Year: 2014

Hallelujah! At long last, a book on the Dobro.

No, Steve Toth’s Dobro Roots may not be the complete, encyclopedic history unraveling the tangled tale of the Dobro concern from its contentious National spinoff through its Regal association, later retwining with National, and then its various postwar strands. And no, there’s not a scrapbook of images of famed dobroists at work: Cliff Carlisle, Josh Graves, Bashful Brother Oswald, and kin. Leave that all for another book, sometime in the future – maybe.

Instead, Toth has focused on the guitars – and the guitars that are the most sought after, Dobro’s prewar wood-bodied resonator instruments. And he’s done things right, with simple yet stylish photography. As the subtitle emphasizes, this is “A Photo Tour,” and a solid, organized one at that.

Toth makes sense of Dobro’s curious model numbers that have long bewildered and beguiled enthusiasts. He separates the book into chapters based on the companies’ catalog lines and series, starting in 1929 and running through 1941. The development and variations of models are well explained: for example, the difference between Model 27s built in California versus in Chicago by Regal, and then later National-Dobro developments. And he touches on Dobro’s “badge-engineered” resonators, such as the Magno-Tone made for Montgomery Ward and others.

The collection of guitars that Toth has photographed is wondrous. He has a healthy respect for the lower-priced base models – the Model 27s and 37s, which are often some of the best-sounding Dobros despite their less-exalted appointments. At the same time, he has also amassed a fine selection of the flagship models and custom guitars, such as the Model 65/66/60 with its sandblasted scroll designs and the fancy black walnut-bodied 156 with gold-plated and engraved metalwork.

The selection, though, highlights Toth’s personal interests, and unfortunately there are no ukes, mandolins, tenors, tenortropes, banjos, or any of the metal-bodied Dobros built at the same time. Nor does he get into Dobro’s fascinating and little-known early experiments with electric amplification. But the book’s subtitle makes no false promises – and again, that’s all ripe material for a thorough history.

There are some technical details, however, that would have been good to elucidate on here. The photo tour ideally would have visited the build and design details of the spun versus stamped aluminum resonator cones, long versus short spider bridges, and the wooden soundwells with either round or parallelogram holes. But that’s a minor quibble.

Toth also includes a CD entitled Sounds of the Prewar Dobros with 15 tracks played on guitars illustrated in the book – many of which, however, are fitted with later cones, mostly John Quarterman replacements.

Dobro Roots is well worth the wait. With a foreword by Jerry Douglas, this is a beautifully published volume that does these guitars justice.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s August 2014 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

The name of producer Gregg Miner’s label says it all: Harp Guitar Music. He is a leading practitioner and promoter of the multi-stringed beast and a big reason it’s currently enjoying such a renaissance. That renewed popularity is on full display here, beginning with Brad Hoyt – although it’s just one of the dozen or so instruments he plays.

Joining him are no less than 29 other musicians, eight of them also playing various models of harp guitar, including Miner. Normally, such variance from cut to cut can border on cluster-pluck, and even though Hoyt composed all 14 instrumentals, it’s as much a compilation as solo outing. And an excellent compilation it is; the only drawback is in the pacing.

The CD opens with the melodic noir jazz of “The Relative Sea,” carried by Howard Levy’s harmonica and Jeff Coffin’s soprano sax, with Hoyt on piano. Then we plunge into lively Gypsy swing featuring Miner and Joscha Stephan on guitars. Next, the waltz “Impossible Liaison” features Tomas Mach’s violin, before guitarist Phil Keaggy gently coaxes melodies from the spare “Look Inside.”

These shifts in tempo and texture lend a cinematic, soundtrack feel to the proceedings, somehow avoiding gratuitous jarring. Muriel Anderson, Stephen Bennett, Mike Doolin, Andy Wahlberg, and other harp guitarists take turns, but “Ricochet,” with just Hoyt overdubbing plucked and bowed piano, cimbalom, and a 30-string arpa viola caipira, is especially impressive. Unfortunately, about two-thirds into the program the repertoire gets bogged down in sleepy new-age. Pretty stuff, but one longs for the Gypsies to return.

Every musician is pictured in the liner notes, but with such exotic and one-of-a-kind instruments as a bazantar, lute harpsichord, Knutsen harp mandolin, 7-string bass zither banjo, and nyckelharpa, it’s a shame there aren’t more detailed pictures and descriptions of the instruments, à la David Grisman’s Tone Poems series.

This article originally appeared in VG‘s July ’14 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.