I have here, you just
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 3: don't you don't get the same quality of recording.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: I don't think.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: And plus we're a streaming society now, And to cut
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 3: ten songs when people are going to take one off
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 3: of that, they're gonna they're gonna download one song. I
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 3: think I think making I think EPs are a better
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: idea going in and cutting five songs, you know, getting
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: five songs you really really like, and not getting five
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: more songs that you don't like as much as the
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 3: first five. Why cut those songs? You know, wait until
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 3: you know them better, or wait until they show you
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: that they should.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: Be out there.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 3: But I I I think that uh, and so many
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: people are doing it, just cutting the EPs to see
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: what lands.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: Because cutting a whole ten song.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: CD and and bringing in the players and and uh.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: The equipment that you need.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: On the floor, you know, to cut a to cut
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: a great big to cut cut a band, to cut
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 3: a whole band.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: Uh, it can be.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: Done in a home studio, but man, there's just something
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 3: missing to me. I mean that there's a you know,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: you can tell, you can hear a record that's.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: Been done in pieces.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 3: You know, somebody, they'll call somebody, they'll come in, you know,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 3: three days later and put a part down. Well, it's
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 3: to me, it's not it's not the same. It's not
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: it's not gonna equal what was put down the day
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 3: of when all the original ideas were flying around, and
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 3: and all the sounds were there, and everybody was bleeding
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 3: onto other everybody else's microphone. And you know, there are
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: some bad parts about that if you have to replace things.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 3: But boy, you get a really good band, you put
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 3: them in one room and turn it on, let them
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 3: go that that's that's the way music sounds the best,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: and and and and it's cheaper.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: It's uh.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, I remember when the twenty four track tape
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 3: machine costs half a million dollars, you know, and now
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 3: we can do a whole record on something that costs
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: you know, four hundred dollars. And so you got to
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 3: figure something's lost somewhere.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 3: It's it's not just technology, it's the way we treat it.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 3: And uh, I think that I think that. You know,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 3: I'm I'm working them with a band right now. Then
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: we're going to do an EP first and if we
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 3: and if we uh we get some traction, we'll we'll
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: do more. But I think we take our best five
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: and we throw them. We throw those first. You know,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 3: if I could get away with three, I'd do it.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: So how much do you work on the road at
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: this point?
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: I probably did one hundred and twenty five days this
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 3: year and plus so you can double that, you know,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 3: as far as with travel. So yeah, and I'm sixty
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 3: eight years old. It's not as much fun as it
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 3: was when I was twenty thirty years old. Uh there,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 3: you know it's I'm slower. I'm uh, I'm slower to
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 3: get up. I'm slower to uh to to want to
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: go out and do anything. Yeah, I don't know, it's just, uh,
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 3: I'm on the road enough. I want to cut that back.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 3: Next year, I'm going out with Alison Krause again for
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: the next two years and those will those will probably
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: be eighty to one hundred and one hundred show years.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: And I want to cut that back.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 3: After after all the Alison stuff, I want to cut
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: it back to like twenty five. You know, it's just
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: I've seen the world. I've seen the road, I've seen
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 3: most of this country at night. But I feel I
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: feel I feel.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: Like i've I feel like i've seen it. I feel
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: like I've seen it.
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 3: I feel like I've done a fair amount of things
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 3: that a lot of people don't get to do. And
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: I feel very fortunate about that part. But I'm getting tired.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: I'm getting a little tired.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: Okay. There are some people go on the road. They
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: got tapes, they got click tracks. It's the same every night.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know how they do it. It's gig one.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: They got one hundred to do. You go out with
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: these acts. How do you keep it interesting for yourself?
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: And what's it like for you at every gig?
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 3: Well with I will try to mix up that, mix
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 3: up the set list, you know, I'll take a look
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 3: at the audience. It's one way that I'll try to
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 3: keep myself interested in. And I love the songs. It's
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 3: not that I don't start off not, you know, in
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 3: a negative mood or anything like that. I'll take a
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 3: look at the audience and I'll mix up this, mix
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 3: up the show, you know, put some other songs in
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 3: there that might be it. Maybe a lot few more
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: bluegrass people in there than there were the night before,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 3: so I will I might lean on the bluegrass a
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 3: little bit more. But our audience, my band audience, seems
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 3: like it's it it it. The people know that they
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 3: know I'm I'm there. They don't know what they don't
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 3: know what I might play, so they're okay with that.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 3: But UH, with Alison, like I think, we went two
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 3: years playing pretty much the same set list. Like you say,
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 3: we didn't have any we didn't have any click tracks
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 3: or anything like that, so we were we were able
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 3: to move to move the uh, the tempo a little
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 3: bit into you know however we felt that night. But
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 3: there's still things when you're playing in a band like that,
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 3: and and and to UH audience like that, they expect
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 3: to hear certain things and you've got to give them those.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 3: But I remember when when I was out on the
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: was out on the last couple of years with Alison
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 3: on Tuesday nights, I wouldn't play the same solos that
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 3: I played.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: On the records.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 3: That was just for me, that was just for that
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 3: was just for me. I don't know if they they
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 3: paid it. I don't know if they paid attention to
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: that and heard what I was doing or not. But
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 3: I played different that night. I had to or I
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 3: was going to go crazy. You know, I can't do
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: the same I can't play the same solo twice. And
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: but if it's on a record and people know it
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 3: that way, I'll try. And Uh, I could do it,
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 3: but I just don't want to. I don't want to.
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 3: I want I like the I like I like playing
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: off of something I heard somebody else. Do you know
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 3: somebody else might do something and trigger trigger a response
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 3: for me, and uh, it's going to be different than
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 3: it was the night before.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: I just that's just me. I can't.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 3: If I have to, I can play the same thing twice,
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: and I will, but I don't want to.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: So how have you balanced home life and relationships with
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: all this work on the road.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: It's tough. It's tough. I mean. The last thing I
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: have left this year is is a a gig at
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: BlackBerry Farm in East Tennessee.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: It's a really nice resort. Tommy, Emmanuel and I are
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 3: going to go play for an hour over there. I'm
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 3: gonna take my wife and we're gonna spend three days
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 3: over there, just relaxing.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 2: But there's.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 3: My daughter is about to have a baby, like any day. So,
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 3: you know, I've missed so many birthdays. I've missed so
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 3: many birthdays. I've missed weddings. I've missed you know, things,
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 3: my kids stuff.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: And you know, it breaks my heart to go back
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: and read my daughter's third grade paper, little paper she wrote,
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: you know, something that happened. Daddy was gone, Daddy was
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: Daddy was not home. You know, it just kills me
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: and I and.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 3: You know, there's no way around it unless it's your band.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 3: You go, it's my son's birthday. Were not working that day,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 3: you know, or whatever. But we can't really do that.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 3: We're we're at the mercy of what the people want,
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 3: you know. And so I've been I've missed so many birthdays,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 3: and it's been hard to balance it. It's been really
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 3: hard to balance it. I'd say I have a very very.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: My wife is so I don't know, We'll just say
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: she's she's put up with it.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 3: She's she's a good person. I want to I want
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 3: to be like her when I grow up. You know,
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 3: it's like, but she's put up for thirty seven years
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 3: now she's put up with me and all of this stuff.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 3: And we have four children. Now we have almost seven grandchildren.
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 3: So I'm feeling the need to be around here a
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 3: little bit more, you know, and and be part of
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 3: my I'm feeling part of like being part of the
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 3: family more than ever.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know if.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 3: I I don't know if it was that I didn't
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 3: want to be I don't know. I don't think so
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 3: I wanted to be here. It was just, man, that
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 3: was my job, and that's what I went to do.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter if you're sick, if you're about to
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 3: black out on stage, You've got to play, you know,
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 3: And some of those can be some of your best gigs,
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 3: less distractions. So yeah, it's been hard to balance that
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 3: and and friends, you know. And some of my best friends,
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 3: you know. One of them lives right around the corner
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 3: from me, but Sam Bush, but I don't see him
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 3: unless we're five hundred miles from home, you know. And
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 3: it's not a it's not a normal lifestyle, but it's
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 3: a it's suited me. It's done well for me, and
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 3: I have no complaints about I just wish I had
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: seen a few more.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: Of those birthdays and been here for a couple more berths. Yeah.
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, so sometimes the stars align, sometimes they don't. You
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: talked earlier about the clock metaphor, which was brilliant, but
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: up until now, maybe with Billie's strings, for the last
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: few decades, there has not been a moment where bluegrass
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: was literally at the top. We've had other things. We've
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: had the Mumfort and Sun Sound. We've even had Chris
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: Stapleton in Americana slash country, but there wasn't a moment
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: where everybody looked around and said, bluegrass that's as big
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: as anything. To what degree do you feel upset that
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: you and your music didn't have that moment at the peak?
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: Do you think this is a moment with Billy Strings
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: for just a momentary thing.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 3: I'm first, I'm I'm not upset that our music is
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 3: not that bluegrass music has not been.
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: At the you know, like in a like a pop chart.
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm I'm okay with that because it's not
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 3: that kind of music.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, it doesn't it mean it it's a it's
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 2: a it's a music that that does get to more people.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, there there are certain what am I trying
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 3: to say it's not popular amongst the African American audience.
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 2: Uh, but it.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 3: It's it's like grown exponentially over the years. And uh
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 3: but but it's not an international snow music as much
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 3: as I mean, there are people that that are playing
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 3: in Europe and all over the world that are playing
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 3: bluegrass music. But it's their version, you know, with their musical,
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 3: with their with their musical, uh other other genres mixed
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 3: into it, you know, and their their cultural music mixed in.
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 3: But uh, I'm not I've never been I've never been
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 3: upset that it wasn't as big as country. I kind
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 3: of like, I kind of think that we've we've dodged
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 3: the bullet in a way that we didn't have to
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 3: get to that point and then have you know, when
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 3: you like it's when you have a single out and
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 3: you find out on Thursday that your single has tanked
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 3: and you need to start it. You need to go
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 3: back to the dwell and get another single. We don't
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 3: have that problem.
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: We don't have that problem. We we uh, we are a.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 3: Genre and and and we're not a splinter of a genre.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 3: Uh and and I don't I think that you know,
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 3: maybe you know, we'd like to sell as many records
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 3: as as Beyonce, But I I don't know how it
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 3: would change my life, you know, and uh, it's it's
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 3: I don't feel I don't feel bad about it not
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 3: being it's more popular than it is. I don't because
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 3: there I've watched it grow from almost nothing to you know,
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 3: taken off again. But I think Billy strings Is is
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 3: a phenomenon.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 2: Uh. I've played out there.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 3: I've gone out there and been on that stage and
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 3: watched that audience, and that audience loves everything that he
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 3: does everything, and it just never stops. I mean, it
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 3: starts before he goes on stage, and and he is
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 3: up there and the band is doing its thing, and
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 3: Billy Is is in his toy box, you know, he's
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 3: got all kinds of things going on stage and and
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 3: he's he's.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: Become this entertainer.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 3: But he has a he has a drive like I've
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 3: never seen, I mean, and it comes from him growing
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 3: up in a in a in a really really uh
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 3: depressing kind of world where he had a choice, he said,
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 3: he said, I had a choice.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: I got to this fork in the road. I can
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 2: either be a meth addict or I could try this
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: music thing. I try, any ie.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 3: I went to the music route and saved his life,
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 3: gave us all this great music from him, and uh
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 3: and and and it also gave gave another generation another
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 3: another direction to go, you know, and and believing that
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 3: they can they can achieve the same things he he has.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 3: I think that's important to have that to aim for.
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 3: And he gets us up. I mean, I'm so polaed.
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 3: I'm thrilled that he asked me to get up there.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm one of the old guys, you know,
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 3: but but he has a lot of reverence for for
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 3: all of us that came before him.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: He has a he has a deep, deep feeling about that.
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: And he's, uh, he's just this guy. He wants to
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: pay back.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 3: He wants to pay back, he wants to for music
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 3: saving his life. He wants to give everything to everybody.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: You know. He's he's that kind of guy. He's a
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 2: good kid.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 3: I've known him for you know, ten years now, and
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 3: uh just watched his meteoric rise.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: It's just amazing. It's many. All the ducks are in
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: a row. You know. The management's great, booking agents are great,
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 2: the venues are great. His team is like I haven't.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 3: I haven't been out on the road with A with
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 3: A with you know, I don't think the roll Rolling
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 3: Stones can rival his his team on the road.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: I mean all the.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 3: People that he's got to do whatever he needs, and
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 3: the great sound people, the great lighting.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: The lights are amazing. And that's another thing you have
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: to have. Now. Uh, you can't go out on the
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: stage and bowl people over with your musical ability.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 3: You better have something. You better have a kicker ready
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 3: to go, you know you need. The light show is great.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 3: The light show. Bring out a guest once in a while,
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 3: you know, mix it up, make it interesting all the
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 3: way through. And nobody wants to just watch, you know,
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 3: watch five men stand on stage and just play into
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 3: microphones and not move.
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 2: That's boring.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 3: I want to see people running around. I want to
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 3: see people enjoying what they're doing. And when you go
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 3: see a Billy Strings concert, just just joy from the
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 3: beginning to the end. And he's he's the main source
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 3: of it. And he's just all over the place doing
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 3: crazy things. He started the second set out the other
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 3: night with a He had a loop and he had
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 3: a bong and he blew into the bong and he
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 3: and he recorded that, and then he then he so
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 3: he had so he had a sound. So then he
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 3: set up a ding on the side of it and
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 3: another ding to to frame in what the beats were.
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: And then they.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 3: Sang a total as they sang a whole song to that,
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 3: to that loop of the bonging.
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: It was great.
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 3: It was so incredible. You mean, who else comes up
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 3: with stuff like that? You know, it's like this guy's
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 3: got a he's got a brand new handle on things
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 3: that we never thought about before. And uh, I've been
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 3: watching this stuff for so long and it was just
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 3: thrilling for me to see that happening too. I see
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 3: it going up, and I see him helping bluegrass music.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 3: But I think that you know, people, the people that
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 3: go to his concerts, they know what bluegrass music is,
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 3: but they're gone to see billy strings. They want to
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 3: see the phenomena. And he doesn't disappoint.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, you've accomplished so much, you're still working. One of
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: the goals in the future.
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 2: I'd like to keep on working.
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 3: I don't want to have to go out on the
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 3: road and beat the road anymore, but I want to
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 3: keep on working. And suddenly I can draw this thing
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 3: called social security and but you know, I know that's
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 3: not going to save me. But I just want to
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 3: keep my head above water and and my family happy,
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 3: and my musical friends happy, and play whenever I want
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 3: to and not when I don't want to.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 2: That's what I want to do.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: Jerry, it's been fabulous talking to you. You can really do.
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: Your clock metaphor was great. You're everywhere, everybody knows you
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: and they know more about you now. Thanks so much
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: for taking this time to speak with my audience.
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 3: I appreciate so much being able to speak to your audience. Bob,
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 3: Thank you very much.
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: Thank you. I had a great time.
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: How's good on until next time. This is Bob left
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: sets