Jerry Douglas
Back in 1992 Jerry Douglas appeared on television’s Austin City Limits as the bandleader behind Irish singer Maura O’Connell. Douglas had just produced the Nashville sessions for O’Connell’s best-ever album, Blue Is the Colour of Hope, and he reproduced his virtuoso dobro licks from the record for the Texas TV cameras. Little did he know, but in a Manhattan apartment, 1,700 miles away, a married couple was watching that show. That couple was Paul Simon and Edie Brickell.
Simon was so impressed that he tracked Douglas down and invited him over to that same apartment to hang out. The singer picked up the dobroist after the latter’s show at the Turning Point, a listening room in the Hudson River Valley, and brought him back to Manhattan. The next day they hung out at Simon’s apartment and played a lot of acoustic guitar and dobro together—and out of that jamming grew the version of “Thelma” that emerged on Paul Simon 1964/1993. The relationship has endured, and Douglas’ new solo album, Traveler, features two Simon compositions and Simon himself on “The Boxer.”
“He’s a guy I’m really interested in,” Douglas says. “I want to know what makes him tick—without asking him what makes him tick. He’s at a point in his career and his life where he’s not afraid of anything; he’s not out to prove anything. He’s proud of what he’s done, but now he wants to have fun with it. I’m at that same point in my career. I want to just enjoy making music. I didn’t want to do a bluegrass album; I didn’t want to make a jazz album; I didn’t want to make the dancers fall down by changing time signature in the middle of a tune. I just wanted to do whatever music I’m interested in. I’m not scared, and I don’t think Paul is either.”
Simon isn’t the only unexpected collaborator on Douglas’ album—Eric Clapton, Marc Cohn, Keb’ Mo’ and Dr. John are also on hand. In fact, the lead singer on “The Boxer” isn’t Simon, who wrote it, but Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons. Douglas had befriended the British group early in their rise and invited them to contribute a song to Traveler because the dobroist was eager to find out how they achieved that big sound. The group chose “The Boxer,” not because they knew Simon’s recording but because they loved the Emmylou Harris version. After they had layered all their moving harmony parts, Simon volunteered to add his own high harmony to the track.
He then insisted that he and Douglas add the coda that they had played when Douglas had been the opening act of Simon’s 2006 tour for the Surprise album. It’s a remarkable conclusion to the song; after the oceanic waves of British voices, Douglas’ horizontal dobro steps into the quiet ending as the most eloquent voice in the arrangement, accompanied only by Simon’s acoustic guitar. Even though the solo is wordless, the instrument’s bent-note vowels and plucked consonants evoke all the melancholy regret of the aging prizefighter who is Simon’s protagonist.
Something similar happened this past April, when Douglas performed at Baltimore’s Meyerhoff Symphony Hall as part of his regular job with Alison Krauss & Union Station. Wearing a brown pinstriped vest over a white shirt, the tall, trim dobroist with the red goatee played a solo on nearly every song, whether an instrumental or a vocal by Krauss or Dan Tyminski. In the second half of the show, the other four members of the quartet left Douglas alone on stage for an unaccompanied dobro showcase. On this evening, as on recent tours, Douglas played Simon’s “American Tune” and Chick Corea’s “Spain,” a medley he reprises on the new album. At the April show, once again without lyrics, Douglas was able to capture Simon’s mixed feelings about America’s place in the world merely through the twists and turns he gave the melody.
“Unlike most singer/songwriters,” Douglas says, “the music comes first for Paul. He doesn’t write the lyrics to his songs until the track is finished. I imagine he has ideas so he can shape the track, but he doesn’t put the words down till he has the music. That’s completely backwards to most songwriters I’ve known. I spent a summer opening for him on tour, and I got to hear Steve Gadd and all those amazing musicians that have been with him forever. There’s a lot of loyalty there, and it’s a sign that he’s interested in the musical side of his songs. He wants to create stuff that lasts.”