Bluegrass Jam Along
The IBMA Award winning podcast for anyone and everyone who loves bluegrass.
Free fiddle tune backing tracks and interviews with amazing people from the world of bluegrass.
For every tune we give you four brand new tracks:
- Backup 4 times through (you play the tune or improvise breaks)
- Tune 4 times through (you play backup)
- ‘Jam Along’ (4 complete run throughs, alternating backup and tune)
- Full performance
For more info and chord charts, visit https://bluegrassjamalong.com. Hope you find these tracks useful (and thanks for listening!) - Matt
Bluegrass Jam Along
David Grisman - Celebrating 35 Years of Acoustic Disc
My guest this week is a legend of American string band music.
When David Grisman raised his middle finger to MCA Records, after being dropped for failing to meet arbitrary sales targets, he couldn't have known it would spark a 35-year musical revolution. As one of America's foremost, and best loved, mandolin virtuosos turns 80 this year, he offers a fascinating glimpse into the birth, evolution, and future of Acoustic Disc, the independent label he founded in 1990 that became a vital archive of American string band traditions, as well as home to over three decades of his own music.
Grisman's journey from frustrated artist to label founder came at a pivotal moment in music history, as CDs were eclipsing vinyl and the digital revolution loomed on the horizon. He built his own studio, using gear he bought from the iconic 1750 Arch Studios, and Acoustic Disc was born. The label's early success—including Grammy nominations for its first two releases—established a blueprint combining Grisman's new compositions, collaborations with luminaries like Jerry Garcia and Tony Rice, and carefully chosen historical recordings.
The switch from physical media to digital distribution liberated both Grisman's creative vision and business model.
"It's just too beautiful a concept to make one product and sell an infinite number without manufacturing anything," he explains.
This shift allows him to release an album every month, including expanded versions of classic recordings with Tony Rice, Jerry Garcia, and others. These "deluxe editions" offer fascinating insights into the creative process behind influential albums like Tone Poems, capturing not just the music but the conversations between master musicians at work.
Whether you're a huge Grisman fan, dedicated bluegrass lover or just a fan of acoustic music at its best, Acoustic Disc's extraordinary catalog offers a gateway into America's rich string band traditions.
Find out more at acousticdisc.com and, while you're there, sign up for their weekly newsletter to receive a free "Treat of the Week".
For updates, follow David on Instagram and Facebook
Happy picking.
Matt
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Thanks to Bryan Sutton for his wonderful theme tune to Bluegrass Jam Along (and to Justin Moses for playing the fiddle!)
Bluegrass Jam Along is proud to be sponsored by Collings Guitars and Mandolins
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Hi, this is Matt and you're listening to Bluegrass Jam Along, the podcast for anyone and everyone who loves bluegrass. Hey, everybody, welcome back to Bluegrass Jam Along. I've got a really, really fun episode for you. This week I've been chatting to David Grisman. David turns 80 in a couple of weeks. It's also 50 years since the start of the David Grisman Quintet, but tonight what we're going to talk about is 35 years since he founded Acoustic Disc, the record label that he runs and owns, and such a great conversation. Really enjoyed chatting to him.
Matt:There's so many I mean I could have had five different chats with David, all of which would have been fascinating and all of which would have taken up an hour of just, you know, glorious conversation, but really enjoyed it. You're going to hear a bit about how Acoustic Disc started, how the label's gone from being a CD label to a digital label, some of the benefits of that, what that allows David to do, the range of music he's put out. We're going Tone Poems a bit about tone poems that he put out with Tony Rice and the expanded version of that. Just so much interesting stuff, so much interesting stuff. It's a real treat to get to have this. I really want David's to thank Craig Miller, david's manager, who's been David's manager for 50 years now, for helping get this together, and thank David for chatting to me. It was
Matt:really, really good fun.
Matt:Here comes my conversation with David Grissman. I hope you enjoy 'my. Sometimes when I do introduction' an episode of the podcast, I say my guest tonight needs no introduction, and that's probably never been more true than it is tonight. But he could also be the kind of guest who has several introductions because he wears so many hats. He's been at the forefront of instrumental string band music for over half a century. He has been a key figure in bluegrass, a huge figure in the mandolin world, he's a composer, he's a record label boss and everything Grisman he's done could easily be an episode in its own right. David Grissman, it's a real pleasure to have you here.
David Grisman:Oh, thanks, Matt. Thanks for having me.
Matt:And there are so many things we could talk about. This is about to be your 80th birthday. In a couple of weeks, it's 50 years since the David Grisman Quintet first got together. But what we're going to chat about, and I'm really excited about this, is it's 35 years since you started Acoustic Disc.
David Grisman:Wow. Time flies! eah
Matt:Yeah it does, doesn't it? And it's such a cool thing that you've done with Acoustic Disc and I'd love to know, before we get into some of the details, just sort of how it came about starting your own label in the first place.
David Grisman:Well, it was total happenstance. I had been recording for MCA Records and I had a contract for several records. But I did a live project with Sven Asmussen, a great jazz violinist from Denmark, and they put the record out. But they put a clause in my contract that if I didn't sell, I think, 25,000 copies in nine months, they could drop me. And I guess I sold 19,000. I was ready to make a record and nothing was happening, and finally found out well, if you send us a demo of what you want to record, we'll give you an extra six weeks while we figure it out. And I told him not to bother with a simple motion of my middle finger, translated through my manager, in any case.
David Grisman:Two friends, Artie and Harriet Rose, had moved to California, where I was living, and wanted to start a business there, and this was about the time LPs were going down and CDs were coming up, and so their initial idea was to start a CD store and I was helping them look into that. But we realized pretty soon that you couldn't really compete with the studio that I'd been working at. 1750 Arch Studios in Berkeley had closed down and one of the engineers there put it in my head that I should acquire all their equipment and build a studio. And he convinced me to do that. And I was building this studio and I was like being dropped by my record label. I was ready to record a record and I had two friends that wanted to start a business. So that's what happened. We said, oh, we can start a CD company. And we did. And I made that first record called Dawg 90, and it came out in 1990, which you pointed out is now 35 years ago and my second release I was very interested in the music of Jacob de Bandolim, who was kind of a master musician from Brazil, a mandolin player who was the kind of leading proponent in a genre called choro music, negotiated the rights to his recordings to lease them from RCA Brazil and was planning to put that out as the second release.
David Grisman:And then Jerry Garcia came over for a visit and suggested we make a record. And I told him I just built a studio and started a record company. And he said and started a record company. And he said, great, we'll do it for you. So that was the easiest contract negotiation in history of my history. Anyhow, we started recording that very day and that ended up being our second release and that kind of catapulted us. Actually, the first two releases were nominated for grammys.
Matt:um, so we were batting a thousand there for the first year, but anyhow, that's how it got started and that's fascinating because just those three releases that sort of contains the seed of what Acoustic Disc has grown into. It's kind of on one hand putting out your new music, also music of people you've collaborated with over the years, and also finding interesting music from elsewhere and making that available. And those sort of three strands have really run through all of the past three and a half decades in Acoustic Disc, haven't they?
David Grisman:That's a very astute observation on your part.
Matt:Because it's an interesting label for something. Even just talking about 1750 Arch, like there's a whole chunk of string band history happened in those rooms and on that equipment and some amazing music came out of there and it's great to hear that that equipment was still being used.
David Grisman:Right, music came out of there and it's great to hear that that equipment was still being used, right there's uh, well, probably it's all faded into the sunset and been replaced by now.
David Grisman:Um, because right now we've become all digital and just, uh, I've tripled my producing output since my wife, tracy, and I acquired the full ownership of the company in 2020.
David Grisman:And partners wanted to retire, and so we took the leap of faith. And so we took the leap of faith and, coincidentally, the pandemic came in right about that time and kind of just decimated my touring business or activities. And so we had a new endeavor to operate this company and we quickly decided that since CDs physical CDs were not really viable commodity and we really didn't want to, we had done been doing digital releases for, oh, I guess maybe 10 years. I read a book about 20, 25 years ago called the Future of Music, which kind of predicted what would happen, and so I really wanted to get on board the download facet of it, and it took several years to get that happening in the early stage. But by 2020, we were able to convert our or build a new website that could handle all of that, and so that took about six months and then we're off to the races here and I try to put out a new release every month.
Matt:Wow, and I guess, if you're not tied to and it's extraordinary just thinking about that that when acoustic discs started, cds were just starting to get a proper foothold in the market and people were still buying lps, people were still buying tapes, but cds were definitely in the ascendancy and just sort of look now you know this entirely, pretty much entirely digital label, although lps are are selling more than CDs right now.
David Grisman:But you know, it's just too beautiful a concept to be able to just make one copy or one product and then be able to sell an infinite number of them without manufacturing anything. So it's just, and plus we can. We put out a lot of what I call high definition versions of these projects and expanded versions of earlier projects that we call deluxe edition, with added material and at a higher resolution than than cd. So it's kind of a win-win situation. And music sounds better, we can put out more of it and, uh, you know, the customer gets the music right away, we get paid right away and it's just a beautiful concept you don't have all your money tied up in stock, which is a bonus right right.
David Grisman:That's the all the kind of negative parts which I never really you know, my partners were really engaged with that aspect of the business, but that that's where the headaches begin. You know um how many to make, and the fact that it's a consignment business and they can get lost, they can get broken, they can get returned.
Matt:Uh, it's kind of a nightmare for a musician and it feels like um, it feels like it plays right into the, the sweet spot of getting your music out there, because it feels just from the amount of stuff there is, it feels like you're somebody who's always recorded a lot, regardless of whether it's a specific studio product, there's just so much stuff. It feels like the tape was running for most of your creative life by the amount of stuff that's come out.
David Grisman:Well, you know, my big inspiration was a man named ralph rinsler who, uh, was actually a neighbor of mine and growing up in desaig, new jersey, and my mom was his art teacher. He lived four blocks away and he was a fantastic, uh, mandolin player. He was in the greenbrier boys, which was the first bluegrass band in new york city, and he was a folklorist who, really a renaissance man he, he discovered doc watson and brought the tapes. I brought tapes back and I was sitting in his kitchen at the age of 15 and he said I was the first person to notice Doc's playing because he was on a recording of. Clarence Ashley, who was an old-time banjo and guitar player, would record it in the 20s and Ralph had rediscovered him and went to Tennessee to record him.
David Grisman:Doc Watson was one of his neighbors who ended up on the recording and I kind of went from the I had discovered bluegrass music around that time and was smitten with it and this incredible person took me and two fellow misfits from junior high school from the ground floor to the penthouse, so to speak, and it was a very great experience. That's continuing to this day and he, I got onto the idea that, well, this is music you can record with one microphone. Onto the idea that, well, this is music you can record with one microphone. And I had, my mom had given me a wall and sack tape machine and I started recording stuff you know off the radio. I've always been, I guess, a collector or an archivist, you know.
Matt:I mean, that's one of the beautiful things about um, about acoustic disc, is it is sort of an archive but it's also an onward, moving, growing, living. It manages to be both at the same time, which is such a fascinating thing like labels tend to be one thing or the other, and it manages to be this sort of archive and continuing breeding ground for, you know, david Grissman, music, but also all the things that you're interested in, so the history of the mandolin or the history of recording, or all these things that just you know. You reach out and pull into that and there's an extraordinary catalogue there.
David Grisman:I'm glad you appreciate that I've always been into the history of. You know where things come from and you know when I got interested in bluegrass and decided I wanted to play the mandolin, you know I just was fascinated by the progression of you know American of that music. You know how it grew from. And of that music you know how it grew from, you know what they call old-time folk music. That started being recorded in the 1920s, largely through the efforts of a man named Ralph Peer who convinced RCA Victor to let him record some of this rural roots music. They'd been like the largest classical music label in the world and he got this brilliant idea to record people like the Carter family and Jimmy Rogers and the Stoneman family and it just took off, especially in the South. And you know I got interested in all of that and I wasn't alone People like Jerry Garcia and Bob Dylan, bob Dylan, and there were little pockets of kind of kindred spirits of young people that were interested in traditional American music.
Matt:And you know and that the sort of the roots of it all and how much of a crossover there was between, like there wasn't this marketing, distinguished distinction between this is blues, this is bluegrass, this is like the like american music in the sort of pre-war years felt like it all came out of one. You know it all sort of crossed over and because you know jazz wasn't separate from everything they did.
David Grisman:Actually, you know the major labels did kind of try to establish, you know blues was called race records and they were marketed to you know, different aspects of society, but you know something in the American musical spirit that appreciates it's very eclectic. I mean there are people that just only want to listen to. You know country blues or rhythm and blues, or I mean now there's a new genre every day. But you know, the music that interests me is music from, you know, the early part of the 20th century or the first half, primarily because it came out of, I guess, a more real circumstance With the advent of recording around 1900 and radio and records were developing technologically as well as aesthetically.
David Grisman:I guess you could say the business aspect started becoming a big influence on the music. Until you know, it finally achieved its. One of its goals was to make music a disposable commodity, which I disagree with strongly. I think great art is timeless and it shouldn't be. You throw out yesterday's biggest hit, but that's what it's turned into, which I just don't participate in that. I think there's music and art that's important and the fact that we can develop digital releases enables us to make this stuff available, even though it may only sell 50 copies, whereas you couldn't really think that way.
Matt:If you're manufacturing something, uh, I mean you could, but you couldn't stay in business that way and that's really interesting is that sort of need the industry has to sort of churn and make things new all the time. And you know, we went through the sort of 50s, 60s, 70s when there was this catalogue of classic music that people just had and, you know, people started talking about classic rock or kind of whatever. So the record companies just started inventing new formats to make us buy it all again. Yeah, You're not going to buy new music, you have to buy the old music again. There's something really beautiful about finding a rehearsal tape from the 70s or a live show of Tony Rice and Wyatt doing some duets and being able to go. Well, just put this out for those people that are interested in it.
David Grisman:Right, I keep finding things all the time. I really recorded once I started playing gigs and touring, I just tried to get everything recorded and the last thing I would do after coming back from several weeks of playing gigs would be to listen to it all. So I have boxes of tapes that I still haven't even really delved into and, for example and I have a great engineer comes over about once a week and we work on various things. I've always got five or six projects in the works and, um, recently I uh, you know one of my big mandolin heroes and somebody that taught me a lot and spent a lot of time with me when I was, uh, young, was a guy named Frank Whitefield who passed away this past year, a great mandolin player and um showed me a lot and taught me a lot, and I was contacted by his partner and who expressed interest in, you know, having us release anything that I might have.
David Grisman:And I realized I had a several tapes of Frank in the basement my basement playing the mandolin with me backing him up on guitar, and I hadn't heard this stuff for over 50 years and my recollection was oh, I suck on guitar, but you know it's over like 60 tracks of, and I hung in there pretty good with him and he's kind of at his peak during that period and, um, you know they're home recordings but the music is there, you know, and uh, so I have a lot of things of that nature that I keep discovering and I have a means to distribute it. And you know commercial recordings of today or 30 years ago. I mean been on this path of, you know, pulverizing whatever elements there were of rock and roll or blues or jazz into just some kind of homogeneous ilk. I don't know how to describe, describe it, I'm just not into it. I think, uh, there was a lot of great music that was more or less invented in this country and I'd like to start making hats saying make the music great again.
Matt:Anyhow, I think that it's really interesting what you're saying there about the nature of those recordings, because listening to a whole bunch of stuff in preparation for this and like hearing you with like with Doc or with Tony or with Jerry or corner of the room next to you and they're not and particularly, as you know, as string band music got more developed and there isn't you're not necessarily going to get people doing a commercial record full of those kinds of songs. I just listened today to the complete Tone Poems and there's a take of Bill Cheatham on there. There's just sort of in between other stuff.
David Grisman:Oh right, you know, and it's just brilliant between other stuff.
Matt:Oh, it wasn't, you know, and it's just brilliant and it's, but it's not necessarily the kind of thing you sit and plan to put out on your record right.
David Grisman:Well, you know, when I built my own studio was you know most uh, professional commercial recordings that I took part in you know, you showed up at a studio and there was a producer and an engineer and the artist and it was all very business-like. And you know you did whatever task was at hand and then fill out a form and goodbye. You know, and when I built my own studio and jerry started coming over, we just set up the microphones and played stuff and you know, oh, let's do that again. I mean, there was no deadline, there was no pressure, there was. Yeah, it was like being in your living room, more or less, and some of these things were recorded in living rooms and kitchens. And some of these things were recorded in living rooms and kitchens.
David Grisman:And you know, I, just when digital audio tapes came into being, they were two hours long and the engineer could just slap one in the thing and just keep it rolling.
David Grisman:You know, I mean that's as analog recording faded into the sunset, more or less.
David Grisman:You know, multi-track tapes one inch and two inch tapes were got to be very expensive, I mean, and I for a long time would record at 30 inches per second. So basically, you know, most of my multi-track recordings were made on a one-inch eight-track machine, my 3M M23, which Les Paul told me was the best machine they ever made At 30 inches per second. You know you would get, you would spend like $65 for 15 minutes and now it's just gigabytes on your hard drive Anyhow, and the commentary and the, you know talking and joking around and a lot of spontaneity. And you know I mean when I started recording you know if you had three minutes left on a reel, better change the reel, you know, because it's going to run off, or let's go over that last take so we have enough tape for the next song. And I mean I remember sessions where, well, we have five minutes left, let's do another song, and but without those constraints I think it was more relaxed and I think it produced in a lot of ways better music.
Matt:And it was interesting listening to the complete tone poems because, like part of me, thought I don't need four hours of five takes of this and five takes of that and like 20 minutes, 20 minutes of different versions of Turn of the Century or whatever.
Matt:But as soon as I started listening I was just engrossed and part of it is the chat and just hearing Tony's voice and your voice and you're kind of nudging each other in the direction you want to record in and just little, even innocuous bits like, oh, should we do one more today? Well, I've got blisters on my fingers, maybe not, you know, and it is an extraordinary insight into like making those records. It's like having a whole extra like audio booklet almost of information you can listen to for context, and I love all that stuff. I can go down rabbit holes forever on things like that.
David Grisman:I'm so glad to hear you say that, yeah, it's. I mean, one of the things I've observed is really the world doesn't really need any more music, recorded music. Because I mean, for example, I have like 112 CD set of complete works of Mozart. You know, I haven't even probably listened to 20% of it. You know, and you know, there's so much great music that's been produced and now, due to various formats, it's all available. Various formats, it's all available. You can instantly buy the complete works of Duke Ellington or Benny Goodman or Shostakovich or the Stanley Brothers. I mean, it's all available.
David Grisman:You know, back when I got interested in this stuff, man, it was hard to find, you couldn't. You know there were very few bluegrass recordings and recordings in general. You know they used to put out a new single, 78 RPM single every six weeks and of course the last one would go out of print. And where do you find something like that? You know? But now, um, say, 50 years later, there are compilations of everything bill monroe ever recorded, and complete with a, with a lot of outtakes, because major labels kind of, when cds appeared, they had, you know, like an 80-minute capacity, whereas LPs were like pretty much maximum, 45 minutes. So you know, a lot of companies started oh well, we've got extra takes from this John Coltrane session that nobody's ever heard, let's put it on there. You know so, because people that are really passionate about music I mean if you love Miles Davis or Jimmy Martin, you want to hear it all. You know, or at least have it all available for as much as possible or more than was originally released, so sort of play. You know, it's fortuitous that I kept all this stuff and you know, I realized at a certain point that this isn't doing anybody any good just sitting on my shelf or in a box, you know, and I have the ability to put it out, and so I've added to a lot of like.
David Grisman:You're saying that Tone Poems was originally one CD, but I, you know, we recorded for four days or something and did multiple takes and tried out different tunes that were never released. And did multiple takes and tried out different tunes that were never released. And you know, going back over it, I mean how bad can it be? You know, I mean I'm not the greatest, but Tony Rice was, and you know it's pretty consistent. And you know we just put out three volumes of duo recordings of Jerry Garcia and myself that were largely unissued takes and tunes from sessions where it was just the two of us and we called it Bare Bones and found over 50 tracks. So hey, I know there's some people that are interested in hearing that.
David Grisman:And one thing I've observed in my own listening is, you know I was very passionate about Bill Monroe and you know he did a, was familiar with all of his issued stuff. But a label called Bear Family, which you're probably familiar with from Germany, originally West Germany, and they put out a lot of music, american music that was no longer or never even released in the United States. And they put out several beautiful box sets of Bill Monroe's recordings. And you know the classic original bluegrass band with Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and Chubby Wise. You know that's like the prototype of bluegrass music. They put out a whole disc of unreleased alternate takes and that was mind blowing because you know I've been listening to.
David Grisman:You know Summertime is Past and Gone, I'm Going Back to Old Kentucky, just one version with one, you know set of mandolin solos, one band, and then to hear like the next take it was completely different, at least if you're getting into the weeds on this stuff and really listening that's another thing I've noticed is I used to think, well, if people could just hear Django Reinhardt, they'd all start listening to that. But it's not true, because what I call listening is not what a lot of people do. It's like background, it's like wallpaper. You don't really notice it. It's there. But I've always paid attention to music and noticed things, and I guess that's the thing musicians do and I'm not really advocating that everybody study what they're listening to. But for those that do, and, like yourself, you pick up on wow, there's Bill Cheatham that wasn't on the record, or here's an alternate take of this tune. Yeah, that that's different, because I'm used to hearing this one version, uh, you know.
Matt:And now here's three other versions well, and all the fascinating sort of chat about the instruments themselves. You know, there's a point tony's talking, I think, about the um, the sort of gibson guitar that's got a sort of scroll on it and he's going what is this thing, is it? I'm starting to like this, and you know, and it's just and that's all, because it's a project that fascinates me on two levels.
Matt:Because tone poems is fascinating, just as you can sit with a booklet and look all the instruments and that's amazing. But also it sort of teaches you, regardless of what the instrument is, tone comes from the player, like it's amazing how tony tony sounds on all of those instruments and how you you sound on all of those very different mandolins, and so it's just, it's an extraordinary listening exercise just for that.
David Grisman:Yeah, I've noticed through the years. You know people always say, oh, that mandolin sounds really good, that guitar sounds really good, and of course you know that's funny, I don't hear anything. You know they never say you sound really good. You sound really good.
David Grisman:But you know that's been another really side interest of mine is the instruments themselves and you know that's a whole other story of these instruments that were used, the acoustic instruments that were used in bluegrass and old time country music and blues is their story is very fascinating too. And uh, I've gotten, you know, observed that and, and you know, through the years, have come to realize what that whole thing is kind of about the development of Martin guitars or Gibson mandolins or you know, gibson banjos or Vega banjos, you know, and all the you know kind of instruments that were kind of oddball experiments, that kind of fell by the wayside during the development of, you know, american stringed instruments up to today. But there's kind of a golden era and it's really rooted in old-world craftsmanship. A lot of immigrants who built violins and guitars in other countries came here and were hired by companies like Martin and Gibson to develop these things which are, you know, our voices. If you're an instrumentalist, the instrument is your voice really, and that's all been very fascinating and I still keep up with it.
Matt:Well, it feels, it sort of feels really fitting that those instruments have such such a sort of rich history in the immigrant kind of experience in America. Because just listening back to you know American music in the first half of the 20th century, particularly looking at some of the releases that you've put out, and you know what, uh, what a an immigrant thread there is running through American music, you know, and even some of the things that aren't necessarily that well-known. One of the first things I bought from Acoustic Disc was the two CD set you did from Dave Appel on oh great, and just that you know, know this is. This is music that you hear the you, you hear the europeanness in it and yet it's definitely a big part of that bridge between that music becoming american music as well yeah, did you get the second volume of that?
David Grisman:yeah, have you heard that tenor madness release? Yeah, that's another kind of tone poem sort of thing. Uh, that's got over 50 instruments on it and that's. I really learned a lot from kind of uh, doing that project and researching the development of those instruments, because they they were really came out of a very transitional period in American music and recording technology, which interacted with the music as well. So it's all tied together if you care to study it.
Matt:And that's it, I think. I mean, this is sort of what this podcast is. It's me finding things interesting and pulling on threads and seeing where they lead, and then seeing where they lead and it's all tangled together and it all goes off in different directions and it's endlessly fascinating.
David Grisman:Well, I'm glad, I'm glad that you're that interested in this stuff and and, uh, hopefully you'll turn some other people on to it. That's the one area that I feel inadequate in is trying to capture the attention of potential fans of all of this stuff, because, you know, most people you know are occupied with their you know their daily lives and the music they're aware of is music, is largely commercial music that they hear on, you know, wherever they hear it, you know it isn't this usually, I would imagine. But but anyhow, I appreciate the interest and and I I think there are a lot of people out there that would fall in love with a lot of this stuff.
Matt:Just just going through the catalog. You know, in lot of this stuff, just just going through the catalog, um, you know in advance of this, one of the things that sort of piqued my curiosity was the um. Oh, it's the record that um you put out that had been coming. What label it came out on first? But it's the peter astrusco and um bertram levy oh, yeah, great.
David Grisman:Yeah. Well, bertram is a neighbor of ours here in Port Townsend, washington, and I've gotten to know him in the past dozen years or so and he's quite an amazing guy. He's concertina, he studies bandoneon, goes to Argentina once a year and he builds boats and he's a urologist or a retired urologist and he's a real Renaissance man himself. And yeah, this is. He's done records for various labels. He's done records for various labels. This one was from Flying Fish, originally on LP, and he gave me a copy of it and it was really great stuff. And that's another thing.
David Grisman:A lot of music that came out is just out of print and not available and you know, often the hardest part is to like make a deal with somebody, or even finding who to make a deal with, and I've never been wanting to be a bootlegger. I've never been wanting to be a bootlegger, and so you know there's still projects that I'd love to do. It's just kind of hung up in that netherworld of you know where music meets commerce or art meets commerce. But you know I've got plenty to keep busy. One of my things I'm working on now have you ever heard of Giovanni Vickery?
Matt:No.
David Grisman:He's an Italian-American string virtuoso who started recording in 1928. You've probably seen him because he plays the mandolin in the wedding scene in the Godfather Right, and he was a great mandolin player, tenor, banjo player, guitar player and violin player and did a lot of recording. And about eight or nine months ago I was contacted by his son who was wondering if we'd like to put out his father's music, and so there's well over 100 tracks that I'm working on and it's really amazing stuff, you know, through the late 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s.
David Grisman:I mean, this guy's an amazing player and pretty much very few people have heard of him or heard his music. So that's just right up our alley here, and so I'm working on that, among other things, so it keeps me busy.
Matt:Well, the other thing that's been keeping you busy that, like, I really enjoyed and it again speaks to this sort of dual archivist, yet kind of vital moving forwards thing is the whole dog tracks project, because it's the dog works yeah, sorry, dog works, um all right, yeah. Because it's oh, the dog works. Yeah, sorry, dog works, oh right, yeah. This idea of kind of putting out all your compositions in the order that they were composed.
David Grisman:Yeah.
Matt:You know it's a wonderful project.
David Grisman:Oh, thanks, I'm glad you know they're not. Some of the cuts on there were never released. They're, you know, different versions than what people might be familiar with. But um, and you know I may not have gotten every last chronological order correct, you know. But uh, yeah, that's fun to do and there's a bunch left. You know, since moving to Washington State I've written probably close to 40 more tunes. I keep writing them years ago just because I had a very hectic existence touring and going back and forth and trying to run to the rent-a-car place so that I could be first online to rent a car, checking into hotels and checking out of hotels, and just a lot of activities related to touring and playing music for people that have nothing to do with music and kind of wear you down, especially at my age. So I'm kind of happy to not be doing that.
Matt:So I'm kind of happy to not be doing that.
David Grisman:It's extraordinary how the more kind of commercially successful you get as a musician, the less of your life involves making music. It could very well be that way. You have to really exert a lot of energy in trying to prevent that from happening and unfortunately most musicians you know the really successful ones get to not have to deal with a lot of that. I mean they have their own jet plane or whatever jet plane or whatever and uh, but most, most uh working musicians you know got to go through that stuff. You know to play for maybe 75 minutes. You pretty much have to take three days out of your life One day getting there, uh, one day coming back, and most of that day that you're playing is involved in not playing.
David Grisman:But you know I don't regret any of it. But I'm glad at this point that I've developed something else that fulfills my aesthetic impulses and I don't have to drive to the airport and sit in the airport and get on a plane and go through all of that just to play for 75 minutes, although I miss the music part of it. But I'm going to do two concerts my son, sam, who's become a band leader in his own right. He has the Sam Grisman project and he kind of engineered a concert in Seattle on March 25th which is going to be devoted to my music, and he's assembled a band to more or less replicate the instrumentation of my original quintet and then I'm going to play a bunch of these new compositions that no one's heard, and a lot of my alumni and, uh, musical friends are going to show up and be part of that, so that that's exciting for me and will you record that you think?
David Grisman:yeah, I think they're going to live stream it, but they haven't announced that yet. Hopefully, yeah, it'll all get recorded.
Matt:I hope I can handle. It Sounds great. Well, it's interesting because you sort of talk back to that original quintet and we're talking about releasing all of this music and bringing things out of obscurity and re-releasing things. But the one thing that doesn't seem to be available is that first Debbie Grissman quintet record. And is that? Is that a kind of rights and contracts issue or is there another reason for that?
David Grisman:Yeah, I just don't. You know there's Miller and he's working on trying to get those rights back for a few of those projects. But yeah, I don't know even who owns that now, but the company I did that for Kaleidoscope, they went out of business and I think they sold it to another company that went out of business, you know, yeah, yeah, it's not a pretty picture sometimes but I'm working on it.
Matt:Well, I mean, it's such a that record is such a milestone for so many of us in terms of just I'm particularly interested in like progressive instrumental string band music, you know, in all its forms, and it feels like that was the first real attempt anybody had done to do something progressive.
David Grisman:That was all instrumental well, you know, I could certainly say that. You know the quintet of the hot club of France was pretty progressive, at least in its day, and you know there are people that you know Jethro Burns. There was a series of records or recordings made by the String Dusters which was jethro burns and chet atkins and uh, dale potter on fiddle. You know music is a continuum, you know it's a process, it's always moving and it's always uh developing and changing. And so you know, just due to the magnitude of the influence of the music business, you know it's hard to say any one thing. Is you know say any one thing? Is you know it's hey, I'm glad I'm, I'm a a uh spoke in the wheel. Or you know, uh link in the chain, uh, but I, you know I, I came along at a good time and I was fortunate enough to meet a lot of great people who encouraged me and taught me things and and I try to do the same uh for future generations uh, or you know young people, and there are a lot of young people that are interested in this.
David Grisman:There is a tendency for all young, creative people to want to kind of reinvent the wheel and I think that's not possible. Really, that's where history comes in, and I strongly believe that you should study history and even emulate things from the past. Petersburg, florida, is totally devoted to exclusively the works of Salvador Dali and it's like one big room and you start at one corner and it progressively you see the development of Dali chronologically and you can see that he started out imitating various you know, oh, here he imitates Picasso, here he imitates, you know, the Impressionists, and he doesn't really start to emerge as what we know as Salvador Dali until after about 10 years.
David Grisman:And you know, that's the way I started. I just wanted to learn to play like my heroes, bill Monroe and Frank Wakefield and Jesse McReynolds and Bobby Osborne, and I just was trying to copy what they did. And fortunately, after a certain point, I started wondering why am I doing this? They're already here, you know. And fortunately, this other thing emerged. One thing I copied was oh, they write original tunes. Maybe I should try and write original tunes. And so it's all rooted in the past, you know. So there can be no future without the past and studying the past, and and on.
Matt:in many, in almost every facet of life, it's good to know what came first or before well, I think that sort of like brings us full circle in this conversation in terms of what acoustic disc does, because it preserves a lot of the past for people. But it also charts your development from rehearsals in your living room through to, you know, and all those different bits, whether it's making music in an intimate setting with one or two people or the band or you know. There's just so much there for people to study and, um, and it's been like a remarkable thing that you've achieved with that record label and it's still going strong, and a release a month is an extraordinary thing, um, and we're all the richer for it, I think, and I just want to thank you for taking the time to talk to me about it well, thank you for for talking to me about it and for your interest, and I'm sure you'll help spread the word.
David Grisman:It's AcousticDisccom and we get on our mailing list and every week today, every Wednesday, we put out what we call a Treat of the Week, a free track that you can download from one of our releases. We still haven't gone through them all. We've been doing this about three years and today's treat is from Dog Nillo. Have you heard that one? Yeah, with Danilo Brito. It was a great mandolinist from Brazil who is really preserving the style of Jacob do Bandeleiro. I think he's arguably the greatest living exponent of that style.
Matt:Well, we'll put a link in the show notes so people can go and sign up for that and go and check out the catalog as well. Thank you so much. This has been great.
David Grisman:Well, keep up the good work, and I appreciate your interest in what we're doing.