A Filibuster for Tut Taylor
“Everybody loves Tut [Taylor],” Jerry Douglas reflects. “And not just his personality, him being around and being such a nice guy, but it’s also the contribution he’s made to the industry, in all different ways, but mainly to us as Dobro players.”
On Southern Filibuster: A Tribute to Tut Taylor (released July 13th, EI Music), Douglas assembles a veritable who-who’s of Dobro players to pay tribute to the unique legacy and far-reaching influence of “the Flat Pickin’ Dobro Man.” The record features heavy hitters such as Mike Auldridge, Rob Ickes, Cindy Cashdollar, Randy Kohrs, and Andy Hall, as well as up-and-comers like Megan Lovell, with support from players like Tim O’Brien, Ronnie McCoury, Bryan Sutton, Dennis Crouch and Jason Carter. And that’s just scratching the surface of the stellar lineup that came together for Taylor.
Filibuster is a loving tribute not only to Taylor, but the emotive force of the Dobro itself. The instrument here takes turns seductive, moving, heartbreaking and joyous, as fourteen Dobro players each hold a favorite Taylor tune to new light. It’s a fantastic introduction for new fans and young musicians, but also provides plenty of riches for long-time Taylor supporters. From well-loved tunes like “Ghost Picker,” spine-chillingly played by Orville Johnson, to “Swampwater,” a tune Billy Cardine brought to the record that Taylor never recorded, Taylor’s body of work is well-represented here. Listening to Filibuster, it’s impossible not to be struck by the power and timelessness of these songs.
As perhaps the best known Dobro player in the world, Douglas will no doubt draw a wider audience to the record. But it was his friendship with Taylor, with whom he co-produced the Grammy-winning Great Dobro Sessions album in 1994, and his gratitude for his artistic influence that are at play here.
“This is a tribute to Tut Taylor, I want that to be clear,” Douglas says as a post script, as we’re wrapping up our interview. “It’s not my record. I mean,the company the record came out on, Koch/Entertainment One, is the label I record for. But they’re behind me, they believe in me, they take what I say to heart. They saw that I was really interested in doing this record and they jumped on it. They said, ‘Whatever you want, we’ll do this record,’ and I really thank them for being behind it. Now we’ll see. Now we’ll give them their investment back and we’ll give Tut Taylor back a small part of what we owe him. That’s the whole idea, to just honor Tut Taylor, one of our pioneers.”
Since we’re big Tut fans at the SPPS – and we owe Taylor our own debt of gratitude for his contribution to our audio archives – we were very excited when we first heard about Southern Filibuster. We were even more stoked when Douglas agreed to chat to us about this project, why Taylor is important, and why Dobro players are a unique breed of musician.
What prompted you to record Southern Filibuster?
There were two reasons that I wanted to do the record. Tut, he’s 86 years old. He’s in reasonably good health, but you know when you get to be 86 years old, you could use a little extra cash in your pocket to ease things a long once in awhile. And his wife Lee had had some hospital bills earlier, five years ago or something like that. I just thought it would be one way that the Dobro community could help him out a little bit. The real reason, more than that, is I just think that the community should take care of itself and do a tribute to one of the pioneers of the Dobro guitar. I would love to do one for Josh Graves and one for Bashful Brother Oswald, but Tut’s with us, and it would be nice to reap his rewards while he’s here. I’ve been a big fan of Tut’s forever, and it was a real easy thing to do. I just made a couple of phone calls, and the thing was done [laughs]. Everybody really wanted to pitch in, and everybody really wanted to give Tut the honor.
Jerry Douglas
I did a long list of his songs and pitched them out there to all the Dobro players that were going to play on the record and gave them their choice. I didn’t even choose “Southern Filibuster” for myself until everybody else started choosing songs, and I thought, “Well that’s a song that, I’d love to play, so I’ll take that one.” Cindy Cashdollar really wanted to do “Little Green Pill,” Rob Ickes wanted to do “Oasis.” Nobody picked the same song, and that’s really odd. But we had a long long list of songs, since he’s written a lot of stuff. A lot of it [that I picked initially] was on Friar Tut. But then I started pulling from the other records along with that one, and there were a lot of songs. There were a lot of second choices that people sent in if somebody else picked the same song. But that didn’t happen. We all ended up with our first picks. It was a very serendipitous venture.
That’s great, it sounds like it worked out really naturally then.
Yeah! That’s the way it should be. And you can hear Tut’s songs through the new arrangements. The essence of the songs is definitely there, but every player has their own personality and that comes through strong as well. To hear [the songs] in a new light is something that I think will further the interest in the songs, especially as newer players come along. As the evolution of the instrument progresses, so do the players. And I think that everybody will maybe be even more interested in the songs hearing them in a more modern setting. It’s just a different way of playing the songs, because Tut plays everything with a flat pick. We kind of flirted with the idea of everybody playing with a flat pick, but nobody can do it. So there you go, Tut’s in his own league.
You mentioned “the Dobro community.” What is it about playing that particular instrument that you think makes it such a close knit community?
I find that the people that play the instrument are pretty cerebral people. I wouldn’t describe them as quiet, really, but mainly they are thinking musicians. They’re not just blasting musicians, because you have to coax the sound out of the Dobro guitar. It has so many different voices. It plays flat notes, slow notes, plays a lot of sustain – but everybody has their own sort of signature sound. It allows players to have the instrument be a conduit for their personality.
Can you describe what the environment of the recording sessions was like?
I had set up three days of sessions, but it ended up being four, because Mike Auldridge and Curtis Burch could not come in on the first three days. The Dobro players that came in, we tried to do it in three – I think one day it was Phil Ledbetter, Orville Johnson and Cindy Cashdollar [for example] – but there ended up being a fourth player in there for a couple of the days. But you know what? They [the dobro players] hung out. It was easier because Rob Icke’s ResoSummit had just ended. So there were a lot of Dobro players in town who were actually instructors on that. I sort of planned it that way because I knew a lot of those people would be in town, and it would make the logistics of recording the thing a little easier. The support players were all here in Nashville. I just lined up a different band for each day, so only three players would have the same band. We had a really different complexion for the songs on each day. When I finally sequenced the record, all the bands were mixed up, so it changes the whole mood.
A Tut Taylor resophonic guitar
But all the Dobro players hung out and watched each other play, there was a lot of comradery there. And that was really great to see. That’s another thing that’s different about the Dobro community than any other instrument [community] that I know of. Some of the players were even playing the same guitar from cut to cut. Instead of playing their personal guitar, they’d say they liked the sound of Billy Cardine’s guitar. I think Phil Ledbetter, Billy and someone else played Billy’s guitar. So when it got to be late in the evening, the time for Billy to play, I said, “Billy I think you should change your strings, everybody’s played your guitar all day long!” I don’t think he would have changed them if I hadn’t told him to [laughs]. But that’s just the way it went. There was a lot of comradery. You know, for Dobro players, it’s not as different now as it was 20 years ago, but it’s still a different animal. We don’t run into each other that often. We do a lot more often then we used to, but it’s just really nice you know? It’s like being in the oddfellows club or something.
What did you learn about yourself as a producer making this record?
Well it was real easy [laughs]. It’s one of the easiest records I have ever been a producer of. My role as producer on this record was more logistical. I was more of a director and a travel agent, and a hotel booker than a producer. I made the pieces fit together and got all the people to the studio, and Bill VornDick was nice enough to donate all the studio time. We had a great studio, and all the best class A gear, one of the best mic collections in the world. It was all available to us and he didn’t charge us a dime for any of it. You know, the whole thing was really lucky. You don’t often run into a record that has as much cooperation as this one did, and it was all in the name of Tut Taylor.
Another thing that helped the record a lot is that the songs are all Tut’s songs. They’re all written by Tut, he has all the publishing rights on them, he has all the writing credit on them, and anything the record sells, all the money goes directly to Tut. In every way. And that’s hard to do. Many artists, all of their songs are usually written by other people, so you have to split it with somebody, but in this case Tut gets 100%. Everything goes directly to him. There’s no middle man anywhere.
You kept the album a secret from Tut. What was his reaction when you presented the album to him?
Yeah, I kept it completely quiet. When I told each person about it, I said, “The one stipulation is, you cant tell Tut. Because this is going to be a surprise, this is going to be a present to him, hopefully a present that will keep on giving. But I don’t want him to know about it. I want that to be part of this, that it’s a nice surprise.” He had no idea that that many people were really interested in his songs, in his playing style, or in him, the whole package. He was very humbled and really, really surprised and really, really happy when I told him. When I called him up and told him what we’d done, we had already put the CD in the mail to him, so it was going to come that day. So I could tell him what we’d done and then later on that day, hopefully, if the mail systems were working, he could listen to the fruits of our labor. I think he was more pleased and honored with the idea that he was listened to, that was he revered by all of the players. I don’t think that he thought that we, as a D0bro player group, thought of him as much as a Josh Groves or a Mike Auldridge, or anyone like that, but we do. And it brought it home to him. It was a really nice feeling and it was really great to be on this end of it to tell him. It’s something that I’ll never forget.
Tut Taylor
I would say that Tut Taylor is one of the building blocks. If you’re a Dobro player, you may not know what it is, but there’s some inflection in your playing that Tut Taylor is responsible for. And if you really start digging and start looking around in there, you’ll find it. You’ll find Josh Graves in there, you’ll find Mike Auldridge in there, you’ll find Bashful Brother Oswald in there – all these people were responsible for huge parts of playing styles for the instrument that we we all love and play. So I would say, “That Tut Taylor, you owe him a great debt of gratitude for what he’s given.” That’s just how I would explain Tut Taylor to a new Dobro player.
While we’re on the subject, what was it that first attracted you to play the Dobro?
For me it was the sound of the Dobro guitar. The sustain, the lonesome howl that it can make. It’s capable of making all kinds of sounds, and I’ve tried to display them all in my career so far. It’s a different sounding instrument than any other instrument out there. You can’t duplicate the sound of a Dobro guitar without having that particular kind of instrument in your lap. You can’t do it. We’ve tried to sample it, we’ve tried to do all kinds of things with it, but it just doesn’t sound right, you’ve got to be actually physically playing the instrument to make those sounds. When I heard Josh Graves and Tut and Bashful Brother Oswald, they were the first guys I heard playing the Dobro, the sound of the instrument went right through me. I was really young at the time. I was ten or eleven years old, and I knew I wanted to make that sound. Where I lived, in northeastern Ohio, it was a pretty hard instrument to find. So I really had to dig. That was the chore, but I would have done anything to get one, and I finally got one. I’ve just been fortunate enough to be able to make a good sound on the thing since. And everybody on this record is in the same bag. Everybody on this record is just a great player and they’re the cream of the crop when it comes to playing the Dobro guitar. The people on this Tut Taylor tribute record are the best that there are on the planet.
You can purchase Southern Filibuster here.
You can read our exclusive 2009 interview with Tut Taylor here.
