13th Floor Interview: Jerry Douglas – More Leftover Feelings
Last week we brought you an interview with John Hiatt, this week we have Jerry Douglas on board to talk about Leftover Feelings, the album John and Jerry have just made together.
The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke to Jerry just after talking to John Hiatt. As it turns out, Jerry and Marty grew up in the same part of the US…the border between Ohio and Pennsylvania and so we pick up the conversation there..
Listen to the interview here:
Or, read a transcription of the interview here:
M: Since we’re on the subject, what kind of music were you listening to in Ohio when you were growing up?
J: Well, mostly bluegrass. Mostly Flatt & Scruggs. and WWVA and gee, did you get any Cleveland TV stations?
M: Mostly Erie, but I went to my first professional baseball game in Cleveland. I saw the Yankees and the Indians play in the 60s. That was pretty exciting.
J: That didn’t go well for the Indians I would imagine.
M: No, I don’t think so.
J: Not back then anyway.
M: This would’ve been like ’65 I think it was.
J: It’s been a dry, dry time for Cleveland. The last couple years have been pretty good, they even have a good football team now.
M: Oh man.
J: They got a good quarterback from, he’s either from Texas or Oklahoma? Oklahoma I think and he’s just great. It gives the town something to cheer for at least. I’ve been around Pymatuning..I haven’t said that word, God, 40 years but I recognized it so yeah I would love to come over there.
But I was listening to bluegrass in the mornings when I’d wake up cause my dad worked at a steel mill and he was a crane repairer but at the steel mill and he would be going to work about 8 o’clock and I’d be going to school and we’d be listening to Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs on the radio if we could get it from clear channels WSM, but most mornings there was too much weather between us and we’d have a record on but at night I listened to Cleveland rock stations so I was confused you know, musically? How do you do both of these things? That’s all and I’ve spent my life trying to fuse the two.
M: Well you’ve done a pretty good job I must say. I mean you’ve recorded with freakin everybody so that’s just amazing.
J: I’ve been in some of the right places at the right time, yeah.
M:I love that you mentioned WSM cause I think there’s a reference to that radio station in one of John Hiatt’s songs on the Music Is Hot song.
J: That’s right. That’s a fascinating song to me, I could keep going back to that song and trying to figure out who the lady is. I think she’s a single mother and a lot of bad stuff happened to her but there’s always the radio and the music is hot you know? That sort of, when it comes around to it, at the end of every paragraph, but the music is hot, so that’s all that matters.
M: Excellent. So take me back to how you got involved with making this album with John Hiatt. What kind of communications and interactions did you have before you got in the studio?
J: We found ourselves under the same management umbrella so one manager said something to the other one and then it trickled down to us and John said wow, I never thought of that before and I said yes! But I’ve known John for a long time. First time I guess we played together was probably on the second Circle Be Unbroken record, the Dirt Band record and John came through there with Rosanne Cash for a song that he had written but that was like a turn style. That recording session was two weeks long and it was, I sat on the same chair every day, played on every song and sit beside Mark O’Connor for two weeks and two of us and Roy Husky and The Dirt Band and Randy Scruggs and they recorded everything and they filmed everything too so there’s proof that we were there at the same time but I haven’t seen it yet.
And then we were both at Newport folk festival at the same time and I just, some people…and all of us artists we met each other but for brief periods of time and I just took the opportunity to sit him down. Around the time it was Little Village time, Bring The Family and all that and I just sat him down and talked to him a little bit. I really wanted to talk about Ry Cooder but we talked about everything else. And I just thought this is a guy I would really like to know this guy.
He’s interesting, he’s my kind of guy, I mean I just like talking to him and so years passed again and then this turns up and I just went, ‘Yeah!’, cause Sonny Landreth and I are really good friends, we’re brothers almost and so I’ve been sort of on the outskirts of Hiattville for a long time and he has this intention to get slide players for his records and now I’m that one. But I got to produce the record. So I brought my band in and I knew they would do a great job, they could do as good a job as anybody that I could hire in Nashville to make it a high marquee record so I went with them. Those guys don’t let me down and they’re great.
M: You say you produced the record, that could mean anything to anybody these days. How did you approach your job as the producer?
J: Well, I approached it as I kind of got the studio together and got the engineer that I wanted to do this kind of music, who was really good at this kind of sonics, these sonics of acoustic music plus some electric stuff in there too. Mike Seal the guitar player, he played a lot of acoustic but he played some really great electric parts and he’s one of the best electric players on the scene. He’s just amazing, just kills me every time he plays I just stop and watch.
And so is Christian, Christian (Sedelmyer) the violin player’s that was too, I’m still hearing things on this record that I can’t pinpoint what it is until I really just sit down and put an ear on it and It’s Christian doing things that just fiddle players don’t do you know…rhythmic parts and shuffles and things like that, that just sort of take the song all the way through and just played the perfect stuff.
M: The album was recorded at RCA’s Studio B in Nashville. Was that your doing? Your choice? I assume you’ve been there before.
J: I’ve been in there before but it was really the idea…Ken Levitan, our manager and The Country Music Hall of Fame had been batting it back and forth. They wanted somebody to record in there and make a good record in there and so they chose John and me to go in there and do it. But it was during, when we were gonna record there there was no co-vid yet, the first plan, there was nothing and then co-vid hit and shut everything down and we couldn’t record, we couldn’t go there for weeks.
We had chosen the place and if we had recorded there, they would have to, we would have to tear down every night and set back up again every day because of tours. Tours coming through … and I was thinking, ‘this is nuts, I can’t, this is terrible. We could record anywhere but why do we have to do that?’ And then co-vid hit and it stopped the tours and so we got back in there. We didn’t get back in there though until late October, November. But we had that much more time, John and I did, to do pre-production and get the right songs and for me to wrap my head around them and just trying to arrange them a little bit. Get some ideas about what I wanted to do.
M: Did he have a lot more songs to wade through?
J: Yeah, there were a lot of songs. There were tons of songs but most of these he wrote during the pandemic and so we had songs that we wouldn’t have had. We ended up with songs we wouldn’t have had otherwise. Covid was a terrible thing and the whole pandemic was a terrible thing but you know there’s some jewels fallen out of it too. This record I think, things that had a chance to do more than just get hot. They got a chance to simmer and finish the flavour, in cooking terms, but yeah it did give us a little more time to really go through them and be emotional about them cause it’s a crazy record, it’s up and down there’s Long Black Electric Cadillac and then there’s Light of The Burning Sun so there’s a huge gamut of emotions there. So it’s hard to…the producer’s job is to put that together and make a whole picture out of these parts. I think that’s what the producer’s real job is.
M: Once you had the songs sorted out, what did you tell your band? Did you have a discussion with them or did you just sit them down and let them play?
J: We went into a rehearsal studio for a couple of days just to get our…mostly to get our ear, we have an ear rig that we travel on the road with so we just added John to it so we were able to sit there with our ears in and hear everything and change the mix and sort of hear it as a record first. And so that was fun and the guys though, they play with me and my songs are up and down and all over the place and change meter and change time signature and everything and they’re just…they’re on me like glue. And I knew they would be him too, they know the right thing to do at the right time so we sat down and did a couple days rehearsal and Hiatt was just loving it, how it sounded. John was loving it so you know, when John’s smiling, I’m happy. But we all had this great time, I mean with covid rules we couldn’t all be in with the console listening back all the time together and we were all masked up and everything.
When you got to your place where you were going to play, when you got your station, you could take your mask off and get comfortable and you’re in your own little cave, your own little place. It was safe and we were distanced and everything but the covid rules that have a lot to do with the record too. Who could come to the studio and usually people are all trying to get in and this time it’s like, ‘I’m sorry, you can’t get in’, and so no visitors, that was beautiful. You could actually get something done, you can complete a thought without somebody going, ‘hey, why don’t you try this?’
M: It’s interesting, a lot of people are recording at home because of covid and they’re using zoom and collaborating like that and there’s been some discussion you know, maybe this is gonna change the way musicians and producers think about making records because they realize how much they can do without the studio. Have you thought about that?
J: We have been doing this for a few years now but you know, there used to be a saying years ago around the time that cell phones were invented, that we would say we’ll just phone our part in. We’re actually doing that now. I played on probably 40 records during the pandemic because I have a studio, I have a set up that I can record myself and I can get some tracks and some wav files in of a song and It’s pretty much finished or a rough mix anyway and then I can record to that and then I can send my parts and all my files to them. I even got to where I was doing all my own editing for solos and everything like that. Just enough to be dangerous you know?
It sounded good but there’s nothing like being there, there’s nothing like being there and seeing the look on somebody else’s face when there’s a big section about to come up and everybody’s got this eye contact in the room where everybody raises the level at the same time and the whole band moves up! Where you can’t do that sitting in a room by yourself staring at microphones and just reacting to what you’re hearing.
M: I think some of that comes across in some of the videos you guys shot at the studio. Obviously the tracks were recorded by that time but you still kind of get that vibe. You enjoy being in the same room together.
J: Yeah, we’re kind of eyeballing. We know when things are about to happen cause we’re reading charts for a while until we get the song really in our head and then you throw that chart away and you just react to each other but you’re looking at each other too. That’s important in the studio to be able to see each other. It’s not always possible but the best records we ever heard were made that way. They were made, everybody was there, they were all looking at each other and they had a plan and they were all in one room at the same time and all those sounds mixing together in the air and that’s an added factor that you don’t have recorded separately.
M: Now, in addition to being the producer, you were also a player. Do you have any particular moments in the record that are your favourites as far as, where you were kind of let loose and allowed to do your thing musically?
J: There were a couple of times when it came down do what are we gonna do for an intro? And I would just go and ‘da da da da!’ and everybody would go just bam. And that happened a couple of times but we for the most part worked things out but there were some real improvising going on the whole time. There aren’t that many fixes on this record because of that room. It’s a very big sounding room. The room is the 12th man. It’s on there whether you want it or not, that room sound is there and it’s just our luck it’s a good sound.
It’s a really…what am I trying to think of? The words I’m trying to think of, it’s a real down to earth kind of no bones record. We just added vocals in some places but you know, and Lilacs In Ohio, we were screaming it out in the studio, why not? Sound like more people. And I told him, I said I don’t remember any lilacs in Ohio, I don’t know where that comes from and then he explained to me what the term really meant from a Ray Milland movie. Did he tell you?
M: Yeah, he did tell me that, that was awesome. Now I gotta go watch the movie.
J: I was like oh ok, alright. I’m not crazy, I wasn’t missing thousands of lilacs in Ohio.
M: No, that would be tough.
J: I thought it was the State Plant or something there for a second, I missed it.
M: So you mentioned you’ve also been playing on lots of other things. What other kind of things have you been working on that we can look forward to hearing that you’ve been recording over the last few months?
J: Well I worked on a few bluegrass records and some, there’s a fella Adam Ezra who’s in California and since the pandemic started, has done a show every day of the pandemic and does a new song every day. And I played on some of that. That was nice. I played on a record for a guy who was known as the Bob Dylan of Venezuela. Just things like that, you know records from Prague, records from Paris, just really international stuff. A lot of more international stuff than I could ever do because that’s the only way I can do it by being here and then there, that’s the only way…and so I ended up on a lot of records that way but a lot from here in town where people would cut tracks.
They cut the bed and then send it around to a few people but there was, I couldn’t believe how much of that there was and that’s kind of how we made it through the pandemic was recording a lot. I felt bad for live acts who are just starting and trying to get their name out there the old fashioned way…ok, you have to computer savvy right away.
M: Yeah, it’s a learning curve, a quick one.
J: Yeah and that’s advanced, a 1000-fold in our business now cause we didn’t even use it before, zoom, and now I think it’s a part that’s gonna stay. I hope that, I know that we’ll go back to, we all miss being in a room when it goes down so there’ll be more of that. We’ll go back to that but we figured out how to do this now and so yeah.
M: I noticed you’re kind of referring to the pandemic in the past sense now. Is it your feeling that the worst is over and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel?
J: I think that’s, yeah. I hope the worst is over. It depends on how people go about these next three, four months I think. We can’t do full on audiences. I’m going actually, I’m going out for four days the day after tomorrow I play in Asheville, North Carolina and then I’m playing in Roanoke, Virginia, Knoxville and then Lexington, Kentucky. It’s weird, they’re not far away but it’s strange. We’re going somewhere, we’re gonna stay in a hotel, we’re gonna play to people who are in sort of pods, not side by side. If that starts happening I’ll have to go, I’ll have to say something.
M: I love it when you mentioned all of those cities names, I can think of a song for every one of those. Knoxville and Asheville. Oh, there’s I’m In Asheville which is on the record so there you go.
J: Yeah. Well that was what Leftover Feelings came from, that was just a lyric in there and he sent me the lyrics and the name of that song was Leftover Feelings and I said what’s this? And then as I read the lyrics I went oh, I’m in Ashville. But there’s this line and I said I think that would be a great album title. But I don’t think it should be the title of the song. So we changed the title of the song and he’s like ok, you know, again I’m going wow, just told John Hiatt something and he’s doing it. It’s like telling James Taylor sing it again you know? It’s a very strange situation to be in.
M: John said that you guys are probably gonna hit the road though right?
J: We are. In August, we should be, we’re thinking they are selling at full capacity so we’ll see. But we can always cut back from that but that affects everything. But we’re hoping that if people over here don’t upset the whole big apple cart that we’ve got gloriously rolling, if they go ahead and if everybody becomes vaccinated then things can go back to normal. So, it’s all one big twisting your fingers, crossing your fingers.
M: Both you and John have this huge back catalogue legacy of stuff that you could be doing. Do you see dipping into that when you get together and hit the road?
J: Yeah, oh yeah. We’re going way back into John’s stuff. I mentioned something to him today and he said, ‘Oh man. I have to go find the lyrics’ cause he said anything you guys think of from anything else I’ve done, let me know and I said uh oh. Cause everybody’s a big John Hiatt fan, they’re digging. Of course I’d like to do Slow Turning and Thing Called Love and that kind of stuff, a few of those songs but I wanna go deep catalogue on him in a few places.
M: Well hopefully…I’d be great if you could bring your show down here. Come down to New Zealand and play.
J: Oh man, if there’s any chance, we will. John and I have been talking about if nobody else wants to go, we’ll just go. Just the two of us will go. Anywhere, we’re enjoying this.
M: Excellent.
Leftover Feelings is out now.
Click here for more updates on The Jerry Douglas Band.
