The David Grisman Interview Set II

Last time I spoke with my guest he hipped me to Herbie Nicholas, Village Music and the album Bass Ball which I still haven't found.

Since that time I Have been Woodshedding in many different regions of the country. Talking to Charlie Daniels about his bluegrass upbringings in Appalachia, or maybe Bill Keith who is a master of the banjo. It Could have been talking with Peter Rowan before a concert I promoted for him in Sahuarita where he talked about why the outlaws migrated from Texas to Stinson Beach.

Dawg Music is dawg grass, dawg jazz, fluid improvisational melodic invention it's not a bastion of hard bop like Horace Silver or Art Blakey but it has the swing element thanks to the drumming of  George Marsh at City Winery not the Jabberwocky, where Richard Greene almost dislodged Herb Pedersons eye ball with an up bow.

My guest has forged relationships with so many artists from so many spectrums that there is no label to define his music. Acousticity is a big part of it, the plucking of the strings playing a Milt Jackson tune or Klezmer music with Hal Blaine at the Tucson Jewish Community Center.

That lifestyle catches up with some, the road can eat you up so you have to constantly retool, reinvent and look towards the light.

He's a grandfather now with incentive to teach his grand kids about good rhythm, good syncopation and letting the music breath.

When he was winning the Union Grove Fiddlers Convention in 1964 the original masters of bluegrass were still thriving Father Bill, Vassar, Chubby, Lamar, Tex. The same way it was in jazz with Dizzy and Duke, Trane and Miles, the same in soul with Ray Charles and Sam Cooke.

Those cats have long since left the bandstand and the baton has been handed off to people like my guest. He knows he is a link in the chain for future generations of musicians and music enthusiasts. He thumbed his nose at the record business and has made a living playing music that is true to him with the trusty Bob Schumaker at the helm @ 1750 Arch Records.

Back at it again David Grisman welcome to the JFS