HOW TO GO
What: Jerry Douglas Presents The Earls of Leicester
When: Friday, Sept. 25 at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Miami University Middletown, Dave Finkelman Auditorium, 4200 N. University Blvd.
Cost: Tickets for this performance are $30 for adults, $28 for senior citizens, Miami faculty and staff, and $20 for college students and children under 12.
More info: To order, visit www.miamioh.edu/boxoffice or call (513) 529-3200. (A service charge applies to online orders.) If questions, email epsteihr@miamioh.edu. Also visit www.JerryDouglas.com.
An Ohio native and 14-time Grammy Award winner will kick off the 2015-16 Miami University Regionals Artist Series season at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25 as Jerry Douglas Presents The Earls of Leicester at Miami Middletown’s Dave Finkelman Auditorium.
The show is expected to sell out. At press time, there were about 100 tickets still available for the show.
We recently talked to Douglas from his current home in Nashville, Tennessee. He shared more about growing up in Ohio, his love for bluegrass music, and what fans can expect from the upcoming concert.
“I was born in Warren, Ohio, up in the Northeast, in the steel valley. My father was a steel mill worker for 30-some years, and retired from there, but he had a bluegrass band, a really good one,” Douglas said. “It was made up of a lot of other people, who had moved to Ohio from the South, and they brought their music with them, too. So, that’s where I was first exposed to live music, and bluegrass music in particular. I was exposed to the music of Flatt and Scruggs at the same time. That was my Dad’s favorite band. It was everybody’s favorite band around there.
“So, I really liked the sound of the Dobro, of Uncle Josh (Josh Graves) playing the Dobro, and that’s what I decided I would like to play. I was playing the guitar, and the mandolin, just messing around, but I got serious when I started playing slide guitar, like the Dobro guitar.”
After playing with his father’s group — the West Virginia Travelers — for several years, Douglas joined the pioneering progressive-bluegrass band, the Country Gentlemen in 1973. A few years later, he became a member of J.D. Crowe and the New South, which also included Ricky Skaggs and Tony Rice. In 1976, Douglas and Skaggs co-founded the now-legendary bluegrass group, Boone Creek.
“I turned 18, graduated from high school, and moved to Washington D.C., where I had a job with the Country Gentlemen, who were the first people I ever came to Middletown with to play, back in 1974 or 1975,” Douglas said.
As far as the birth of The Earls of Leicester, Douglas said he has always wanted to do an album of Flatt and Scruggs material, and in doing so, he wanted to get as close to the real personality, or to the original essence of it.
“It took me all of these years to find the right musicians to do it with,” he said. “It just fit so perfectly, and they can play it with such ease. They had lived it, too. They grew up listening to it, too, so we were all in the same boat as far as that goes. It’s wonderful music.”
Along with Douglas, the band’s leader, the 2015 Grammy Award winning super-group features Shawn Camp, Johnny Warren, (his father, Paul Warren, was the original fiddle player in the band Flatt and Scruggs), Charlie Cushman and Barry Bales. Tim O’Brien contributed vocals and mandolin on the album, but he is currently on the road touring with Hot Rize. In Middletown, Shawn Lane from Blue Highway will perform with the group.
“We are all accomplished musicians in our own right, and to pull it off, you have to be a student of that music at some point in your life. Then, you go off on your own, and make your mark in your own way,” Douglas said. “Everyone has their own style of playing. I play completely different when I play with Alison Krauss and Union Station, or do a session for somebody else.
“But, I just try to channel Josh Graves, and play as much like he did in the original recordings as I can. It’s hard music to play, it’s very challenging music to play, even after you’ve been a professional musician for years and years.”
In keeping traditional bluegrass alive, the band will perform some of the best-loved music of Flatt and Scruggs. .
“Truthfully, part of our personalities have come from listening to them. So, there’s always that part that’s going to be there, no matter what kind of music I’m playing, something I’ve learned from Josh Graves is going to come out,” Douglas said. “This is one way that I can pay my respects to that kind of music, but to also educate a new audience to that music, and hopefully, they will feel the same way about it, and they will want to play it that way as well.
“I think we make our own mark on it by just having enough respect to treat it exactly the way they did, instead of trying to put our own spin on it. We are not really trying to put our spin on it, or to inject our personalities into it.”
In concert on stage, the band will play most of the tracks that are featured on the album. In an approximate two-hour show, The Earls will perform 30 to 40 songs. The group has toured throughout 2015 and been honored with a Grammy Award for “Best Bluegrass Album” with their self-titled debut.
“We were all at the Grammy’s, except for Barry. He wasn’t able to come, but the rest of us were there. We were awarded the trophy by Rosanne Cash, who is a really good friend of mine, and a great artist in her own right, for sure,” Douglas said. “It made it a little more special for me to get it from her, but the rest of the guys, they had not won a Grammy before. I had won a few. When this project won, it was really special to me, because it was something that was close to my heart.”
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