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Like no other genre, bluegrass twines back porch attitude with virtuosity, making the style a natural fit for Phil Leadbetter, a soft-spoken man whose humility belies his pyrotechnic ability as one of the world’s top resonator guitarists. A living bluegrass legend and first-call Nashville session musician, Leadbetter effortlessly dances from graceful melodic and chordal passages to solo flights remarkable for the way they echo a song’s emotional heartbeat.
That’s why Leadbetter recently won the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America’s 2008 Dobro Player of the Year honors and the band he co-leads, Grasstowne, took Album of the Year for their new The Road Headin’ Home.
Leadbetter knows that road well. His history of acclaim begins with a 1995 Grammy nomination for the band J.D. Crowe & the New South and includes 2005 International Bluegrass Music Association awards for Dobro Player of the Year and Best Instrumental Album for his solo recording Slide Effects. And his inspiring musicianship has made the Phil Leadbetter Signature Series Dobro Gibson’s most popular resonator instrument. Yet he’s lived near his friends and family in Knoxville, Tennessee for most of his life.
Working at his craft since he first picked up a Dobro at age 12 or 13, Leadbetter was raised in a bluegrass family with a father and older brother who both played banjo and who religiously tuned into the Flatt & Scruggs TV Show Saturday mornings.
“The guy who really made me put down my baseball glove was Josh Graves on Dobro,” Leadbetter says. “Then I heard Mike Auldridge of the Seldom Scene. Jerry Douglas also emerged around then, in about 1975, and after hearing those guys I was certain this was what I wanted to do.”
Leadbetter’s first pro gigs were with Hee-Haw star Grandpa Jones and with Vern Gosdin, but his real apprenticeship was with bluegrass innovator J.D. Crowe, with whom he spent 11 years as a member of Crowe’s New South. “J.D. taught me how to play Dobro behind a singer—where to play and where not to play, and how important tone and attack are to the meaning of a song,” Leadbetter says.
Leadbetter’s rippling lines on 1994’s Flashback helped earn J.D. Crowe & the New South a Grammy nod, but he really stepped to the fore co-leading the group Wildfire through three albums. He also came into his own as a composer during the Wildfire years, sparking a solo career so far documented on Philibuster and Slide Effects.
Still another jewel in Leadbetter’s crown was the 2003 unveiling of the Phil Leadbetter Signature Series Dobro. “I had always hoped to just get an endorsement, so I was kind of blown away when Gibson approached me,” he recounts. “It’s the only real Dobro being made right now, since Gibson owns the Dobro brand.
“When I started playing Dobros, they were making them the same way they were made in 1928, with sound wells. We improved on the design by adding sound posts and baffles, and using solid woods to increase sustain and make the tone richer. I love playing them and I’m really flattered that they’ve become the most popular Dobro out there.”
Leadbetter’s Signature Dobro is all over The Road Headin’ Home, the first album from Grasstowne. Leadbetter formed the acclaimed group in late 2006 with fellow bluegrass vets guitarist Steve Gulley and mandolinist Alan Bibey, who also has his own Gibson signature series instrument.
The group’s fluid ensemble playing drives The Road Headin’ Home while Leadbetter plys speedy, jubilant runs on tunes like the uptempo “Dixie Flyer” and makes his strings purr warmly in response to lead singer/guitarist Gulley in the country weeper “Here Comes That Feeling Again.” His first solo on the chain gang ballad “Devil’s Road” keys in on the pain of abused prisoners by employing a series of short stabbing notes and wailing slide tones, and he conjures the dark drama of pick-and-shovel coal mining with his slowly unreeling moody licks on “Black Lung Blues.”
Besides his Signature Model, Leadbetter’s slides are his most important tools. “I have always used a cutaway slide bar, but because I’ve had carpal tunnel a couple times and a surgeon nicked one of my nerves, it’s especially useful to me now,” he says. “A round bar is too hard to grab. For a while I used a Scheerhorn, but now I use a Dunlop Lap Dog because it has a wider bass and is kind of tall.”
And when it comes to tunings, his backbone is open G—a tuning very compatible with mandolin. “G is at the heart of a lot of bluegrass,” he says. “F and B are also favorites that I go to, but when you’re beginning in bluegrass, your world is G.”
Although they’ve just collected their first round of major awards, Grasstowne is already at work on their second disc.
“We’re having so much fun doing this,” Leadbetter says. “It’s a real partnership of equals in all ways. It’s like we wanted to have this band even before we knew it.”