Picker packs in big gigs

Opportunities just keep coming for dobro player

By Walter Tunis

CONTRIBUTING MUSIC CRITIC

How many places are there where a dobro player can pick away in a year's time? And by places, we mean big places. All-star gigs. Different and distinguished recording sessions. The Big Time.

For Rob Ickes (rhymes with bikes), the answer is still being computed. The six-time (and current) International Bluegrass Music Association dobro player of the year has made himself at home of late with these prestigious projects: a series of TV performances, including a stop on The Today Show with country star Reba McEntire; collaborations with Mountain Heart, an act, like Ickes, that will perform at the Kentucky Horse Park next weekend as part of the Festival of the Bluegrass; an R&B-style gospel tune featured on an album of remixed field recordings by folk archivist Alan Lomax called Tangle Eye; and a folk, pop and soul summit with chief Maverick Raul Malo titled The Nashville Acoustic Sessions.

But of all the avenues Ickes has traveled to further the wiry sound of the dobro, the path he enjoys most is Blue Highway.

A native of the San Francisco suburb of Millbrae, Ickes moved to Nashville more than a decade ago; he and veteran players soon banded together to form the harmony-rich bluegrass group. But Ickes interspersed work as a recording studio session ace and touring duties as a Blue Highwayman with a solo career. In quick succession, Ickes cut three albums that blended traditional bluegrass picking power with elements of jazz, new grass and R&B.

"That's why I moved to Nashville," Ickes said last week in a phone interview. "I wanted to play a lot of different music with a lot of different people."

Which brings us to Big Time, Ickes' fourth and newest solo album. Bent on breaking the habit of overdubbing and studio tinkering that has made some newer bluegrass albums sound as stale as most contemporary country records, Ickes chose to cut Big Time live with musicians sitting around a single microphone. But instead of going after hotshot Nashville players, Ickes called on names he could immediately trust: his fellow pickers in Blue Highway.

"They are my favorite players," Ickes said. "I could have used a bunch of Nashville guys. But Blue Highway plays to the strength of a song. Those guys are very tasteful. Plus, we just have something special. When the five of us get together, something magical happens.

"Some of the music on the album isn't typical bluegrass stuff at all. But we would run through a few of the tunes before a gig, and the guys would play it all so well. I thought, 'I don't need anybody else for the record.'"

Big Time offers Ickes a typically varied repertoire that runs from a grassy remake of Machine Gun Kelly (first cut in 1971 by James Taylor) with lead vocals by Blue Highway bassist Wayne Taylor to a Celtic lullaby called Ireland, Love of My Heart to a spicy update of Bill Monroe's Lonesome Moonlight Waltz.

But the key to the sessions was immediacy. Ickes wanted first-take freshness instead of laborious studio production.

"I know there were things the guys probably wanted to go back and fix," Ickes said. "You always hear something in your playing that you don't like and want to replace. I took that option away from them. But the great thing is they let me.

"There is just something about sitting around in a circle playing music that, to me, is really profound. When you're sitting there next to each other, you just feel the music more than you would when you're in separate booths with headphones on. It's also a lot more fun."