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Alabama Music Office.com goes to the 30A Songwriters Festival 2014 in South Walton County, Florida. This was their 5th year and is one of the very best Songwriters Festivals that I have covered. Jerry Douglas was at Rosemary Beach Town Hall to entertain along with Pierce Pettis and Gretchen Peters.

In addition to being widely known as the foremost master of the Dobro, Jerry Douglas is a freewheeling, forward-thinking recording artist whose output incorporates elements of bluegrass, country, rock, jazz, blues and Celtic into his distinctive musical vision.

Called "dobro's matchless contemporary master," by The New York Times, thirteen-time Grammy winner Jerry Douglas is one of the most innovative recording artists in music, both as a solo artist and member of groundbreaking bands including J.D. Crowe & the New South, the Country Gentlemen, Boone Creek, and Strength In Numbers. Douglas' distinctive sound graces more than 1500 albums, including albums by Garth Brooks, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Elvis Costello, Earl Scruggs, and Ray Charles, among many others as well as the eight-million-plus selling soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? and its spinoff live disc Down from the Mountain. As a producer, he's helmed albums by such notable acts as the Del McCoury Band, Maura O'Connell, Jesse Winchester and the Nashville Bluegrass Band.
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The Ohio-born Douglas began playing Dobro at the age of eight, after his father—a steelworker who played bluegrass in his spare time—brought him to a Flatt and Scruggs concert, where he was entranced by the sound of Dobro player Josh Graves. In 1973, a 17-year-old Douglas joined the pioneering progressive-bluegrass band the Country Gentlemen. Two years later, he became a member of the seminal J.D. Crowe and the New South, which also included future solo stars Ricky Skaggs and Tony Rice. In 1976, Douglas and Skaggs co-founded the now-legendary bluegrass combo Boone Creek.

In 1979, Douglas launched his solo career with his LP Fluxology, and also became a full-time member of the beloved family country group the Whites. By the time he left the Whites in 1985, Douglas was Nashville's most in-demand session Dobro player, while continuing to develop his blossoming solo career with a series of acclaimed and influential albums. In the late '80s, he formed the acoustic supergroup Strength in Numbers with Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer and Mark O'Connor. He also continued to collaborate on such forward-looking recording projects, e.g. 1994's Grammy-winning all-star The Great Dobro Sessions and 1996's genre-bending experiment Bourbon and Rosewater, with bassist Edgar Meyer and Indian musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt.

Since 1998, he has been a key member of "Alison Krauss and Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas", touring extensively and co-producing and playing on a series of platinum albums, splitting his time between Union Station, his ongoing work as co-Music Director of the popular BBC TV series Transatlantic Sessions, which teams American roots musicians and singers with their Celtic counterparts, and his work as a solo artist. Douglas's latest solo album, Traveler (eOne Music, 2012), produced by award-winning producer Russ Titelman, features guest appearances by such notable friends as Paul Simon, Mumford & Sons, and Eric Clapton, among others.
Artist website: Link