Jerry Douglas and The Earls of Leicester will perform at 8 p.m. Friday at Griffin Music Hall, 101 E. Locust St., and Jeans ‘n Classics will perform the Beatles Abbey Road with the South Arkansas Symphony Orchestra at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, also at the Griffin Music Hall.
Dobro master and 14-time Grammy winner Jerry Douglas’ distinctive sound graces more than 1,500 albums, including discs released by Garth Brooks, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Elvis Costello, Earl Scruggs and Ray Charles, among many others.
Jerry Douglas and The Earls of Leicester’s self-titled debut album earned a Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album. Their music merges jazz with bluegrass, country, blues, swing, rock and soul.
The band’s music focuses on Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs during the period when the band consisted of Flatt on guitar and lead vocals, Scruggs on banjo and guitar, “Uncle” Josh Graves on dobro, Paul Warren on fiddle, Curly Seckler on mandolin and “Cousin” Jack Tullock on bass.
Since 1998, he’s 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. The Earls of Leicester is a bluegrass group assembled by Jerry Douglas to present the music of Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and their band, The Foggy Mountain Boys, to a contemporary audience.
“The Earls of Leicester have discovered a kind of magic that, when harnessed, allows moments once relegated to memories to roar back to life. Old sounds rattle loose chains of space and time that have kept us from forgotten joys and who we once were,” according to their website.
Tickets to Jerry Douglas and The Earls of Leicester are $15 and can be purchased online at tix.eldomad.com.
Three time Grammy Award winner David Blamires and Jeans ‘n Classics will join with the South Arkansas Symphony Orchestra at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Griffin Music Hall for an evening of Beatles favorites, including the Abbey Road album.
Abbey Road was the Beatles’ 11th studio album, first issued on Sept. 26, 1969, by Apple Records and the last in which all four Beatles participated, according to the Jeans ‘n Classics website. It was an immediate commercial success and reached number one in the UK and U.S. As of March 2014, Abbey Road remains the Beatles’ best-selling album.
Jeans ‘n Classics and the South Arkansas Symphony Orchestra are scheduled to perform several Beatles’ hits such as “Nowhere Man,” “Taxman,” “Penny Lane,” “Band on the Run,” “Daytripper,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “A Day in the Life,” “Come Together,” “Something,” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” “Octopus’ Garden,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” and others.
Tickets can be purchased for Jeans ‘n Classics and the South Arkansas Symphony Orchestra online at tix.eldomad.com or at the box office in the Murphy Arts District on Locust Street.