Photo: Scott Simontacchi

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“The reason I wanted to cut this record the way we did was that people were coming up to us after we’d play and they’d go, ‘Where can I get the third song you did?’” explains Jerry Douglas. “People were always fighting over the setlist at the end of the show and I’d say, ‘Well, that’s on this record, but this other one’s on this other record.’ So I thought I’d record some of these songs that are on the setlist and just try to put everything in one place so they can take the show home with them if they buy the record.”

Aptly titled The Set, this album not only features vibrant new arrangements of older material but also songs from his bandmates Daniel Kimbro (bass), Christian Sedelmyer (fiddle) and Mike Seal (guitar), as well as the concerto they collectively composed for the FreshGrass Foundation.

The musical span of the work is fitting, since Douglas was inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame this past September. However, the Dobro icon is disinclined to rest on his laurels, as he continues to gig with the Jerry Douglas Band, the Earls of Leicester and the Transatlantic Sessions. In April, he’ll return to the road with Alison Krauss & Union Station for the group’s first tour in over a decade. AKUS also has a new album that will be released in anticipation of these dates.

When asked about his initial reaction upon hearing the Hall of Fame news, Douglas says, “I was just about to go on stage with the Earls at the Ryman when Ken White told me. It took me about three songs to come back to Earth. I had never really thought about it. A Hall of Fame, to me, was for Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs. I was in shock for a good 20 minutes. I couldn’t say anything, I could barely play, but I just kind of did it. Then I shocked myself back into, ‘OK, forget about that. Now you’re working.’”

“I was able to go in there with my pals, Béla and Sam,” he says of the honor. “New Grass [Revival] got in and then Sam went in by himself—I was there for that. Sam inducted me and that’s where we are. I still don’t believe that it’s hanging in there.

“I plan to go back and see where they put me, then I’ll ask them if they can move it to a better place,” he adds with a laugh. “I never considered that I would be in anything like that. It’s just amazing.”

In the spirit of your Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame induction, looking back to the outset of your career, The Country Gentlemen first took you out on the road one summer when you were in high school, which is extraordinary on any number of levels.

I don’t know of any other kids except for Marty Stuart that hooked up with a professional band that early in life, stayed with it and didn’t just do it for a few years and burn out. Marty and I both followed the same kind of path. We knew we wanted to be better musicians and we looked for opportunities to become better musicians and put ourselves in different bands that would give us some more training to learn the musical world.

But yeah, it was strange. A few years ago, I asked my dad about letting me go out on the road when I was 16 years old with a bunch of guys that he didn’t know. I’m a father. I wouldn’t have let my 16-year-old son go out on the road with a bunch of guys in their 30s and early 40s. And he said, “But they were my favorite band.” [Laughs.]

So I went out there and it was a great thing. I was totally safe as a kid looking at it from that angle. I really enjoyed myself and I was right where I needed to be. I learned more every day just being out on the road with those guys, because there were all these other bands around that I could also listen to and take things from. But I was still trying to figure out how to marry the bluegrass world with the rock-and-roll world. I still am, but I’m chipping away, getting closer and closer.

At what point did you decide that you wanted to be a full time musician?

I think I started messing around with instruments—plastic guitars and all kinds of stuff like that—when I was 4 or 5 years old. My dad played guitar, so I wanted to play guitar, but I played mandolin first and then I got a guitar for Christmas one year. It was always at the forefront of my learning. I was also learning something about music, but not at school. I didn’t play in the school band or anything like that. It would’ve looked funny, a guy marching with a Dobro. [Laughs.]

But then I started playing in my dad’s band. It seemed to come easy to me and I loved it. I didn’t know that I was going to be a musician for the rest of my life, but it was always enjoyable to me and I was never forced to practice or anything like that. It was just fun.

It was rare to see anyone playing a Dobro at that point, and I just really liked that instrument and all these things sort of wove themselves together.

Then that summer, when I went out on the road between my junior and senior years of high school, that kind of sewed it up for me. I knew that I would be going back and playing with the band again the next summer. So I looked forward to that, then graduated from high school and moved on into the professional music business world at that point.

The business is a definite part of it that you should get to know, but it was not at the forefront for me. I was more interested in playing and learning how to play and becoming a better musician—to take the steps, whenever they came up, to further my musical education and become the Rhodes Scholar that I am today. [Laughs.]

You’ve played on over 2,000 records as a studio musician, so you’ve certainly explored those educational opportunities. All things being equal, do you prefer to hear the music in advance?

It depends on the artist. There was a band, Authentic Unlimited, that asked me to play on a song. I didn’t know them, but I knew Doyle Lawson and most of the guys had been in Doyle Lawson’s band up until he retired. So Doyle asked me to listen to a song [“Fall in Tennessee”] and decide whether I wanted to play on it or not. I loved the song, I played on it and it did great. Those guys won everything but female vocalist [at the IBMA Awards], so that worked out.

But for 15 years, I did three sessions a day, and I didn’t know any of the stuff before I got there. A lot of times, I imagine they hired me as a Dobro player to keep it in a certain genre or to keep it on the road they’d originally put it on. I’ve replaced a lot of saxophones in this world. [Laughs.] But as a session musician over the years, I’ve hardly ever known what the song is before I go in to play.

In your role as a producer, is there something that will capture your attention and lead you to take on a project?

It’s really about the intentions of whoever the artist is, what they want to do and where they see themselves in this whole world. I like to get a personal view and know the person a little bit before we start into the music—just to make sure the music matches the person and they’re conveying a matter that everybody can sink their teeth into.

It scared me a little bit when Molly Tuttle told me that she wanted to do the second record [City of Gold] with her band because I didn’t really know the band and I knew they hadn’t been in the studio that much. I wondered how much studio savvy they were going to bring. But we got in there and everybody was great. They took direction and they gave me some really good ideas.

The songs were great, and we all sat down in a circle and fleshed the songs out before we recorded them. We took two days, went through all of the songs and kind of got ourselves a good sketch outline before they split up and went to these different booths where they couldn’t make eye contact with one another.

Just getting everybody on the same page, that’s my idea of being a producer. I remember they said to me: “Make us AKUS.” [Laughs.] I was thinking, “No, I can’t do that, but I’ll make you the best you I possibly can.” That’s my job.

It turned out to be a great record. With the one before, Crooked Tree, she had a couple of people that she knew she wanted to be on there. She didn’t have the band yet, so we just picked the best people we thought fit each song and didn’t use the same people all the way throughout.

Then we came in with the band record. It was a big surprise to me, but I love the band, love the record. There’s not a negative in it. It was a great situation.

You produced John Hiatt’s last record, Leftover Feelings, in which your band backed him. Did the process of making that album have any impact on the process of making The Set?

It really did. When I started to make the John Hiatt record, he said, “I don’t think I want to use drums on this.” We’d already decided we would use my band to do the record, so when we didn’t use drums on that record, we stopped using drums in our band, too. I heard all of the space that we had previously not done anything with because it was kind of covered with drums.

There’s a sonic spectrum that goes from left to right and things can cancel each other out by being in the same frequency range. So I decided that I would rather use that space for notes instead of beats. Doing the record with John that way, and hearing the band that way, really opened the door for me to hear it differently. The music opened up and everybody realized it, which was nothing against the drummer we had. I loved him.

We all heard space that we could either fill or leave, and it gives the songs more of a shape. It gives them more dynamics, different places to go than they had before. So we haven’t used drums since we did the John Hiatt record three years ago.

Some of the songs on The Set you’d previously recorded and now you’re revisiting them with different personnel. It reminds me of what some jazz artists have done with their repertoire as their groups have evolved over time.

That’s exactly where I was going. Different musicians played them over the years in different ways. I’ve got all these songs we do in the show that are fully thought out and fully formed, but over the years, the arrangements have changed along with the musicians that played them.

One of the songs is “From Ankara to Ismir,” which is an old one of mine. But when a song is brand new and you record it with the band, you don’t really know the song that well yet. It takes about a year of playing it live for people to find out all of the places you can go with it and open it up. So the first recorded version is kind of like your demo.

Somebody recently pointed out to me that Miles Davis recorded the same songs over and over again with different bands because they were carried out differently. They had a different personality at the end because of the musicians who were playing.

I love the guys who are playing with me right now. I think we all get along as well musically as we do personally. I love the way they play these songs. I’ve been playing them so long and I have a certain way that I want to hear them and they may bring in something that’s akin to that, but is just different enough to set me on fire about the song again.

The original version of “From Ankara to Ismir” features you on lap steel, but at some point you decided that the Dobro felt better. What prompted the change?

When I originally wrote it for a lap steel, the song had a tougher personality with drums and electric bass—more of a rock and pop sensitivity. Then, as I started playing it live and played it on the Dobro with these different musicians, it took on a different color. I liked that it didn’t have to be electric. It didn’t have to be loud because the song spoke for itself. I didn’t have to beef it up with heavy instruments, big amps or anything like that. I didn’t have to make it loud in order to make it speak. I’ve settled in with the instruments that are on the new record. It’s the best I’ve ever heard the song. It’s the best I’ve ever played the song. It all just opened up for me, particularly with this band.

Can you talk about “Something You Got,” which is another song you’ve recorded again?

“Something You Got” was a song I cut on a record called Traveler that was produced by Russ Titelman, who was a great producer and had a great track record with Bonnie Raitt, Little Feat, James Taylor and all this stuff in the ‘70s and ‘80s. We were pals who kept saying to each other, “We should work together someday.” So we finally did. Clapton sang that song on Traveler, but I switched back to this acoustic version of it and I sang it instead. That’s something nobody was ready for. [Laughs.] But Eric Clapton doesn’t show up at all my shows, so somebody’s got to sing that song and that somebody is me.

I was singing all the time as a kid until I started playing Dobro. I’ve actually been singing parts for years behind singers like Alison, Vince [Gill], Elvis Costello, Dan Tyminski and all these great singers. I really love doing it, trying to be a fake ghost harmony against them and just kind of following them around.

I also knew my bass player, Daniel [Kimbro] was going to sing a song on this record. Another thing I did was to include songs from each of the guys in the band on the record. They’re great songs and they f it because we’ve played them a lot.

What originally led you to the Mike Stern tune “What Might Have Been,” which appears on The Set with Aoife O’Donovan?

What led me to the song in the first place was that I met Mike Stern at a big guitar festival out in Montana. Albert Lee, David Lindley, Brent Mason and all these great guitar players were there. He didn’t play the song there, I was just listening to one of his records after that, and I heard that song and it was so beautiful.

I pretty much did the same thing he did. It’s just that Aoife O’Donovan sang on my version of the song. The melody is the same, and the approach to it is the same but there are no words—every note I play, she sings. Her voice is so beautiful and the texture of her voice lays against the Dobro so well. She just nailed it. I love the melody of the song. The whole thing is heartbreaking to listen to and Aoife put the icing on the cake.

How about the song you go out on, “Sir Aly B?”

I wrote that song and then titled it after my good friend Aly Bain, who’s the king of the Shetland fiddlers. He and I are the musical directors of the Transatlantic Sessions. We started it in Scotland and we still do it every year. We filmed it six different times, and they were each a six-part series, so there’s a ton of it in Europe and the U.K. It didn’t quite translate over to the States. I tried to get PBS to do it and struck out, but I’ll try again someday.

But with the tune, “Sir Aly B,” he did get an MBE [Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire] not too many years ago. So I titled him, Sir. But he’s an amazing guy and has made a huge impression on me musically and historically, as a man from Scotland where all my ancestors came from. I’ve learned all of this music that my grandfathers probably heard—ancient Shetland tunes, fiddle tunes—and it connected me to the country. It also connected me to a great person who’s a tremendous friend and a musical partner.

How much advance preparation is involved for that tour?

A few weeks out, I’ll write a letter to everybody begging them for songs. [Laughs.] This year we had Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams, as well as Loudon Wainwright—his daughter Martha was on it last year and she’s amazing. We also had the McGarrigle Sisters years ago—so we had Kate who was married to Loudon and is the mother of Martha and Rufus, who’s also been part of it. That means we’ll have had the whole family on our show.

We rehearse for a week and we do two nights in the Glasgow Concert Hall. Then we take it on tour down through the U.K. and end up in London, which is where Eric Clapton usually shows up and even plays with us once in a while. All kinds of people have shown up for this thing. We’ve had tons of people on the show, but you never know what you’re going to get.

So I have them send me songs a few weeks out. By the time I land in Glasgow, I have the set and we rehearse what I’ve laid out. I make sure it’s cool with everybody and then we start carving out the show. We only really get three full days of rehearsal for a two-hour, two-set show, so it’s a little tight. The first one’s a little tense, but it’s usually the best one. Everybody’s nervous at that point, which is a good thing. [Laughs.]

This spring, you’re back in the U.S. for an extended run with Alison Krauss & Union Station. Since Dan Tyminski is focusing on his solo career, Russell Moore has joined the group. It sounds like you’ve already been recording with him. Can you talk about Russell’s addition, which I found somewhat surprising since he’s played with his own band, IIIrd Tyme Out, for so many years.

The album [Arcadia] will be out in late March [3/28]. Then it was onto the second record that’ll likely drop next year at the same time.

Dan had a pretty good thing going on and he really liked where he was and what he was doing. We are all totally behind him, and he’s one of us, so we’ll always support him. But we needed somebody to cover his spot. Alison and I looked at each other and both of us went, “Russell Moore!” at the same time. He’s been in a different room than us, and he’s had total success with what he’s doing. He’s had that band for over 30 years.

I said to him: “If you’re thinking about this and you’re worried about the band, what you’ll gain from exposure with us will also increase your exposure for your band. When you go back out there, these people will come with you. And you’re helping us by being there with us. That counts for something, man.”

So now, we’ve got Russell in there, and he’s just killing it. When we first came in, we all were going, “Oh, God, I hope this works.” Then when I heard it, I was like, “Oh, man, what a great thing.” I hate that Dan’s not there—everybody hates it—but it was a decision he had to make and I’ll totally honor it. I’ve been in that situation a lot of times, and I’ll support him. But Russell’s band will also work when we’re not working and his whole band was like, “Yeah, go support!” We’ll be playing to 6-7,000 people a night, every night. It’s something none of us can really do on our own, but the sum of the parts can make that happen.

I took Russell out one weekend with the Earls of Leicester and he was brilliant. We’d never really had a permanent mandolin and tenor singer until Jeff White came into the band. I think he was out with Lyle Lovett or somebody and we had some dates, so I got Russell to go out with us. Man, he’s such a strong singer and just a great guy. We had a blast. The mountain of talent that guy brings, and his voice—he could have stood against the back wall while he was singing and still drowned us all out. He’s really funny and a great guy to be around. So he’s going to fit right into AKUS just fine.