[Cover photo: The Jerry Douglas Band , L-R: Christian Sedelmyer, Daniel Kimbro, Jerry Douglas, Mike Seal]
16x Grammy Award-winning artist Jerry Douglas, who has also been a member of Alison Krauss and Union Station since 1998, has announced his first album in seven years, The Set. The 11-track album, comprised of five new offerings and six “revitalized” songs from his catalog, is set for a September 20th, 2024 release via Nolivan Records in digital, CD, and vinyl formats.
Out now, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is Douglas’ rendition of the Beatles’ 1968 classic featuring The Jerry Douglas Band, consisting of Douglas (dobro), Daniel Kimbro (bass), Christian Sedelmyer (fiddle), and Mike Seal (guitar).
Douglas says about the track:
I love how easy it was to play the song. It just lays perfectly for the dobro. It gives you all the latitude you need to play the whole song from end to end, in different octaves. That melody always got me, but I never tried to play it. And when I did, it was like, ‘Wow! Why haven’t I done this before?’
Years ago, Douglas and the band worked up an instrumental version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” a song that Douglas said he’d known forever. When he performed it in London during a Transatlantic Sessions tour, Eric Clapton joined him onstage for a reunion of sorts. They had previously collaborated on a 2012 recording of R&B artist Chris Kenner’s “Something You Got,” with Clapton on vocals, that appeared on Douglas’ Traveler (2012). The song reappears on The Set, with Douglas taking lead vocals.
Regarding the album, Douglas says:
I’m proud of it. I’ve left no stone unturned. I’ve been producing records for a long time, so I really, really put on that hat for this record. Usually, I like instrumentalists to have free rein in whatever they do. It’s the way they speak. If anybody had an idea, we chased it down to the end. I feel like it’s really finished. I’m really happy with the outcome of this whole experience.
TRACK LISTING FOR THE SET:
“Gone to Fortingall”
“Renee”
“What Might Have Been” featuring Aoife O’Donovan
“From Ankara to Ismir”
“Something You Got”
“Deacon Waltz”
“The Fifth Season”
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”
“Loyston”
“Pushed Too Far”
“Sir Aly B”
