At a glance

Jerry Douglas’ schedule is similar to a youngster first learning to play guitar: too many strings, not enough fingers.

“What show is this?” Douglas asked at the beginning of his recent Dispatch interview. “I have to ask because I have too many things going on.”

The question is valid considering that the renowned resonator guitarist has played on more than 1,600 records and is currently in four different bands.

When he stops Tuesday at Thirty One West in Newark, Douglas will perform as The Jerry Douglas Band.

Two weeks before, he cruised through Cincinnati The Jerry Douglas Band Thirty One West, 31 W. Church St., Newark 740-258-6002, www.thirtyone-west.com 8 p.m. Tuesday $20 to $50

and Kent with the Earls of Leicester, a six-piece tribute to bluegrass gods Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt.

A few months prior, he made a few stops along the East Coast for his Transatlantic Sessions project. Douglas gathers together musicians from both sides of the Atlantic — Rosanne Cash, Milk Carton Kids, Declan O’Rourke — and hosts a show on the British Broadcasting Corporation as well as leading live concerts.

Those shows are practically insubstantial compared to his nearly 20 years playing the resonator with Alison Krauss and Union Station.

While Douglas keeps busy enough on the road, the bulk of his work occurs in studio sessions supporting other musicians.

“The whole word ‘collaboration’ is what I’m all about,” Douglas, 61, said. “I like sharing it with a lot of other people. I’m after the magic part. I don’t care about the famous part or the stardom part.”

His nonchalant attitude shrouds the guitarist’s grab bag of accomplishments.

He’s won 14 Grammy Awards — most of them with Krauss — three Country Music Awards for Musician of the Year and a residency with the National Endowment for the Arts.

Douglas’ plucky picking has been featured on albums by Mumford & Sons, the Allman Brothers and Sting, among dozens of others.

Before he sidled into the credits for A-list musicians, though, Douglas was a starry-eyed youngster in Warren, Ohio, listening to grown-ups make music on the front porch while the other kids played in the yard.

Douglas started on a regular guitar but switched to the resonator — which features a metal cone in the guitar’s top to amplify sound — at age 11.

He learned rapidly, switching over to the slide-guitar method in which Douglas

holds the instrument parallel with the ground and slides a metal piece across the strings to create chords and solos.

With the Earls of Leicester, Douglas said his playing is “intuitive.”

The method isn't easy, considering the six members are copycatting two of the bluegrass greats, but nobody stops grinning, Douglas said.

“We’re not like a Kiss tribute band; we’re musicians who’ve spent our lives creating our own careers, but in this band we’ve chosen to play this music because no one was doing it and

we didn’t want it to die,” he said.

With the brand new Jerry Douglas Band, Douglas is playing precisely what he wants to. The six-member group has a jazzy edge and some maniacally quick guitar runs.

“I’ve sort of been edging this way for many years, with drums and bass and electric things onstage,” he said. “This is what I would think about in my free time, and I just decided I wanted that to take up all my free time.”

A mixture of revamped songs previously recorded, new material and covers of works by old-school country stars, Douglas said the album is comprised of “what’s rolling around in my head.”

He’s doing this solely for kicks, but the musician sees something bigger down the road.

“I think there are Grammys and all that kind of stuff in the future,” he said.

Not that he cares too much for the award itself, but he does get a kick out of going to the ceremony.

“You can watch it on TV and it’s boring as hell, but to be there, the commercial breaks are the best part, when Paul McCartney's coming down the aisle to talk to you,” he said. “That’s what it’s about.”

— Julia Oller joller@dispatch.com @juliaoller