--- title: 2012 Road Trip: Travels with Ry description: Dayton, Ohio I'd like to introduce Jacob Templin's video of the legendary guitarist Ry Cooder playing music with a brilliant, but largely unknown fiddle and... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7184815/2012-road-trip-travels-with-ry/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-06-19T10:10:04.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-18T07:38:12.744Z article:section: Politics og:title: 2012 Road Trip: Travels with Ry og:description: Dayton, Ohio I'd like to introduce Jacob Templin's video of the legendary guitarist Ry Cooder playing music with a brilliant, but largely unknown fiddle and... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7184815/2012-road-trip-travels-with-ry/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf4bd602c2482934a/698b237c09208f6a52424a4f/ry-cooder-0618.jpg?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 600 og:image:height: 338 og:image:alt: joe's road trip timephotographers og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 2012 Road Trip: Travels with Ry twitter:description: Dayton, Ohio I'd like to introduce Jacob Templin's video of the legendary guitarist Ry Cooder playing music with a brilliant, but largely unknown fiddle and... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf4bd602c2482934a/698b237c09208f6a52424a4f/ry-cooder-0618.jpg?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Politics](/section/politics/) # 2012 Road Trip: Travels with Ry > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=1c53c96a-eb29-4e88-b424-926fa321b954&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Jun 19, 2012 10:10 AM UTC  Ry Cooder, legendary guitar player, front, and Dan Gellert, a fiddler and banjo player, being interviewed on video by TIME's Joe Klein and Jacob Templin following their performance at the Trolley Stop. a pub and music venue, in Dayton, Ohio, on Wednesday, June 13, 2012\. (Pete Pin for TIME) Ry Cooder, legendary guitar player, front, and Dan Gellert, a fiddler and banjo player, being interviewed on video by TIME's Joe Klein and Jacob Templin following their performance at the Trolley Stop. a pub and music venue, in Dayton, Ohio, on Wednesday, June 13, 2012\. (Pete Pin for TIME) for TIME by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Jun 19, 2012 10:10 AM UTC _Dayton, Ohio_ I’d like to introduce Jacob Templin’s video of the legendary guitarist Ry Cooder playing music with a brilliant, but largely unknown fiddle and banjo player named Dan Gellert in Dayton on Day 13 of my road trip, with what used to be called a few liner notes: videoid=1695796111001 Ry Cooder has provided much of the sound track of my life–and that was especially true back in the late 1970s, when I was writing my first book, a biography of Woody Guthrie. moreRy is not only a great musician, once ranked by _Rolling Stone_ as the eighth best guitar player ever, but he has been an avid music historian, digging out lost gems of down-home American music from Hawaii to the Delta. His version of Guthrie’s “Vigilante Man” is one of the best Woody covers I’ve ever heard. He has expanded his musical explorations internationally over time, finding and playing with the Buena Vista Social Club in Cuba; and before that, the magisterial Tex-Mex accordion player, Flaco Jimenez. He’s been writing political songs in recent years, and unlike most in that often-too-obvious genre, each is musically exquisite. His new album, _Election Special_, will be released just in time for the GOP national convention. So I was thrilled when Ry agreed to come along with me for a couple of days on the road. And even more thrilled when he told me that he’d recently found a fellow named Dan Gellert–a retired meter reader in Dayton, Ohio–who just might be the best fiddle and banjo player that Ry had heard. He had never played a set with Dan and wanted to give it a try. But he was a bit nervous: “I imagine that trying to play with Dan will be like running to catch a train that’s leaving the station.” He wasn’t talking about Gellert’s picking speed, but his creativity. This was going to be the musical equivalent of a conversation between two astro-physicists. I speak music some, but not on the level of subtlety that Ry and Dan operate. I could sense them testing each other out in the first few songs–Ry carefully and humbly following Dan’s lead–then sensed them growing easy with each other and, finally, reaching the joyous fluency of finishing each other’s sentences (most of which were sly twists on sentences and phrases that have come down through generations of country players). It was a memorable evening and great getting to know Ry, who is an utter purist when it comes to music–I think he was appalled by the stuff on my iPod, and not-very-impressed by his own work in the past, which I kept on citing, somewhat to his embarrassment. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7184815/2012-road-trip-travels-with-ry/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7184815/2012-road-trip-travels-with-ry/"},"headline":"2012 Road Trip: Travels with Ry","datePublished":"2012-06-19T10:10:04.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-18T07:38:12.744Z","description":"Dayton, Ohio I'd like to introduce Jacob Templin's video of the legendary guitarist Ry Cooder playing music with a brilliant, but largely unknown fiddle and...","url":"https://time.com/archive/7184815/2012-road-trip-travels-with-ry/","keywords":["Romney"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf4bd602c2482934a/698b237c09208f6a52424a4f/ry-cooder-0618.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf4bd602c2482934a/698b237c09208f6a52424a4f/ry-cooder-0618.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"joe's road trip timephotographers","caption":"joe's road trip timephotographers","creditText":"for TIME","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7184815/2012-road-trip-travels-with-ry/","name":"2012 Road Trip: Travels with Ry"}}]}] ```