It’s altogether appropriate that Jerry Douglas titled his latest release, Traveler. Since June of 2011 the world-renowned master of the Dobro resonator guitar crisscrossed the world as a longtime member of Alison Krauss & Union Station. He used any free time away from recording and touring with that band to work on his own album in Nashville, New Orleans, New York and Banbury, England. And just as Krauss’ tour ends, he keeps his bags packed in order to hit the road again.
“Alison is finally slowing down and I’m gonna speed it up.”
I speak to Douglas just before he heads to the airport for a flight from his Nashville home to Denver for a date with Krauss & Union Station. Shortly afterwards, he begins touring with his band, which currently enlists Omar Hakim (Weather Report, Sting) on drums, Victor Krauss on bass and Luke Bulla on violin.
Only Bulla, who also plays with Lyle Lovett, remains from his previous touring group. Douglas is more than pleased to see his backing musicians work even if it means he has to start all over again. “When I went off the road a couple years ago to do Alison fulltime I got [bassist] Todd Parks a job with Sam Bush. Sam and I have traded players back and forth for years, he said, laughing.
Mixing originals and covers, Traveler is an album where Douglas feels he isn’t afraid to try just about anything. That attitude resulted in his recorded lead vocals debut on Leadbelly’s “On a Monday,” a dobro medley of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” Chick Corea’s “Spain” and his regular bandmates of 14 years, Krauss & Union Station, on “Frozen Fields.” A special guest appears on nearly every track including Eric Clapton, Paul Simon, Mumford & Sons, Sam Bush, Dr. John, Del McCoury, Bela Fleck, Keb’ Mo’, Marc Cohn and Jon Cleary.
Before we discussed the thinking behind and recording of “Traveler,” how growing up surrounded by bluegrass at home and rock ‘n’ roll at school shaped his musical mentality and his renewed interest in lap steel, I mentioned that I saw the Jerry Douglas Band perform on Jan. 15, 2011 at Seneca Niagara Casino’s Bear’s Den.
He recalled that day’s blizzard and how his corner suite had a ceiling-to-floor window. “I couldn’t see Niagara. It was like being in the middle of a big white cloud.”
With a tight schedule to keep as a traveling musician, he didn’t even have a chance to use the room’s Jacuzzi or even the bed. “I was there playing the gig and left.”
Asked if it’s worth it to get a hotel room if all it becomes is little more than a large walk-in closet, Douglas quickly responds, “It’s just nice to stop moving. That’s what it is. Buses are great. I’d rather be in a bus than an airplane to get to a gig anytime but every three days I’ve gotta stop.”
*JPG: You provided a nice segue to discuss Traveler. (Douglas laughs) You and producer Russ Titelman approached the album conceptually as far as the music and the different musicians appearing on it. *
JD: It was more motivational to go where they are. Mumford, I was at the end of a tour, and I had just enough time to go out in the country, about 70 miles by train. Get out of the city. Get them out of the city so we could all work and not deal with folks. So, that one worked out great.
The whole thing started in New Orleans. That happened on purpose and that’s pretty much where it ended, on purpose. Other than that, I knew I’d be going to New York to get Clapton to sing on it and then he and I would play against each other there. And the same with Marc Cohn. Then, I got Omar [Hakim] down here to record in Nashville and went to Connecticut and added Paul Simon.
The record didn’t take me all over the place. We ended up mixing a lot in Montreal and here. It wasn’t on purpose to get somebody, but we knew what songs we were gonna record and we knew who we were going to record with but the emphasis was on starting in New Orleans.
JPG: How long did it take to make this a reality?
JD: We started talking about it around Christmas of 2009. We started recording in 2010, February, in New Orleans and we finished mixing and everything in February of this year. So, it was a little over two years to do the whole thing.
The biggest time lapse — where I wasn’t working on the record but Russ was still working on the record, editing things, and in some cases editing things down where we overcut lengthwise – was because I was going out with Alison. That tour started late because the [Alison Krauss & Union Station] Paper Airplane record was taking so long. It threw my schedule off. Finally, I said I had to do what I have to do. (slight laugh) Pretty much what Alison said, too. “I know you guys have been waiting…” And she was having bad headaches. Threw the whole thing off, basically.
There’s a time period of any recording where all the publicity is done months before it’s released and then you can start touring. But that’s kinda the way it’s ending up for Traveler. But it’s good timing because I’m doing the final dates with Alison.
JPG: Looking at your schedule I see that you’re plugging in solo dates here and there between dates with Alison and Union Station.
JD: When Alison stops then mine begins.
JPG: During moments like that…I’m kind of joking here, do you have to take a few minutes before going onstage and look at who’s around you?
JD: (laughs) Look at the setlist! Yeah. Yeah, I do, but that only lasts for about a couple weeks then I’m settled down. After we’ve done four or five straight shows I’m in the groove. We get four or five under our belt then we can go off and not think about the songs.
JPG: So, have you had enough time to get in the groove with Omar, Viktor and Luke?
JD: No. The first one we’re going to do is the festival with Mumford…Even though you have management, a road manager, I’m still like, “Okay. Go do that.” (laughs) I’ve tried to take myself out of these situations and maybe I’ll be able to this time but I like to know what’s going on. I used to be a road manager. So, I like knowing where I’m going to wake up the next day.
JPG: So, you’re that rare type of musician because you pay attention to such things.
JD: it’s been a long time since it was just only music that I would think about. Sometimes, the gigs with Alison get me close to that. After awhile I can get in a groove with that stuff. Sometimes with Alison it’s like a vacation. I get on the bus and I don’t even care where I’m going. I know exactly what songs I’m gonna play when I get there. Not a lot on my shoulders but to play those songs with polish.
But I’ll get used to it. I’ll get used to it when I’ve got the band out for a little while.
JPG: Back to the album, the opening track, a cover of Leadbelly’s “On a Monday,” features your lead vocal debut on a record. Who forced you to sing?
JD: I did. My manager and Russ said, “You sing. Why don’t you sing on your record?” I work with Alison Krauss, the best singer in the world, I don’t wanna sing. I’ll sing harmony parts with her but singing is a completely different animal. You’re naked. You’re out there for all the world to see. I feel like I’ve been doing that with the dobro for so long, and it takes up the same center of the brain when you do that. When you play a slide instrument and it doesn’t have frets and to stop that note from going somewhere else and to be in tune at the time and being on the note, I think it’s the same brain center as singing.
When I started playing dobro, as a kid, I stopped singing. Before that I was a guitar playing, singing kid and that all stopped when I started playing dobro. I didn’t feel comfortable singing words. It’s got me pretty far. I never worried about it too much but singers rule the world. It’s true. You don’t see too many top 40 instrumentals against Celine Dion. It’s a fact. Singers, people are gonna remember them because they can sing along with the crowd, where nobody can hear what they’re singing and that’s okay.
So, I decided to sing this song because it wasn’t a big stretch. It wasn’t a song where I had to be Frank Sinatra. It’s a period song but Leadbelly sang it like he was happy. He may have been happy to go back to jail. It seemed like half his life was spent in jail. It was a fun song to sing so I just went ahead and let it go. I wasn’t really inhibited by singing. I felt like I needed to sing as well as I play. I would like to, and I’m working on it. And I’m not there.
JPG: It came out nice.
JD: Yeah, it came out fine, and the whole time I was thinking about singing it and while I was singing it in the studio I was thinking Del McCoury has to sing this with me ‘cause that will make it cool. That will be the cement to hold it together. I heard him the whole time. Then, when he stepped in the studio and sang it was like a completed thought.
I did it on Letterman. I sang the song and Del was able to come with me. And I thought, “Wow! This is so cool to be able to sing on national TV like this and have Del McCoury as my backup singer.” He was just humoring me. He’s also a good friend. So…I think that probably answers you question. (laughs)
JPG: I was gonna joke with you that maybe Del just wanted a free trip to New York…
JD: Yeah, well, he needed meet some managers that work with him.
JPG: …and he wanted to meet David Letterman and shake his hand after the song.
JD: Yeah! Dave’s a good guy. He does get a bad rap about being a curmudgeon but he’s always been really nice.
JPG: He always seems really enthusiastic about the bands that play. I don’t know if he approves them or…
JD: He does. He approves the bands and he is really into what happens there. It’s the end of the night and he’s under a lot of pressure.
JPG: And it’s always cool to see musicians so excited to greet him. You see drummers jumping from behind their kits.
JD: (laughs) Yeah. He’s iconic. He’s a good guy. So is Leno. Leno’s a good guy. Leno actually mixes it up with people before the show. Letterman doesn’t. He stays up in his man cave and does whatever he does. Then, he comes down the stairway. And they clear the stairway for him to come down. I actually was in the stairway when he came down and we talked for a little bit. (laughs) I later heard that it was against the rules.
*JPG: Back to the singing, it’s interesting because the next number after you sing has vocals by Eric Clapton (Douglas laughs) and he didn’t want to sing either. He was forced into it. He just wanted to concentrate on playing the guitar. *
JD: He didn’t want to be a singer?
JPG: Yeah, exactly. That’s what I read.
JD: And he’s gotten better.
JPG: He sounds great on this (a cover of Chris Kenner’s “Something You Got”).
JD: That is something he cut his teeth on. When he was learning to play that’s what he played. I called him up and asked if he would sing on that particular song and he said, “Yeah.” He recorded it just a little bit faster and in the same original key. So, he knew the song. He just never recorded it. And he was wailing. He was thinking about [Kenner] when he was cutting the track. I think his voice has gotten better over the years. And he played great. In the last few years the stuff that he’s recorded hasn’t been what you would call cream of what he’s playing but I thought he stepped up. He was pretty raw and there wasn’t a lot going on around him; just fighting it out with me. I was playing lap steel.
(I describe to Jerry a scene from The Love We Make, the Paul McCartney documentary that follows him as he organizes the Concert for New York City in 2001. In it the legendary Beatle’s been asking other musicians to join him in singing his brand new song, “Freedom.” Most are openly wary of doing a new track in front of a sold out arena and a TV audience of millions. He gives Clapton the scoop and requests a short solo in a particular key. The guitar legend doesn’t hesitate to help out.)
JD: Yeah, yeah. (laughs) That’s the way Clapton’s been at all those Crossroads [Guitar Festivals]. He would jump up there and play with anybody that asked him. I met him a few years before that but then I did two of them. It was like that. Everybody was just kinda elbowing around and talking backstage and he was just roaming. He’s God but he doesn’t act like God.
McCartney’s the same. I met McCartney, just shook his hand and said, “Hello, nice to see you,” in London a month ago when we did Hard Rock Calling. It was the night after he and Springsteen had been pulled off the stage. I was there playing with Alison and we opened for Paul Simon for like 60,000. Afterwards, there was a party and McCartney’s there. I had just played with Paul [Simon] and we had just come offstage and went over. And I thought, “I’m gonna go talk to Paul McCartney.” I started over towards him and he looked at me and stuck his hand out. We stood there and talked about all kinds of stuff for 20 minutes. He’s just a regular guy. And he’s a very good businessman, just like Mick Jagger. Those guys, they didn’t always have the best careers but they turned ‘em around, and you can’t deny business-wise. Eric’s got his way together and Paul always has except for the short time that Michael Jackson was involved. Paul Simon, all those guys, they’re businessmen. They were musicians first and then they saw they were gonna get ripped off if they didn’t start paying attention. But they’re all outstanding guys.
JPG: Earlier you mentioned about playing dobro when you were young. I know your dad played in bluegrass bands but you came up in a time of the Beatles and when rock ‘n’ roll was such a huge cultural phenomena. What was it about the dobro and bluegrass that you stuck with that rather than…?
JD: Rather than becoming a rock musician?
JPG: Yeah, where you’d be strumming the guitar like Clapton.
JD: I was so in love with the sound of the dobro and especially the way that Josh Graves played with Flatts & Scruggs. That’s it for me. That was what started all of this for me, and I just loved the sound of it. It was everything I wanted to be, just that sound. That’s strange for a 10 year old kid in Ohio. That’s really weird. But, I played football all the way through high school. I ran track. I did everything that everyone else did but I had this secret life on the weekends where I’d go play in bars with my dad’s band and play dobro. So then, all my friends found out about it my junior year in high school and they all started showing up at the bars and getting kicked out for having a drink.
At the same time I was close to Cleveland so I was hearing all this good…it was ’69, ’70, right in there. I think that was the best music ever made, was right in that time period. That was the explosion of everything to come after. I had a cousin that moved into the house who was 18, 19 years old and he turned me on to Lovin’ Spoonful, Mamas & Papas. And then I went Stones, Byrds…the Beatles had already happened by then. And I loved that. Loved it. My dad’s band wasn’t doing any of those songs. If they did anything outside of bluegrass, it was some country song. But, I loved it all and it all stayed in there and it all got all mixed around.
This record comes the closest to really being that mishmash of what all’s been going on in my head all this time. It’s the closest I’ve come to making a real…I don’t know what you’d call it…the sound of the music my brain listens to, (laughs) what’s locked up in there.
JPG: It makes sense that all those influences have combined to make you comfortable in a variety of different musical situations.
JD: I was listening to bluegrass in the morning and rock ‘n’ roll at night because I’d go to sleep listening to Cleveland stations. I wake up in the morning. My dad’s going to work. I’m going to school. So, I’m listening to Flatt & Scruggs, live on the radio in Nashville, Tennessee, if the weather permitted. There wasn’t Clear Channel to make it to us. So, it confused me a lot for a long time until I was playing the dobro well enough to make those sounds, too. Then, John Fogerty comes out with a record [with Creedence Clearwater Revival], standing on the cover with a dobro, “Green River.” And that made me legitimate with my friends. (laughs)
It blew my mind. It blew my mind. And I remember telling one of my friends, “I’m gonna play with these guys someday.” It only took like 30 years but then Fogerty and I became friends and I have played with him, recorded. So, it all came around. Took awhile but it did come.
JPG: What about the improvisation, jam aspect of your work? Is that a result of this combination or a jazz influence?
JD: It’s definitely a jazz influence. And that all began with when Tony Rice introduced me to David Grisman, probably. That aspect of playing…I was improvising all along but not really thinking of it that way. Improvise is more of a jazz term. It’s a part of the music. In bluegrass or string band music it’s sort of like, “Okay, I’m gonna play the melody. Nah, I’m not gonna play the melody but I’m gonna play something kinda like the melody.” (laughs) Well, then I found out that was called ‘improvising’ through jazz musicians. And I thought, “Well, it’s a big deal for them to give it a name.”
Then, I started learning the ways to build a solo and the ways to legitimately improvise where you use the melody as a springboard to something else. I like music that does that but comes back; that makes the return trip. A solo should be a round-trip ticket. It should start out with a little bit of the melody and then jet off somewhere for awhile, and then come back, state the melody again. And that’s the signal you’re gonna hand off to somebody else. When I’m out there, if you don’t hear me playing the melody it’s not your solo yet. That’s sort of the way we all tend to listen to each other and we know it’s coming. If somebody comes back to the melody they’re handing off. It depends on how they feel that day how long their solo is.
JPG: That makes me think of how Jerry Garcia would do that and the Grateful Dead would do that, going between him and the keyboardist.
JD: Yeah. They looked up. His head was down all the time. When he looked up he looked at who was gonna solo next. “Here it comes. I give this to you. A nice little present.”
JPG: Was there anyone that you watched or listened to that taught you that this is how you should approach improvising?
JD: I listened a lot to Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli. That’s like the crash course. That’s like Jazz 101 pretty much, before Charlie Parker…before jazz got really complicated. Those guys were giving you the rudimentary crash course on how to improvise and how to…They weren’t playing 16 bars and then handing over. They were going take chorus after chorus after chorus until they wrung it out, until “Here you go.”
I was around when David Grisman and Tony [Rice] and those guys were rehearsing before they ever did their first gigs, and it was some of the most amazing music I had ever heard. Intricate arrangements played by these guys who were so great on their instruments. It was a real wake up call for me and a step. It was like, “There’s no turning back at this point. You gotta go.”
JPG: You’re known for playing the dobro yet on “Traveler” you’re using lap steel on seven of the album’s 11 tracks. How long have you been playing lap steel and why decide to feature it so much here?
JD: Well, I’ve been playing lap steel for quite awhile. The “MCA Masters Series” was the first place that I got to really experiment with that. It’s a different animal in that there’s so much gain because you’re playing through an amplifier; you’re playing an electric instrument. So, you don’t have to beat it up to get loud sound out of it, just volume pedal or turn a knob and you’re louder. With an acoustic instrument, part of learning how to play is to learn how to play dynamics, how to play soft with a different tone. And if you’re playing with different people, you want to dial your dynamic down so that you can hear them, so that you can play off of them, so that you can get ideas from them, so they can be heard by the audience and you’re not drowning them out by playing over top of them. When your turn comes then you increase and dial up a little bit and you get a little bit more physical with it. It’s all about how physical you can be, what attitude you play with.
The lap steel was like…I said this a million times is like I’ve been playing with a handsaw all my life and then somebody hands you a running chainsaw. It’s like, “Wow! What I can do with this!” and some things I can’t do with this, like a lot of the really fast, wide-open, rolling banjo-y kind of stuff that I do with the dobro I can’t do with the lap steel. It just runs together. It’s indecipherable. You learn how to phrase differently. There’s a l lot of different right hand techniques, left hand…it’s a different instrument. The only thing that’s the same about it, maybe the tuning and the tuning intervals and that you’re playing it with a slide. Otherwise, there’s all these different tones you can get without changing anything about how you play the instrument. So, I just started messing around with distortion, all the things I always wanted to do but I couldn’t do with an acoustic instrument and played and played and played and played, and listened to people like Clapton and Jeff Beck and became friends with Derek Trucks; people like that who played electric their whole lives and that’s what they’re thinking. My whole thing was acoustic so we’d talk about it a little bit but mostly listening, getting ideas and trying to be different.
JPG: That’s interesting. I’m just so used to seeing you play the dobro. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you use lap steel.
JD: I was using it but I wasn’t using it like a lead instrument that much. I’m playing at Chautauqua Auditorium [on Sept. 7] in Boulder with Omar [Hakim] and Viktor [Krauss], and I’ll play mostly lap steel that night. Marshall [amplifier]. It’s a completely different world.
JPG: You’re going back to your high school rock days. Maybe throw in some Hendrix licks…
JD: Yeah, it gives you that opportunity to recreate those kind of sounds instead. It gives me that opportunity. As soon as I hear that all this stuff floats to the top. I’m like, “Oh! Wait a minute. I can do this now. This instrument lets me do this.” It drags out a lot of stuff out of the closet that I’ve never been able to do with the dobro, not through a microphone.
JPG: Back to the album, in the press release there were a lot of juicy quotes by you (Douglas laughs) such as “I’ve reached the point in my life where I’m not afraid to try anything.” Based on the fact that you’ve contributed to more than 2,000 albums by a variety of artists as well as numerous guest appearances onstage, I’d say you’ve already done most everything.
JD: (laughs) It’s good but trying to do it all on one record was…and I got to this point in my life where a lot of things that I wouldn’t have done like walking up to Paul McCartney or singing on a record.
What gave me the incentive to sing on the record more than anything was a gig I did with James Taylor at Carnegie Hall, and I’m not trying to drop names. I was doing a gig with him and he asked me what I wanted to do. I said, “I want to sing ‘Hey Joe.’” And I hadn’t even thought about it ‘til then. It just flew out of me. And he said, “Okay,” because he didn’t know that I didn’t do that all the time. So, I did it that night. I sang “Hey Joe” and everybody went, “What the…? Where did that come from?” So, I started my singing career in Carnegie Hall, and I just figured it’s not gonna get any better than this so I might as well just go. (laughs)
That’s what I mean by I’m not afraid to do anything. I just reached this point in my life that I’m not as inhibited, maybe, as I was for a long long time and not as worried about what I think somebody might think. I don’t know how long I’m gonna be able to play at this level. So, I’m gonna go for it.
