Warren, Ohio-born, and Nashville-based, Gerald Calvin “Jerry” Douglas has expanded the Dobro or resonator guitar with imaginative, virtuosic playing. A former member of The Country Gentlemen and J.D. Crowe & the New South, Douglas, 61, has gone on to play with the house band for TNN’s “American Music Shop” (1988-1993) and form Boone Creek with Ricky Skaggs and Strength in Numbers with Sam Bush, Béla Fleck, Mark O’Connor, and Mark Schatz. He recorded with Russ Barenberg and Edgar Meyer (Skip, Hop, & Wobble), Peter Rowan (Yonder), and Celtic fiddler Aly Bain (Transatlantic Sessions). As a session player, he played on nearly 2,000 records by everyone from Ray Charles and Eric Clapton to Elvis Costello and Mumford & Sons.

He will be appearing at the  Shea Theater in Turners Falls on Aug. 11.

Fifteen years at this pace, however, took their toll. By 1998, Douglas felt “burnt-out.” Alison Krauss put him back on the road. “She didn’t play the kind of bluegrass I started with,” he said, “but it’s not healthy to stay the same. If we wanted to do a down-and-dirty bluegrass song, Dan Tyminski could deliver anything anyone could have wanted. The die-in-the-heart bluegrass fan, we had them in our quiver, too.”

Douglas’ twelfth solo album, “Traveler” (2012) featured Paul Simon, Eric Clapton, Alison Krauss, Dr. John, and Mumford & Sons. Douglas’ producer credits include albums by The Del McCoury Band, The Nashville Bluegrass Band, The Steep Canyon Rangers, and Krauss. The recipient of fourteen Grammy Awards, Douglas is a three-time CMA (Country Music Association) “Musician of the Year.”

Douglas’ father, John played Dobro in a bluegrass band with “West Virginians who came to Ohio to work in the steel mills. They were top-notch players,” Douglas remembered, “but they couldn’t make a living doing it. Bluegrass wasn’t popular, not the way it is now.”

Dabbling on his father’s Silvertone Dobro before his twelfth birthday, Douglas picked up the instrument quickly. Within a year, he was playing with his father’s band. “I went off with The Country Gentlemen during the summer,” he said, “but, when I came back for school, I played with Dad’s band. I had a good time but friends from school, and people I knew who had already graduated, found out I was a bluegrass musician and it wasn’t the most popular thing. Everybody else was listening to rock and roll. Bluegrass and country music were uncool. I never told anybody I was a musician until I was on the road.”

An avid radio listener, Douglas grew up “listening to Flatt & Scruggs in the morning and The Rolling Stones at night. It all crept in and had an influence.”

Douglas’ Dobro powered the “O Brother, Where Art Thou” soundtrack. “We were too bluegrass for country radio,” he said, “and too country for bluegrass, but that CD sold ten million copies through word of mouth and good, honest music.”

The Telluride Bluegrass Festival has been an annual destination since 1981.

“That’s a full-grown adult,” said Douglas. “It’s a beautiful, storybook-looking place at the end of a canyon. You have a waterfall (the Bridal Falls) coming from the snow melting at the top of the San Juan Mountains. You’re at an elevation of 9,000 feet in a town that usually holds about 1,500 people but you’re with 10,000 people. Everything is over-run but everybody is happy. It’s humanity at its finest.”