David Grisman

Before the Interweb, every town had a corner music store, or at least a corner of a book store with music in it. The one in my town was called Fox and Sutherlands. As you would expect, there were three or four dark-rimmed glasses and plaid shirt-wearing, walkman-totting music aficionados (i.e. Jack Black in High Fidelity) who prided themselves on knowing every nuance of the music they peddled. When the music bug bit me, I started going down to Fox and Sutherlands and palling around with these guys. Much like today’s digital recommendation engines (ex: Pandora) I would feed them my musical interests and they would spit out recommendations.

One of my very first recommendations was Garcia/Grisman The Thrill is Gone. I remember coveting it like a stolen gem. It still gives me a certain excitement to remember what it was like to have found a nugget of an album that none of my friends had. Over the years I got deeper and deeper into David Grisman’s catalogue, moving first to Old and In The Way and then into the various Acoustic Disc releases, and others. One of my favorites is a collaboration David Grisman did with Tony Rice called Tone Poems. I guess I would describe it as old time instrumental Appalachian music. What’s great is that it’s just the two of them – an “ensemble of two” so to speak. You can feel the two of them sitting in the room together. In fact, you can hear one of them breathing in some of the tracks. It’s mellow and moody yet demonstrates blazing musicianship at the same time.

Many years later I performed at the Jammys with Assembly of Dust, alongside Edie Brickell and Dickey Betts at Madison Square Garden – not the finest performance in the world but a treat nonetheless. As part of the song ‘n’ dance, backstage we did an interview for a documentary they were doing on the Jammys and the woman interviewing and directing the shoot was none other than Gillian Grisman, David’s daughter. She was everything you might expect her to be – level-headed, mellow, intelligent. I’m sure she doesn’t even remember me, but I felt an odd connection with her in that her father had had a profound influence on me – one that she will likely never know, but would surely understand.

In the end I hold David Grisman’s participation on this record, as I did that purple and black Garcia/Grisman album I got in the late 80’s, with delight and pride – a stolen gem!