Dobro

Have you ever gotten introduced to something, then started seeing it everywhere?

Today I'm speaking with a dobro player who plays across Montana and Alaska. Never heard of a dobro? After this conversation, you may realize it's right there in some of your favorite bands.

My guest today is Jasper Eshelman, a dobro performer in Tustin, Montana, and my brother-in-law!

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What is a dobro?

The Dobro comes from Hawaiian influence, like Hawaiian slide guitar. Before electric guitars were a thing, guitars were playing in these big brass bands and were like, "How do we get this sound?" So they reinvented the wheel and basically put a metal hubcap inside that amplifies it, and gets a lot brighter tone.

Over the years it's gone through modifications to get different tones and different body to the sound. It's played as a fretless instrument, just like a slide guitar.

Where did you encounter it?

Probably the first time I really tuned in was guys like Josh Swift playing with Lowell Dawson and Quicksilver, and then The Wilder Blue.

I been playing guitars for years, and I got tired of showing up to jam circles and being the ninth guitar there.

Before I got a Dobro, I actually had your old red guitar, and I built a nut that raised the strings up a little bit, and then I took a piece of pipe and squished it so I could have a slide, and jerry-rigged my first Dobro.

I did just get a new one! It's all koa wood. I bought it from one of my biggest dobro influences, Josh Swift. If there's a Mount Rushmore to dobro players, he's on it. I messaged him and got to talking, and saw he had this dobro for sale that he had upgraded and rebuilt all the parts himself. I was like, "Man I've got to try and make a play on this."

So yeah, I bought it, and the tone is fantastic.

How does it work?

Dobro is an open key: I strum across and it's a G chord. If I hold my bar at the fifth fret, it's a C chord, but I don't have minor chords on a Dobro. It's an offset triad.

It's pretty easy to get some unwanted tones in a dobro just from the bar sliding. You wear metal finger picks, and when you pluck a string you try to mute that string before you do anything else.

Basically there's three elements that you can play in a band or a jam:

a rhythm aspect which is just finger picking and you're back behind everybody
pads, which are little phrases that accent what that singer is trying to tell
full on lead for solos

A lot of playing is just feeling what that song needs. Some songs don't need a Dobro solo. They don't need a lot of crazy fills or something. Just a good slide here and there can really put some different emotion into a song and tell the story a little bit better.

What's your performance arc so far?

My first big jam circles were at this bluegrass festival I started going to. You'd start jamming at 9:30 at night, and you probably wouldn't quit till 2:00, 3:00 in the morning. Everyone sits in a big circle, and take turns taking a lead.

I worked with a guy by the name of Tom Randall. He's an incredible singer and a great musician, and we were just bored one day and we were like, "Hey let's go play a gig."

And so we called the local bar here in Toston MT (population 100), and they told us... no. We had the day planned out, so we invited everyone out on the back deck at my house and played for 15 people. and that was the first dobro gig I ever had.

I started playing with a really good friend of mine, Rachel Potter, and we started a band called Derailed. We started playing little bar gigs here and there and got more into a groove of it, and then I ended up just meeting more musicians.

We had a cool chance to play at something called Grown Ass Fest in Philipsburg, Montana. 4 bands came for the day, and we got to be one of them. It was a really cool experience. At that time, it was the biggest gig I've ever played, the nicest stage we had. Someone else was taking care of the sound and everything.

Then the guy who puts that on, Ben Larson, asked me, "Hey, do you want to come into the studio with me? I've got a new album coming out. I'd love to have you on a couple songs." So yeah, last November, I got to go into the studio and record, which was a cool experience.

And then man, the floodgates have opened up a little bit. There's a cool venue here in Montana called Lewis & Clark Brewing where I've seen some incredible bands play. And it was funny, like a week before, I was talking to my wife, we're there having a beer, and I was like, "I really wanna play this stage." And then I ended up two weeks later actually getting to play on that stage.

It was so amazing getting to sit in the green room and see all the signatures of all these bands on the wall like Turnpike, Corb Lund, 3 Doors Down, and Nickelback.

I'm just trying to take every opportunity I can to keep going,

What's a memorable Zeitgeist Moment for you?

I got to go just on a little quick tour with Ben Larson and the Moondogs through eastern Montana. We were playing in Ekalaka at the bar, and it just... I forgot I was playing in a bar, everybody linked up in the band. We had a banjo player, guitarist, guy on a Cajon, and me, and it just linked up. We all kind of caught lightning in a bottle for one night.

At that moment, I quit thinking and I just started feeling the music. I wasn't thinking what I was gonna play next. It just kind of transcended into just raw emotion.

Get more dobro

Thanks so much to Jasper for the great conversation!

There was so much more to our conversation. Head over to the website to read the full transcript—including stories about jamming, differences between Dobro and Slide Guitar, and something called Jam Grass...

Meanwhile, follow Jasper and his bands::

@tomrandallmusic - instagram

@jaspereshelman- Instagram

@derailed band - Facebook

@Benlarsonmusic -instagram

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