Today I wanted to share one of my favorite Garcia side-projects, Garcia/Grisman. Jerry’s collaborations with Grisman go well back into their younger years. They first met at a bluegrass festival on the East Coast (well before that whole Grateful Dead thing) and a friendship was born. Later, Grisman was key to assembling the crazy successful Old & In The Way band. He played on The Grateful Dead’s American Beauty album and also he plays a bit of mandolin on one of the Garcia/Saunders Keystone records.

Time passed…

Enter the 90s and two old friends begin playing casually at home. Grisman decides to roll some tape. Before long, they decided to cut a record and play some shows around the Bay Area.

That record, the first of many, came to be called “Garcia/Grisman”.  It was an all acoustic affair with the pair accompanied by regular Grisman collaborators, Jim Kerwin on bass and Joe Craven on percussion and fiddle. The songs ranged from originals to covers of blues (“The Thrill Is Gone”) and traditional folk (“Two Soldiers”). At a time when many felt that Jerry Garcia was beyond doing anything new or different, this record came as a revelation.

Personally, I wore out at least one cassette version of the release as it was on constant rotation in my car and college dorm. But don’t just take my word for it.

Here’s their take on the Grateful Dead’s “Friend Of The Devil” :

[youtube width=”480″ height=”385″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JSm5TP13dY[/youtube]

Where the real pleasure of this collaboration arose was in the merger of their two unique styles of music. No song better exemplifies this than Grateful Dawg. Forgive the quality of the video… The audio of this live performance from 1990-12-17 is worth it.

[youtube width=”560″ height=”340″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4-gCehGrcg[/youtube]

The collaboration continued until Jerry’s passing and has, to date, resulted in seven releases (all but two were posthumous.) The second release, a collection of children’s folks tunes and the remaining albums mix folk and jazz and bluegrass much in the manner one would expect of two men so steeped in American music.

I’ll leave you now with one more song.

Here’s “Shady Grove” from The Pizza Tapes (with Tony Rice!)

[youtube width=”425″ height=”25″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0ODUbDLS7A[/youtube]