For a man who’s lived his life on the road, Jerry Douglas is trying to figure out what the new normal is.

“I haven’t had this kind of time off since 1973,” the Leavittsburg native and 14-time Grammy winner said Monday during a telephone interview from his home in Nashville. “I’m just getting my health back from all the traveling, from years of it.

“I’m OK and very optimistic the country is going to learn a lot from this. A new normal is going to be set sometime in July or August, and we’ll figure out what we can do about going places. Our whole society is about going places.”

Douglas’ life certainly has been about going places. He’s traveled the world with his dobro and traversed genres, using his instrument to play country, bluegrass, rock, blues and folk. He’s played with Bill Monroe and Yo-Yo Ma. He can play the songs of Flatt & Scruggs and the riffs of Jimi Hendrix.

For now, he’s staying at home. There are some recording projects he can work on in his home studio, and he just agreed to teach an online master class for Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music.

Instead of playing concert halls and festivals, Douglas is doing Facebook Live concerts at 3 p.m. every Friday. The first one had been viewed more than 112,000 times through Tuesday.

“We had almost 2,000 watching it (live),” Douglas said. “I was surprised and blown away that so many were tuning in. It was just something for me to do. I’m thinking more about how I’m going to approach it with all these people showing up. They just want to know you’re out there, and there’s something going on.”

Douglas plans to keep the weekly appearances to about 30 minutes. A lot of artists are doing similar things, and he believes keeping them short will make it easier for fans to click around and see what’s out there.

“I want to tighten this thing up, make it a little more professional, but not too professional. This is a house concert, only you have to stay in your house and I’ll stay in mine. It feels really good to play. It feels good to play to an audience.”

One thing he hasn’t tried to do is monetize it. Many performers have set up links so viewers can make monetary donations; some have a required fee to view online performances.

“I’m hesitant to put a price tag on it,” he said. “A couple people Venmoed me money. I wasn’t expecting anything like that.”

But several festivals he was scheduled to play this spring and summer have been postponed or canceled and an extended shutdown could jeopardize a three-month tour with John Hiatt that starts in August.

“It doesn’t matter how much money you make when your entire livelihood is just wiped out. It’s gone.”

Douglas isn’t complaining about the shutdown. If anything, he’s frustrated that Tennessee waited as long as it did to enact the restrictions adopted earlier elsewhere.

“It’s just been a little odd seeing everybody else closing down and they’re just trying to keep it open for business,” he said. “It all about business. It wasn’t about nothing else.

“I read about the 1918 (Spanish flu) epidemic, I read a lot about it, and this was following right in its footsteps. I was freaking out. It’s worse than they’re saying. Everybody dug in their feet on account of business, and that’s going to be remembered later on.”

Several musicians Douglas knows have contracted the virus. Guitar player Larry Campbell, who toured with Bob Dylan and produced three of Levon Helm’s albums, was seriously ill with COVID-19. In an interview with Rolling Stone last week after he’d recuperated, Campbell mentioned Jerry Douglas sent him a digital file of him playing “Home Sweet Home” on the dobro.

“It lifted my spirits like I can’t even tell you,” Campbell told Rolling Stone.

Douglas said he just wanted to help in the only way he could.

“He’s such a good friend. What can I do? It’s the only thing I can do.”

Douglas also is friends with singer-songwriter John Prine and his wife, Fiona, who both contracted the virus. When we talked on Monday, Douglas said he’d heard John was getting better. Prine died Tuesday at age 73.

“He’s been an icon forever and that last record (2018’s ‘The Tree of Forgiveness’), wow. John is doing his best work,” Douglas said before his death.

The folks Douglas is worried about most right now are his parents, who are 87 and 85 and living on a farm in West Virginia.

“Everybody knows to leave them alone. My brother takes them groceries. They’re fine. If anyone goes in on them, I’m coming after them. Those are the people I’m fighting for.”

agray@tribtoday.com