Instruction was provided by a team of resophonicians including Ickes, Curtis Burch, Cindy Cashdollar, Dave Giegerich, Jimmy Heffernan, Orville Johnson, Randy Kohrs, Megan Lovell, Sally Van Meter, Lou Wamp, and Michael Witcher. Noted builders Paul Beard and Tim Scheerhorn were also on hand.

Rob explained what went down…

“ResoSummit 2009 brought together more than 100 resonator guitar enthusiasts in Nashville last week — participants, faculty, and luthiers — for three days full of workshops and four nights of performances and after-hours jams. It was definitely ‘Total Dobro Overload’ by design, with the goal of sending participants home with enough materials, ideas and especially inspiration to make the next year a highly creative and productive time in their musical lives. We had participants this year from all over the United States as well as Germany, Israel, Ireland, and the U.K., and at every level from beginner to very advanced. Every year, this event sells out quickly, because as one past participant said, it truly is ‘like fantasy baseball for reso-players.’

This was our third year, and we’ve tentatively scheduled the fourth ResoSummit for the last weekend in October in 2010.”

ResoSummit photographer Lee Hiers sent along a number of photos to showcase the spirit of the weekend

That suggestion was surely knocked down early on when choosing a title for the new Jerry Douglas Christmas album, recently released by E1 Music (formerly Koch Records). The actual title is Jerry Christmas, and the CD contains a dozen Christmas favorites, both traditional and modern, recorded with his touring band.

This is his first holiday album, featuring Luke Bulla on fiddle, Guthrie Trapp on mandolin and guitar, Todd Parks on bass and Doug Belote on drums. Jerry plays a variety of resonator and slide guitars, and Maura O’Connell guests on vocals.

Songs include:

Several audio samples can be found on Jerry’s web site, with snippets of all 12 tracks in iTunes.

Douglas will do a limited tour in December performing the material from Jerry Christmas with his band (Bulla, Trapp, Parks, Belote), and his good friends (and singers) O’Connell and John Oates (of Hall & Oates fame). You can see the tour details online.

Just in time for Halloween!

Randy Kohrs is offering readers of The Bluegrass Blog a free download of a scary ghost story from his upcoming CD. The song is The Ghost Of Jack McLine, written by Andrew Crawford with assistance from Kohrs.

It comes from Quicksand, Randy’s next CD on Rural Rhythm Records, due for release on January 12, 2010. It had originally been slated for release in mid-October, but has since been pushed back.

Randy explains why this track is being offered now, both here on The Bluegrass Blog, and to radio via Airplay Direct…

“Since we didn’t get to put the record out when we originally said we would, I wanted to at least do something around that date.  This song just seemed perfect for the Halloween season, so we rushed to get it out. I know we’ve only got a few days left before the 31st, but I’m hoping people will still be able to enjoy and appreciate it for the holiday.”

The Ghost Of Jack McLine features Tim Crouch on fiddle, Aaron Ramsey on mandolin and bass, Mike Sumner on banjo, Andrew Crawford on guitar, Chris Wood on percussion, and Kohrs on resonator guitar and vocals.

The Ghost Of Jack McLine:  Listen Now   

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During the month of October only, you can order any Colorado Case Company branded soft case, case cover or rigid case in pink.

We will then donate 25% of the base case price to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. This money will be used to help find a cure for breast cancer through increased research and awareness.

In addition to this gorgeous pink color, we will be embroidering a pink ribbon on each case at no extra charge.

This offer is only valid through the end of October 2009. Full details online.

He was the subject of a nearly six minute segment on yesterday’s (9/20) All Things Considered, broadcast on the majority of NPR stations all over the US. The piece was produced, voiced and written by our friend Craig Havighurst, IBMA Board member and proprietor of String Theory Media in Nashville.

It is focused on Road Song, the debut CD released on Rob’s ResoRevolution label, a set of piano/dobro duets with Michael Alvey. Havighurst interviews them both about how they met, and came to record together.

You can hear the audio from Craig’s piece on the All Things Considered web site.

He and pianist Michael Alvey made the trip to perform at the Red Sea Jazz Festival in Eliat, a gorgeous resort town in southern Israel – at the northern tip of the Red Sea. Ickes and Alvey collaborated on Rob’s latest CD, Road Song, a set of duets on a mix of jazz standards and new compositions.

Rob shared the story of how a resonator guitarist from Nashville got the call to perform with jazz legends like John Scofield and Paquito D’Rivera halfway around the world.

“There was a guy, Ori, at ResoSummit last year who is Israeli, and he somehow got one of the first mixed cuts from Road Song to Avishai Cohen, the director of the festival. He loved the track, and invited us to perform based solely on that one cut.

It was a really wild trip. I left on Sunday (8/23), we played that Tuesday and Wednesday, and got back on Thursday – plus I had Blue Highway shows the Saturday before and the Friday after!”

Even with that sort of nerve-wracking schedule, Rob said that the trip was worth every drop of sweat. He tells us that Eliat Harbor was beautiful, and that the hotel  where they stayed was magnificent.

“Everything was great… the sound was perfect. I was seeing all these heavy jazz cats and started thinking, ‘What are we doing here?’ but people really dug what we were doing. There was a jam stage just outside the hotel where people were playing every night until 6:00 a.m. I didn’t bother getting much sleep.

After our first show Tuesday night, I had a workshop Wednesday morning and I figured that no one would be there. But lo and behold, there were 50-60 people there! They were fascinated by the dobro, and wanted to learn all about it. Several young people came up to me afterwards and wanted to find out how they could learn. That had me flashing back to when I was first inspired to play -  those kids had that same look in their eye.

One guy asked if he could just put a pencil under his strings to raise the action to get started, and I laughed and said, “That’s just what I did!’

Our second show was sold out, with more than 1,000 in the venue. Before our second set, the festival director came up to me and said that he really had taken a chance booking us, based just on a recording, and that made me feel so good that they heard something they liked that well. Plus he said that he wanted to have us back.

It wasn’t all work, though. Rob said that he had a chance to hook up with his old college roommate who lives in Israel now, and even got to swim with the fishes, metaphorically speaking of course.

“Our chaperon for that week runs a dolphin park, so we got to hang out with the dolphins and relax at a salt water spa. It was like the Dead Sea – so salty that you float effortlessly in the water. If you laid your head back into the water, you could hear the music they had piped into the pool.

It was a very cool trip.”

You can hear audio samples from Road Song on the site for Rob’s record company, ResoRevolution.

Entitled Snapshots, Tapes and Broken Strings, the article includes a career overview of the noted resonator guitarist who has performed and recorded with John Hartford, Norman Blake, and Clarence and Roland White. Hagerman also touches on Tut’s reputation as a luthier and his association with George Gruhn and Randy Wood.

She also covers the time when Tut teamed up with Hartford, Blake and Vassar Clements to create one of the seminal albums in the history of Americana folks music, John Hartford’s Aereo-plane in 1971.

In the midst of this thriving Nashville scene, Hartford, Blake and Clements decided to form a band – The Aereo-plain Band. The resulting album, Aereo-plain, was a ground breaking record. Steering old time traditions down a freewheeling river, with four great musicians at the helm (who were joined by Randy Scruggs on electric bass in the studio), the album organically and lovingly re-examined Americana with quirkiness and warmth, dancing over the boundary lines between heritage and evolution. Often the best things come when you don’t force them, and the work they did on Aereo-plain is certainly evidence of that, still sounding juicy today when that needle hits the vinyl. The relaxed demeanor of the project was inspired by Hartford’s hands-off bandleader approach.

“John was a creative person,” Taylor describes. “He was creative in writing, I don’t know how many books he wrote, but he did write some books. Creative in his music, completely different. He had more rhythm in his soul than any person I’ve ever known. And he was a very free spirited individual. When we got The Aereo-plain Band together, he just told us to play what we felt – if we felt like playing a song to play, if we didn’t feel like playing, not to play. If we wanted to create something or add something to the song, we had liberty to do that. So I think that was one of the reasons that The Aero-plain Band CD has over the years become such sought after music. Because actually, [although] we didn’t know it at the time, we broke the barrier, we broke the mold. What we were playing was different than anything anybody else had ever played. It was a forerunner of the so-called newgrass movement. We didn’t know that then, that was not in our attention.”

“When all four of us got together we kind of played off of each other,” he continues. “One of us inspired the other and would inform another to play better or to play different or to be inventive, to just let the bars down and go for it. [Hartford] was very enjoyable to work with and it was a great experience. The only sad thing about it, he recorded back then on Warner Brothers, and Warner Brothers never did push the album, it never got out there in the marketplace like it should have been. But even then, over the years it’s gained a lot of notoriety.”

Read the full piece at spps.org.

Resonator Guitar: 20 Bluegrass Jam Favorites contains precisely what the title suggests. Mike has created intermediate level arrangements for 20 oft-called tunes, and presents them in tablature and on an accompanying audio CD.

The book is spiral bound to lay flat on a music stand and runs to 28 pages, including a forward from Jerry Douglas. Songs include Angelina Baker, Big Mon, Clinch Mountain Backstep, Lonesome Road Blues, Methodist Preacher, Red Wing, Soldiers Joy and many more.

It can be ordered from Mike’s web site, where you can also see the complete list of tunes.

Witcher also offers live online lessons via webcam. Full details can be found on his site – a high speed connection is highly recommended.

Andy Hall, resonator guitarist with The Infamous Stringdusters, married Janice Young, agent with Keith Case and Associates. Their wedding was held on May 9 at Riverwood Mansion in Nashville, TN with plenty of bluegrass royalty in attendance.

Janice sent along a couple of photos, and provided this recap.

“Bradley Walker sang a beautiful rendition of Walk Through This World With Me, accompanied by Andy Falco on guitar, Katie Studley on violin, and Hannah Schroeder on cello. Tyler Grant played several classical guitar pieces while the families were being seated, and Dave Peterson and His Old Tyme Country Review played at the reception.

We went to Deep Creek Lake in Maryland for our honeymoon, and stayed at the lovely lake house of Ben and Barbara Eldridge.”

Sounds like a lovely ceremony and a great start for their married life. Congratulations to the happy couple!

No purchase is necessary to enter the drawing, and online registration is available. Only a single entry is allowed per person, and the contest is limited to legal residents of the United States. The contest deadline is May 31, 2009 and a winner will be selected by random drawing in mid June.

The Legacy Elegant?©, valued at $1285, is a solid wood mandolin with a hand carved top, a radiused ebony fingerboard and gold plated hardware.

You can find more details about this model on the Michael Kelly web site, and full contest rules and online registration at the Mel Bay site.

Mel Bay has a couple of new instructional books that will be of interest to the bluegrass community.

First Jams: Dobro is a starter book (with audio CD) designed for young players who want to learn some simple, familiar songs on resonator guitar. It will also be suitable for a beginner at any age, offering tab and standard for the basic melody of 20 jam session standards.

The First Jams series includes similar books for guitar, mandolin, banjo, ukulele and mountain dulcimer, each showing the melody of the same popular tunes, selling for $14.99.

Also new from Mel Bay is Bluegrass On Hammered Dulcimer, which contains arrangements of 24 familiar bluegrass songs for malletheads. This one was written for intermediate to advanced players, and is written in standard notation.

8 vocal popular pieces are included along with common instrumentals, taken from the traditional repertoire and from The Father of Bluegrass himself. Jerusalem Ridge, Big Mon, Rawhide and Bluegrass Stomp appear from Bill Monroe’s legacy of great tunes.

The book sells for $14.95.

JamBuddy will turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into… well, a jam buddy. It will provide either mandolin or guitar accompaniment for 50 familiar jam standards, plus you can program in as many other songs as you like. Playback speed is adjustable and songs can be entered in either 3/4 or 4/4 time.

As the JamBuddy page in iTunes tells it..

JamBuddy will keep playing all night and never complain that you are hogging the spotlight.

The app is compatible with any iPhone or iPod Touch running iPhone 2.2.1 software.

The audio guy may have set his drink down on the mute button for the banjo mic, and you can sure hear the drums. The joys of capturing live acoustic music in a club setting…

The Billy Block Show airs live on Tuesday and Sunday evenings on 103WKDF in Nashville, and via online streaming.

The annual weekend of instruction and immersion in resophonic guitar is scheduled for November 5-8, held at the Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville, with some events at The Station Inn.

Though they have already accepted advance registrations to fill the number of students they can accept, a waiting list has been set up for those who might still hope to attend. ResoSummit has been able to offer registration to people on the wait list each year, so get on there now if you’d like to make it in ‘09.

The faculty includes Rob Ickes, Michael Witcher, Andy Hall, Sally Van Meter, Dave Giegerich and Jimmy Heffernan. It is hoped that both Mike Auldridge and Cindy Cashdollar will also be teaching in November.

Sign up for the waiting list on the ResoSummit 2009 web site.

Paige Capo introduced a revised design for their popular capo, which they say makes it faster and easier to use. They make capos for banjo, guitar and 12-string guitar as well as a number of specialty capos.

The new Paige was designed to incorporate several years of artist and consumer feedback, and the designers consulted with a number of pro players during prototyping.

Beard Guitars also introduced a new resonator guitar at NAMM, an oval hole model they call the Odyssey.

It has a single oval soundhole in the top at the end of the fingerboard. According to Chet Hogue at Beard…

“The location and size of the hole makes the guitar resonate at a different frequency and produces a very complex sound, rich in harmonics. The prototype is made of walnut with a Sitka spruce top, and the production models will feature a rosette around the oval hole.

It’s quite a guitar. They will be available soon from dealers and directly from Beard.”

No photos yet, but we’ll put one up when we get more information.

Matt had been working with Marty Raybon, and prior to that, with Lonesome River Band. Knoxville is his home town, so this was an easy move for him to make.

Brand New Strings is made up of Randall Massengill on guitar, Tim Tipton on bass, Mike Ramsey on mandolin, Stuart Wyrick on banjo, and now, Leadbetter on resonator. All five members sing, with Randall and Mike taking the lead vocal chores.

You can find audio samples and their show schedule on the band’s MySpace page.

These 3 day sessions offer a crash course in how successful studio producers “do what they do.” Led by Grammy-winning producer Steve Fishell, the sessions allow ten participants to follow the entire record-making process, from pre-production and tracking, to overdubbing, mixing and mastering.

The Jerry Douglas session is set for February 9-11 at Oceanway Studios in Nashville. Jerry and his band, along with acoustic producer par excellence Bil VornDick, will be in the studio with Fishell. Students at the session will not only be able to watch the whole thing go down, but also ask questions during the process.

Fishell has worked as a producer for the past 20 years, including work with Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, The Dixie Chicks, The Duhks, and The Mavericks. He has worked in A&R for Sugar Hill and Vanguard Records, and was involved in signing artists such as The Duhks, Casey Driessen, Albert Lee, Sam Bush and Rebecca Lynn Howard.

We asked Steve what a participant could expect at an MPI session…

“We cover many important areas of record production, including song arranging, tracking, artist psychology in the studio, overdubbing, mic selection and placement, mixing and mastering. No experience is necessary and novices will feel right at home during the sessions; however a background in audio engineering and/or studio production is suggested. Those with home studios will greatly benefit from this program.”

Tuition for the three days is $1,199, and registration is first come, first served.

Jim Lauderdale’s session is scheduled for March 2-4 in Nashville. Dates for the Bush session will be announced soon.

The brainchild of Jimmy Ross, the CD came about after a discussion between Ross, and Tim Scheerhorn at and IBMA tradeshow. Tim suggested they bring Kohrs onboard to engineer and produce. The resulting project includes nearly 50 musicians, a supporting a cast of bluegrass’ best, and 15 all-star resonator guitarists who all play Scheerhorn instruments.

Each track features a different resonator player, with only Kohrs and Tim Scheerhorn himself making more than one appearance. 17 tracks are presented in total, ranging from bluegrass numbers such as Wheel Hoss (performed by Rob Ickes) to Hot Toddy’s Snake Oil (a dual track tune, the first track consisting of some funny banter in the studio).

If you like good acoustic music, especially of the resonator sort, this CD should be on your Christmas wish list. From beginning to end the recording quality and acoustic tones of the instruments met the expectations I’ve come to have of a Randy Kohrs produced project. The purpose of the project is to showcase the Scheerhorn instruments, and it hits that mark with precision.

Some of the tracks have a more distinct “bluegrass” sound to them, namely Rob Ickes’ Wheel Hoss, Andy Hall’s Fishtail, Jack Ferguson’s Carter’s Blues, and Jimmy Ross’ Turnaround. Other tracks take different directions.

One of the standouts to my ear was Primo Duetto for Reso and Viola by Billy Cardine. This classically styled piece had incredible tone and depth with only two instruments in the mix. The textures of the tones were quite emotive and the performance was spectacular. Interestingly, this track was followed by a Kohrs’ version of Robert Johnson’s Dusty My Broom. Kohrs performs on a Scheerhorn Koa Lap Steel on this electric blues number. The contrast between the two tracks is pleasant and reveals the breadth of music genres which converge on this CD.

Another tune that caught my ear was the dark and grooving Drivin’ The Nails by Louis Wamp.

To tell the truth, I enjoyed every track on the disc. The variety of musical styles only serves to highlight the impressiveness of the Scheerhorn family, both instruments and players.

Resonator guitars are the focus of the CD to be sure, but they aren’t the only Scheerhorn creations to be featured on the recording. Already mentioned is the Scheerhorn Lap Steel, but several tracks include acoustic guitars built by Sheerhorn, and one track includes a performance by Scott Vestal on a Scheerhorn Banjo.

Scheerhorn enthusiasts will want this CD for sure, but even if you’re not a Scheerhorn devotee, or even a resonator guitar devotee, if you love great music I would encourage you give this CD a listen. You just might find you’ve become and enthusiast by the end of the last track.

Audio samples and ordering information are available on the Hornography MySpace page.

The book is Dobro Dreamer by Peter McGinn, published earlier this year and only now being widely promoted. It tells the story of a murder committed at a bluegrass fest and the various people whose lives are affected.

Peter has written previous works of fiction, and we asked how he settled on the theme for Dobro Dreamer.

“With most of what I have written, I might have trouble remembering how I came to write them. With Dobro Dreamer, however, I do remember how it came about. I was thinking about how bluegrass music seemed to be gaining in popularity, with O Brother Where Art Thou, and mainstream country artists doing bluegrass albums, and yet when I looked around I could find no novels with bluegrass themes. So I wanted to base it at a bluegrass festival.

Then I decided it would be a mystery, but I have this quirk when I read mysteries: they all seem the same to me. You have a character solving a crime, gathering clues, asking questions, etc. The detectives have differing jobs and personalities and the settings change, but they all seem similar to me. I feel the structure of the genre take shape as I read and I lose interest. I usually can’t finish them so I didn’t want to write one like that.

I decided not to make it a whodunit, but rather a who was it done to. It is the victim that isn’t revealed until the end rather than the killer. Also, I was reading a history of country music at the time, and I wondered what it would be like to have disturbing dreams based on reading about the deaths of bluegrass performers (though Hank Williams is sort of pre-bluegrass). So one of the characters plays the Dobro and has dreams. Then I threw in a lusty lady evangelist and an estranged husband on a bender and it was off and running. It wasn’t until I was about two-thirds of the way writing it that I decided who would die.”

Dobro Dreamer is available as either a paperback or a PDF ebook, and interested readers can even download a free trial version, with a few chapters omitted, online.

The sample shows brief segments from the various instruments, and the complete lesson contains two breaks each, with both audio and video at slow speeds for each instrument.

You can find more details – and a free sample lesson – at bluegrasscollege.org.

Hornography serves as a tribute to resophonic guitar luthier, Tim Scheerhorn. Kohrs is joined on the CD by an all star line up of Scheerhorn players.

The CD was recorded at Kohrs’ award winning studio, Slack Key Studio. Each track was produced by the featured musician, each of whom brought their own band to project. Spanning multiple genres, including classical, blues, jazz, and bluegrass, the CD is primarly instrumental (Kohrs contributes the only two vocal cuts) and revolves around instruments build the luthier whose name the project adopts.

Track 1 on the CD is Rob Ickes performing the Monroe classic, Wheel Hoss. Musicians on this cut include: Dave Pomeroy, Ron Block, Andy Leftwich, Adam Steffey, and Aaron McDaris.

Randy tells us the CD will be released before Christmas, and that he will have 200 advance copies available at the upcoming ResoSummit in mid-November.

Players featured on the CD are:

• Randy Kohrs
• Rob Ickes
• Andy Hall
• Justin Moses
• Todd Livingston
• Bruce Bouton
• Billy Cardine
• Scott Vestal ‚Äì playing the only Scheerhorn banjo
• Mike Witcher
• Shannon Hayes ‚Äì playing a rare Scheerhorn acoustic dreadnought guitar
• Lee Hiers
• Jimmy Ross
• Lou Wamp
• Sally Van Meter
• Jack Ferguson
• Tim Scheerhorn himself