No Ordinary Joe: dobro maestro Joe Wilson makes it as a musician up north
By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor
I track down Joe Wilson at a sweet two-story house tucked in the woods in Leelanau County. It’s daytime, so Joe is the daycare dad of his seven-year-old son Oliver, a friendly 2nd grader. Joe’s wife Emily is out digging in the dirt somewhere in The County running her Green Thumb Landscapes business. A brilliant dobro player, Joe gigs most nights in one of the many bands it takes for a local to piece together a living as a musician up north. Sundays it’s The Hot Biscuits at Martha’s Table in Sutton’s Bay, Mondays it’s Cabin Fever at Boonedock’s in Glen Arbor, some Fridays it’s the Joe Wilson Trio at Union Street Station in Traverse City, some nights it’s at Hop Lot in Suttons Bay, or the Aurora Winery with E Minor. Joe has schlepped his axe and his gear in and out of pretty much every full- and part-time music venue across the north. How did he make the choice that required not just talent, but patience, determination, luck, and moxie?
“At some point in college, not expecting it to make sense, I quit Michigan Tech and started working in coffee shops with the long-term goal of being a musician,” Joe recalls. “Houghton was a tough place to do it. In remote areas it’s hard to play five or six nights a week, people get sick of you. I needed a city, or a region closer to cities.” So Joe left Houghton when he was 23 to join his twin brother Andy working at Elderly Instruments in Lansing. “I thought of myself as a rock and roll electric guitarist playing in jam bands. Elderly exposed me to a ton of stuff including folk music. There are a lot of guitarists in Lansing, but nobody was playing dobro. I loved the sound of it, and realized that if I could do that, I could be somebody.”
In high school Joe played trombone. He and Andy took piano lessons from the time they were Oliver’s age. “We quit piano in 9th grade, but that last year our teacher Bart Polot introduced us to jazz and improvisation. Our mom conned him into teaching us both together as one lesson, so he made us take turns playing something and copycatting what the other one played. We played this call and response listening exercise back and forth to learn the blues scales, and that was huge training. I used that in playing jazz band trombone.”
While working at Elderly, Joe heard the band Left Over Salmon’s Nashville Sessions with Jerry Douglas and Sally Van Meter, and he fell head-over-heels for the dobro sound. “Elderly had dobros, so I had good resources. I got a cheap one and had Tim Scheerhorn, a dobro builder from Grand Rapids, soup it up. It sounded great. He’s amazing. Now I play a Scheerhorn instrument. You can’t get ‘em anymore. Jerry Douglas and most great dobro players have played Scheerhorns. Arguably the best dobro maker in the world is right here in Grand Rapids.”
Joe’s brother Andy, a super harmonica and trumpet player, was in a new group called Steppin’ In It, playing bluegrass and roots music around Lansing. Three months after getting his first dobro, Joe played on the CD Children Take Your Shoes Off as a “guest” of Steppin’ In It. By the summer of 2000 he was a full-fledged member of this outstanding band that included Andy Wilson, Joshua Davis and Dominic Davis. His first gig as a member was the Empire Dunegrass & Blues Festival. Elderly allowed employees to miss work if they had a gig in a band. With Dominic headed to Seattle they quickly produced their next album, Last Winter in the Copper Country. But Dominic came back, and demand for the band was so great that they started touring. By the summer of 2002, Joe and Andy had to quit Elderly Instruments to go on the road with the now hugely popular Steppin’ In It. They toured until 2008 and produced three more albums: Hidden in The Lowlands, At The Green Door, Simple Tunes for Troubled Times, and Shout Sister Shout with Rachael Davis.
Throughout those years the band (plus drums and a keyboard) was home in East Lansing to play their anchor gig at The Green Door every Monday from 2000-2014. Joe moved up north in 2006, married Emily in 2008, and Oliver was born in 2009. Joe still had a gig downstate in Kalamazoo at Bell’s Brewery. “I would be getting home in the early morning with the sun coming up, and that really got old,” Joe laughs.
So he started poking around TC for gigs. He’d heard of the local mandolin virtuoso and producer Don Julin, so he looked him up in the phone book and called to ask for some side work. Don’s project at that time was a western swing band named Rusty Blaides that included locals Kevin Gills, Dave Collini, and Mark Camp. Joe’s dobro fit right in and elevated their twangy country sound. He played some with Julin’s Neptune Quartet. He and Kevin formed the duo True Falsettos and made two records, Slummin’ (2012), and Cadillacin’ (2013). Rusty Blaides became Sister Wilene with Mary Sue Wilkinson when Mark Camp left. Now he’s in The Ol’ Microtones with Don J and Wes I. And so on.
It is a constantly evolving patchwork of bands and gigs to juggle for a guy like Joe Wilson trying to support his family as a local musician. And the key to his success is how driven Joe is to get better, to keep listening and learning. His playing reveals a deep knowledge of American music going back to even the 1920s and ’30s in all genres: country, folk, roots, jazz, fusion. He is steeped in the tradition, and Joe just keeps improving. He can play any style of music with any band, creating witty licks, crafting sentimental epiphanies, or building soaring solos with inspired musicianship.
“Every couple of years you throw yourself into something really challenging,” Joe observes. “Next summer is the 20th anniversary of Steppin’ In It, so maybe we’ll do some big shows.” Joe is now teaching private guitar and dobro lessons online, and learning that “video lessons can work. There are some free lessons on my website (www.DobroJoe.com) with a digital tip jar.” Don’t miss Joe around The County at his weekly gigs, or you can catch him on July 15 at Blu Stone Winery on Sylt Road near Lake Leelanau with the Joe Wilson Trio. He’ll also be on the festival circuit this summer at Bliss and Wheatland with The Mammals or the Don Julin Project.
How lucky we are to have Joe’s talent right here in our own backyard!
