Noise: SFBG Music Blog - The dobro mastery of Jerry Douglas in all its glory on 'Glide,' at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

JERRY DOUGLAS
Glide
(Koch)

By Todd Lavoie

Universally regarded as the finest dobro player in contemporary music, Jerry Douglas has long been the go-to source for the most evocative of resonator-guitar textures.

Starting off as a session musician back in the '70s and '80s - and having worked along the way with everyone from bluegrass pioneers David Grisman and Ricky Skaggs to country artists as varied as Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Trisha Yearwood - Douglas eventually launched a solo career which established him as one of the forerunners of the burgeoning "newgrass" movement. Proponents of the newgrass sound wanted to expand the boundaries of bluegrass by drawing from other traditional acoustic-based styles - particularly jazz - and the drive to rescue the dobro from pigeonholing was certainly understandable, given the perceived limitations many folks had up until that point.

The instrument has been frequently, almost predictably, used in film and television scores to introduce a Southern setting - often rural and run-down in nature - thanks to its ability to fashion moods from its lazy slides between notes. Sure, its "we'll-get-there-when-we-do" slides and slow finger-pickings easily summon up images of sweltering afternoons under a merciless sun. But the dobro can do so much more - and Douglas has made it his mission to prove exactly that.

Borrowing freely from jazz, country, and occasionally even pop music, his dozen solo recordings have celebrated the instrument's versatility, thus thrusting him to the top tier of the progressive acoustic vanguard. He has won twelve Grammys, been named Musician of the Year by the Country Music Association three times, received the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and contributed to a head-scratching 2,000-plus recordings, landing him in a mighty small circle of musicians who can claim team-ups with Elvis Costello, the Chieftains, and Bill Frisell on their resume.

With Glide, Douglas' latest offering, the journeyman furthers his already sturdy reputation by adding elements of Celtic romanticism and Dixieland sweet-release to his ever-expanding artillery of folk/jazz/country/bluegrass song-form-splicings. Boasting a veritable who's who of bluegrass luminaries as collaborators - Tony Rice, Earl Scruggs, Edgar Meyer, and Sam Bush are just a few of the contributors found here - the disc arrives wildly unconcerned with any sort of genre-beholden purism, instead moving between styles with the fluidity suggested by the title. It's a refreshingly adventurous record, brimming with ideas and bubbling over with playful exuberance. Those who have followed Douglas over the years will find new reasons to cherish his work, while newcomers will receive an intriguing introduction to the musician's dexterity with Glide.

The appropriately monikered album opener "Bounce" - one of the disc's more straight-up bluegrass numbers - is a hopping, skipping leapfrog of a song. Douglas plays pass-the-melody with mandolin player Sam Bush as Edgar Meyer bobs and weaves alluring rhythms into the mix. It's a joyful first hello, with dobro and mandolin furiously trading licks over a twitching, shuffling tempo.

The title track, a considerably slower, more sentimental number, is a delicate flutter of nostalgia-inducing lyricism, with Douglas offering aching interplay to Guthrie Trapp's wonderful acoustic guitar textures and a soaring violin violin solo from Luke Bulla. A sunny, smiling read-through of traditional bluegrass nugget "Home Sweet Home" - perhaps made most famous back in 1964 by Earl Scruggs - is a joy to behold, thanks to dazzling trade-offs between Douglas and Tony Rice (guitar), as well as Scruggs himself on banjo.

Seeking the sort of anything-goes musical freewheeling for which Douglas has become legendary? "Trouble on Alum (Hector The Hero/Woo'ed And Marret)" is a tearful medley of a pair of traditional Scottish folk tunes, here given a dusty makeover with yearning dobro textures - the number, interestingly enough, was orchestrated by Douglas as a commissioned accompaniment to a series of watercolor paintings by noted artist William Matthews. On its own, it is heart-stopping enough - I'd be curious to see how it interacts with the canvases (Google, here I come).

"Unfolding" - an Edgar Meyer composition - is a tempo-juggling pinwheel of jazz improv, due largely to Bulla's Stephane Grappelli-evoking violin flights and deliciously unbridled electric guitar solos by Trapp. The song is a true showcase for Douglas, spotlighting the ease with which he can switch from the dominating voice in a piece to a carefully understated, but irreplaceable, foundation to his lead-taking collaborators.

The two country-flavored vocal numbers on Glide - "A Marriage Made In Hollywood," with Travis Tritt, and "A Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper's Dream)" with Rodney Crowell - are the least successful to these ears, but surely will connect with plenty of other listeners. I've never been a big fan of either singer's voice, so I'm a bit biased from the start - the tracks themselves, however, are thoughtfully composed and offer plenty of nice instrumental flourishes, particularly in Douglas' lilting solo on "A Long Hard Road."

The recording's highlight, however, is the resplendent six-minute epic "Sway Sur La Rue Royale," recorded in New Orleans in homage to the Big Easy. Stumbling in as a weary-footed, tear-stained funeral march with a lovely broken-gospel dobro melody, the song's slow-blues plod gradually gives way to rapturous Dixieland jubilation, kicking and clapping away to Doug Belote's drunken rhythms while a parade of clarinets and horns shout joy to the heavens. Sublime.

I couldn't find any video clips of Douglas performing material from Glide, so here's a fine performance clip spotlighting his dobro mastery: