Dobro master Jerry Douglas wraps up a whirlwind year

Jerry Douglas (photo: Tom Pich)

Earlier this month, Jerry Douglas headed to the Nashville house of fellow award-winning acoustic musician Tim O’Brien, and the old friends did something unusual: They talked. A lot.

For five hours, the two of them, along with some musician friends, sat together and were having such a good time chatting that they didn’t play a note. “My Dobro didn’t come out of the case,” Douglas said. “A bunch of musicians, talking to each other. Imagine that. That was really odd, and really nice.”

It’s not that Douglas isn’t normally a conversational sort; it’s just that in this whirlwind year, his Dobro has spent very little time inside that case. Douglas has taken it to California, to score the movie soundtrack for Get Low. He’s also brought it on tour with Elvis Costello, Mumford & Sons and the Zac Brown Band, carried it into the studio to record with Alison Krauss and Union Station, and used it on the album Southern Filibuster, his tribute to one of his primary musical influences, Tut Taylor.

“This was probably my craziest year,” he said. “Time management is probably the bane of my existence. Years of being a session player … helped, because every day you walk into a studio and have to adapt to somebody else’s style. Every day, you’re somebody else. That’s what 2010 was like.”

With that all behind him, Douglas is off the road and back in his home city of Nashville, planning to take his Dobro back out of its case once again, for a Dec. 17 holiday-themed show at the 12 South Taproom.

“I did a Christmas tour last year, and I just felt like I wanted to play that music somewhere this year,” he said. “I love playing it, and this way we can do something small and have all the money go to (homeless shelter) Room in the Inn and also collect food for the Second Harvest Food Bank.”

Over the past three decades, Douglas has been Henry Higgins to his Dobro’s Eliza Doolittle, coaxing sophistication and elegance from an instrument that once was considered more clattering than cultured. The Dobro, steel guitar’s acoustic cousin (it’s technically a brand name that has replaced the more proper term “resonator guitar”), spent decades as a country-and-bluegrass-only instrument. But in the 1970s, with inspiration from Josh Graves, Mike Auldridge and other forerunners, Douglas began reimagining the Dobro’s possibilities. He has taken it out of the case to play in pop, rock, jazz and even neo-classical settings.

“I love the sound of the instrument, first of all,” he said. “Everyone does who hears it, even when they don’t know what it is. And they love it even more because of how it looks: It’s art deco, and looks so cool. It’s still a pretty well-kept secret, I guess, but I’m trying to let that secret out.”

He helped spread the word this year through his production of Southern Filibuster, on which he and 13 other Dobro players paid homage to Tut Taylor, who released nine Dobro albums, collaborated with singer-songwriter great John Hartford, guitar innovator Clarence White and others and owned Nashville’s legendary acoustic music listening room, The Old Time Pickin’ Parlor.

“Tut is 87 years old, and he’s never been a big star, and I kind of felt it was time to give him a shot in the arm,” Douglas said. “He didn’t know about it until we had the album completely finished, and then I called him and told him. Tut talks a lot. I’d never known him to be speechless before, but he didn’t know what to say.”

Douglas is looking ahead to a 2011 that may be as full and busy as the past annum. In January, he’ll travel to Scotland and Ireland, where he’ll serve as artist and musical director for some multi-performer shows. In February, there’ll be an English swing and a new album with Krauss and Union Station. And the rest of the calendar is already clustered with tour dates and recording sessions.

“It’s going to be a monster year,” he said.

But for one December evening, there was only a group of musical friends sitting together in the house where O’Brien keeps dozens of instruments and one gleaming Grammy Award. Douglas himself has won 12 of them. He and O’Brien were once considered acoustic music’s young guns; today, they’re two of its elder masters.

“I feel like we’re still as vital as ever,” Douglas said. “Young players are listening to us, and we raised the bar pretty high for them. We brought in all our influences, and now they’re riding on the backs of that. They’re standing on our shoulders, and we’re cheering them on.”