We got a note this week from Josh Shilling with Mountain Heart, telling about what a blast they had jamming and hanging out with The Earls of Leicester while they were in Utah. Are there two string bands more at the opposite ends of the bluegrass spectrum than those two?
Anyway… Josh said that Jerry Douglas ended up joining them on stage for a Jimi Hendrix jam, still dressed in his 1950s attire.
“The Ogden Music Festival was something we’d been looking forward to for months! The location, weather, festival staff, crowd, and lineup that included groups like Jerry Douglas and The Earls of Leicester, The Shook Twins, The Deadly Gentlemen, Mountain Heart, and many others, was stellar. We were treated like royalty during our trip and can’t thank everyone involved enough.
Mountain Heart came on immediately after The Earls, and we were nervous about following such an amazing group of legends. We got fired up around 9:00 p.m., and we played for about an hour before casually mentioning on the mic, “we’re going to play a tune by Jimi Hendrix that Jerry Douglas and Tim O’Brien revamped a few years ago. We don’t know if he’s still here or willing, but if Jerry is in the house and wants to, we want to throw down with him on this one!”
The crowd went nuts, but we didn’t see or hear anything from Jerry before starting the tune. After about a minute into the song, right before the extended solo section, we looked back and there came Douglas up the stage stairs with his dobro! He walked out, grabbed a mic, and proceeded to crush the solo section, as only he can, for the rest of the song! The crowd was electric after Jerry’s sit-in, and Mountain Heart went on to close the show down after three encores and over two hours of MH music!
We want to say a huge ‘thanks!’ to everyone at the festival and to our friends/heroes in The Earls of Leicester.”
Wish we had video from that!
