Dobro Master Jerry Douglas Presents 'Southern Filibuster: A Tribute To Tut Taylor'

Simply put, there isn't a Dobro player alive who doesn't owe Tut Taylor. Taylor is a towering figure in the world of acoustic music, championed for his flat-picking mastery by generations of fellow musicians and connoisseurs of rural American music. Prolific and versatile, Taylor's licks have graced recordings by hundreds of country and bluegrass artists including Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe, Norman Blake, Clarence White, Porter Wagoner, Vassar Clements and Leon Russell, and his solo albums have been studied by countless admirers, some of whom playfully refer to him as King Tut.


One of those lifelong devotees is Jerry Douglas, perhaps the most celebrated Dobro player in the world for more than 30 years.

"Tut's tenacious playing style, his phrasing and his way of making simple things interesting," as Douglas puts it, have had a seismic impact on Douglas over the years, and their 1994 co-production The Great Dobro Sessions won a GRAMMY Award for "Bluegrass Album of the Year." But now, with the release of Southern Filibuster: A Tribute to Tut Taylor (E1 Music: July 13, 2010), Douglas takes his esteem for the Dobro doyen to another level entirely.

For this labor of love, Douglas assembled 14 of the world's greatest Dobro players to interpret compositions penned by Taylor. He also enlisted Nashville's finest backing musicians for the recording including Ronnie McCoury (mandolin), Jason Carter (fiddle), Tim O'Brien (mandolin), Russ Barenberg (guitar), Barry Bales (bass), Fred Carpenter (fiddle), Stuart Duncan (fiddle), Chris Jones (guitar), Mike Compton (mandolin), Dennis Crouch (bass), Bryan Sutton (guitar), and Mike Bub (bass). All of the proceeds from Southern Filibuster go directly to Taylor. And even best of all, they didn't tell Taylor about the project until it was a wrap, giving him one of the nicest surprises of his 86 years. Read more.

Alison Krauss and Union Station At Spring Gettysburg Festival

For the first time in several years Alison Krauss and Union Station is doing a bluegrass tour, including a stop at the May Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival.

Alison Krauss and Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas will be performing at the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival! They will perform on Sunday, May 16th at 7pm. Details of the Gettysburg show are here.

Check out the touring section of Alison's web site  for more tour stops and details.

Critic's pick: Jerry Douglas, 'Jerry Christmas'

By Walter Tunis Contributing Music Writer

There's a dilapidated country barn pictured on the front cover of Jerry Christmas, with a field of barren trees gracing the back. Both are covered in snow.
The brown and white tints to the photographs add to the scenery's unblemished Old World cast. But seeing Jerry Douglas's name inscribed in the upper corner of his new holiday album insures that this winter setting is going to give way to come very cool yule indeed.
If you've lived around Lexington for any length of time, then you were hip to the wildly progressive yet traditionally conscious string music Douglas fashioned for the dobro long before luminaries like Elvis Costello, Paul Simon, John Fogerty and, of course, Alison Krauss recruited him for recordings and national tours. So knowing his country and bluegrass heritage, as well as his ability to design daring new soundscapes for the wiry, wily dobro, heightens expectations for what Douglas can do with holiday music.
Needless to say, Jerry Christmas doesn't disappoint. On the opening The First Noel, Douglas creates a hearty, fireside feel with multiple dobros and very discreet colorings of lap steel guitar. O Holy Night operates with similarly hushed reverence, although the magic this time is the string harmony Douglas creates with violinist Luke Bulla and the bowed bass support of Todd Parks.
Douglas could cut an entire album at this mood and tempo and it would still be a winner. But ever since he played Lexington haunts over 30 years ago with J.D. Crowe, Douglas has been a crafty player, an instrumentalist as stylistically cunning as he is virtuosic. As such, Jerry Christmas enjoys smacking us in the face with a snowball or two.

Complete article.