What do Van Morrison, Ryan Adams, Dolly Parton, Rod Stewart, Jorma Kaukonen, Paul Butterfiled, Willy Nelson, Daniel Lanois, Leon Redbone, Bob Dylan, The Dixie Chicks and John Herald all have in common? Well, yes, they are all musicians from diverse genres, but they also have shared the stage or studio with Cindy Cashdollar, the 2013 ELLNORA: The Guitar Festival Artist-in-Residence.
Cashdollar, the recipient of five Grammy awards for her work with the post-modern kings of Texas swing, Asleep at the Wheel, first came to the guitar in her hometown of Woodstock, New York. She began playing guitar at age eleven, and later heard a recording of the late, legendary guitar master John Fahey playing bottleneck guitar. She fell in love with the sound but it wasn’t until she was a waitress in a local bar and saw someone playing Dobro that she decided to make that her instrument of choice.
The Dobro is a guitar innovation of the Dopeyra Brothers of Czechoslovakia in 1928. The word is a contraction of, Dopeyra Brothers, and translates to “good”, or “goodness” in Slavic languages. In a 2005 interview on the talk show, Focus, with Jack Brighton, on WILL-AM, Cashdollar noted that the slide guitar as we know it originated in Hawaii as a spin-off of the local slack key guitar style. From there it made its way to the U.S., by way of the Mississippi Delta country blues players, and then on to the western swing world where it continues to be a ubiquitous member of the band.
Her neighbors in the small but hip town of Woodstock included Levon Helm and Rick Danko of The Band, the great bluesman Paul Butterfield, and bluegrass legend John Herald, of The Greenbriar Boys fame. Cashdollar got to play music with all of them.
Although Cashdollar hasn’t found gender as a barrier to her profession, she says, “some people are surprised at women seen in professions where they themselves aren’t expecting it.” While playing with John Herald at a bluegrass festival, one of the other festival performers asked, “what’s a girl doing playing that instrument?”
She goes on to say that, “you need to make sure you are on time when the tour bus is ready to leave or someone may say, she’s a girl, or course she’s late.”
The list of collaborating performers in Cashdollar’s discography reads like a Who’s Who of Americana, roots, and popular music, with a side of Roma and Indian music to round out the musical feast. Her 2003 solo release, Slide Home, features music greats such as Sonny Landreth, Marcia Ball, Jorma Kaukonen, Mike Auldridge, the premier Dobro player for the bluegrass, jazz, folk fusion band, The Seldom Scene, and Redd Volkaert, the famed Telecaster guitar slinger for Merle Haggard.
She toured with BeauSoleil, for their 25th anniversary tour, the Ryan Adams band, The Cardinals, and she can be heard as an occasional guest on the NPR show, Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor.
Cindy Cashdollar’s first appearance at Ellnora was in 2005, which was then still called The Wall to Wall Guitar Festival. Cashdollar landed in Champaign-Urbana in a very big way that year. During that weekend she participated in the Masters of the Slide Guitar program as part of the festival, and also played locally at Corson’s Music, the Highdive, and the Iron Post. In that same 2005 interview on WILL-AM, Brighton commented on the difficulty of playing a guitar without the benefit of frets, comparing the sound to a trombone with strings, using only a slide bar to produce the notes. Cashdollar admitted that keeping in tune always seemed to be a problem, and it “sometimes feels like flying a plane without the benefit of controls.”
Her second appearance at The Wall to Wall festival in 2007 was equally energizing. Playing the kick-off party with Sonny Landreth, they gave the folks, what one reviewer called, “an unforgettable lesson in blues music.
For her third appearance, this time at the renamed Ellnora Guitar Festival in 2011, Cashdollar took the stage with her former guitar teacher, and country blues master, Rory Block for a set of music that shook this audience member clear down to my soul.
This year, as Artist-in-Residence for the Ellnora Guitar Festival 2013, Cashdollar may show up anywhere during the festival so keep your ears open and eyes peeled. She is also scheduled to appear, once again, at Corson’s Music, {202 W. Main, Urbana), Wednesday, September 4, at 5:00 p.m. This event is free. Come on out meet one of the world’s great slide guitar legends, and pay tribute to one of the icons of the C-U music scene, Mr. Dyke Corson.