Jerry Douglas
Lookout For Hope
Sugar Hill Records

by William Michael Smith

I suspect Wednesday night is bluegrass and old time mountain music night at The Big Honky Tonk in the Sky. Kind of an Oh, Brother, Here You Are kind of thing. And like all club owners, God is probably prone to problems with the help. Let's eavesdrop.

Heavenly Father: "Now Oswald, we've got all kinds of important folks who'll be at the gig tomorrow night and I just can't afford to let you have the night off. You're the best dobro player I've got. Doesn't it mean anything to you that you're my favorite? You know, Roy Acuff never makes demands like this."

Brother Oswald Kirby: "Acuff don't play dobro."

Heavenly Father: "That's irrelevant. Be reasonable."

Brother Oswald Kirby: "Be reasonable! How reasonable is it that I've played this same gig every Wednesday night since I got here? You aren't married like I am. My wife has been after me for years now to take a trip. But I can't go anywhere if I've got to be here for rehearsals and play every Wednesday night. I tell you, my marriage is on shaky grounds. I've got to have some time off."

Heavenly Father: "Out of the question, Kirby. Simply out of the question. We just don't have anybody who can fill in for you right now."

Brother Oswald Kirby: "Well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. You've got to talk to Michael and Saint Peter about getting me some relief up here. Man, even Elvis gets a night off once in while, but not me."

Heavenly Father: "Well, just supposing I could put in a word with Michael and Peter. Who would you suggest we bring up?"

Brother Oswald Kirby: "Ain't but two dobro players I can think of down there that's worthy to play the main stage at The Big Honky Tonk in the Sky. Josh Graves and Jerry Douglas."

Heavenly Father: "I'll think about it. But you've got to play the show tomorrow night, 'cause Monroe is taking off."

* * *

While Jerry Douglas certainly defers to Josh Graves, there aren't many other names that come up when we talk about the crème de la crème of dobro players. Douglas is incredibly prolific and by far the busiest studio dobro player in the world today. He has performed on hundreds of recordings, is a frequent player on the Grand Ole Opry, and plays live dates with everyone from Patty Loveless to Sam Bush.

Roots rock producer R. S. Field once said that Jerry Douglas "picks faster than a Ginsu knife salesman." He went on to note that there are many "fast pickers" around Nashville, but Douglas is a true genius because he doesn't just pick fast, he picks meaningfully, his performances always lending something extra, even special, to the ensembles he plays with.

Every couple of years, Douglas goes into the studio under his own name and records an album that lets him perform outside the boundaries of bluegrass and traditional music. His latest, Lookout for Hope, leaps musical boundaries and eclectically mixes speed-of-light traditional playing with E = MC2 jazzy jams and a bit of folk. It is nothing less than another of Douglas's numerous virtuoso performances.

There are several tracks here where the Ginsu picker is playing too much too quickly for the ear and brain to process. Douglas's composition "Patrick Meats the Brickbats" is an amazing display of precision by Douglas, Sam Bush, and fiddler Stuart Duncan. Douglas leads the way at an amazing pace (while the music is essentially newgrass, I keep flashing back to the guitar torrents of John McLaughlin in his Mahavishnu Orchestra days or his recordings with Miles Davis). This track reminds me of my childhood days when I would put on a 45 rpm single and accidentally slip the rpm knob to 78. Classical musicians who've spent a lifetime studying music theory may be able to mentally keep pace with this piece, but I can't. Not possible. This isn't simply jaw-dropping, this seems to make one's head revolve in 360s.

The solo composition "Monkey Let the Hogs Out" also calls up the Ginsu comparison, although this time the feeling is decidedly Appalachian. This brief piece makes a perfect intro mood setter for "Lookout for Hope." Featuring the two current kings of mandolin, Sam Bush and Nickel Creek's Chris Thile, the quiet, brooding track features an amazing ensemble that includes bassist Byron House and guitarists Bryan Sutton and Trey Anastasio. Clocking in at 10+ minutes, it features movements that build to mind-bending crescendos only to unravel themselves back into quiet progressions. The percussive effect that is achieved is hard to conceive in relation to acoustic instruments. Douglas bends some sounds out of his instrument that would make sitarist Ravi Shankar envious.

On the jazzy "Cave Bop," Douglas moves into a Django Reinhardt guitar zone. But what really sets this track off and makes it one of the most unusual yet satisfying jazz pieces I've heard in some time is the juxtaposition of Jeff Coffin's riffing saxophone opposite the manic, insistent dobro sound. The coupling of this mellow toned sax riff with Douglas's Ginsu dobro runs has to be heard to be comprehended. Bop, indeed. John Coltrane and Diz could dig this. Coffin also lends some interesting sax to the Doc Watson-ish instrumental country burner, "The Wild Rumpus."

Douglas doesn't always go for the land speed record or look for a boundary to obliterate though. Supporting vocalist Maura O'Connell, Douglas and his ensemble reach deep for feeling and empathy on the wistful, Scottish-influenced ballad, "Footsteps Fall." The aesthetic is tone over speed, making for Grade A Prime folk music. With three superior soloists like Douglas, Bush, and Duncan playing off each other, the effect can be eerily spiritual in the extreme. There is little doubt that music is these folks' religion.

Douglas's airy, complex, moody instrumentals like "Senia's Lament" and "The Sinking Ship" may just be a new genre ­ New Age Americana. Certainly they are country instrumentals at heart (in the same sense that one can often discern a country seed at the core of some of Django Reinhardt's work), but Douglas's playing is so clean and ethereal it reaches that spiritual, soaring, eternal quality vocalists like Enya deliver. Coffin's saxophone adds a sultry, humid, clouds-rolling-by dimension to "The Sinking Ship." Douglas even manages to bring a New Age feel to the Allman Brothers' instrumental, "Little Martha," and to the traditional "In the Sweet By and By."

The track that will probably be most noted here is the closer, Hugh Prestwood's "The Suit." Douglas has scored a coup by enlisting the clear, gentle, earnest voice of James Taylor on this maudlin tale of a Nebraska farmer's funeral. The track sounds like something from Sweet Baby James, vintage James Taylor.

Commercially this album may be too smart and too much of genre bender to find any large audience. But connoisseurs of the fine and unusual will seek this album out much as they sought out other difficult work like the "chambergrass" of B-C-H and other newgrass boundary jumpers, because this is truly music of the highest order.

www.sugarhillrecords.com

 
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