So we came up with progressive bluegrass.

Yeah or newgrass. What is that, rock ‘n’ roll with a banjo? What is country music? Country music, as far as I’m concerned, is now rock ‘n’ roll and rock ‘n’ roll is now grunge or something. Country music in 1922 was entirely different than it was in 1948. And now country music is pretty much pop music. It’s rock ‘n’ roll with more melodic content.

Music should be described in musical terms, but the layman doesn’t relate to that. You’d have to get really technically verbiage to describe any kind of music correctly.

How did Jerry Garcia give you the nickname Dawg?

Well, it was just an off-the-wall thing. We had a bluegrass band, Old and In the Way, which was probably a newgrass band at the time. It was a bluegrass band, but we did adapt other material. But in that band, we all had nicknames, and Jerry came up with that.

What was Jerry’s nickname?

Spud Boy.

Speaking of names, I understand you named your son Monroe after Bill Monroe.

Right, my first son, yes.

And now he’s helping you out with Acoustic Disc?

No, he was my agent, and he just moved on to greener pastures. But he’s a good guy. He made me a grandpa last year. A double grandpa. He’s the father of twins. On my DGQ album I’m working on, I wrote a tune called ‘Twin Town.’

Girls or boys?

One of each. They were born on the 8th of January, which is the name of very famous traditional American fiddle tune. So I did a new arrangement of that called ‘Twin Town.’

And, of course, that’s Elvis Presley’s birthday. That’s neat that they share that. What did Monroe think of Dawg Music?

It’s hard to know what Bill Monroe thought of anything. A friend of mine sent me an email about a year ago and reminded of an incident in the ’60s. Some friends of mine, Pete Rowan and Richard Green, were playing with Bill Monroe. They played a concert in Boston, where we were living at the time. Pete Rowan had a party after the concert, and I was playing in a room with some other guys. Bill Monroe was standing at the door listening. We were playing a tune of mine. I don’t remember which one. But Bill Monroe said, ‘I didn’t write that tune, but if I did, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.’ So I think he liked it, but Bill Monroe’s attitude was ‘there is no other music than bluegrass. It’s the greatest music in the world. Anybody that does something different…’ He liked it and probably hated it at the same time. It’s hard to know. He was a very mysterious guy in terms of knowing what he was thinking.

You had played with him but not on a permanent basis.

Years ago, I thought of writing a tune called ‘Everybody’s Played with Bill Monroe but Me.’ He never hired mandolin players except once when he broke his arm in the ’50s. But a lot of my friends worked with him. He would often invite me up to play. One time Pete Rowan was late, and I played guitar with him for a few songs. There’s a Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys CD on Smithsonian Folkways called ‘Live Recordings 1956-1969, Off the Record, Vol. 1’ (see www.si.edu/folkways/40063.htm), which is live stuff put together by a guy named Ralph Rinzler who was one of my mentors. There’s a cut on there that was recorded at a party, and I’m playing bass on it. So I actually did get to record with Bill Monroe.

How long have the guys in the David Grisman Quintet been playing with you?

Jim Kerwin, the bass player, has been in my quintet for 14 years. Joe Craven, plays violin, mandolin and percussion, and he’s been in the quintet for 10 years. Matt Eakie plays flute and percussion, and he’s been in 10 years. And Enrique Coria plays guitar and he’s from Argentina. He’s been with the band six years. This is the band that’s been with me way longer than any other group.

Are any of them part of the quartet with Martin Taylor?

Jim is, and George Marsh, who played in my group for years, is the drummer.

Your latest release, ‘Dawg Duos,’ is with a bunch of folks who’ve played with you and with each a bunch over the years. They include Bela Fleck, who you’ll be touring with soon. Comment on how you like recording with him and performing with the Flecktones.

Well, that’s always a good double bill because we both have similar backgrounds and have taken our respective instruments out of the normal settings that have been associated with them. But we’re entirely different. We have a great time. We always play together. He sits in with my band and I sit in with his. I think Bela is one of the great masters of string music and one of the great innovators.

Out of everybody you’ve both played with over the years, from Flatt & Scruggs to Edgar Meyer and Mark O’Connor, the two of you have turned more young people onto string music through your connections with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead and his connections with both the Dead, Phish and Dave Matthews Band. How has that helped the music that you play thrive?

That’s totally essential because that’s where the future and the present live. It’s very encouraging. A guy like Garcia always was into exposing more obscure types of music to his audience. That was one really good thing about the Dead. They often shared their bill with music that was not mainstream. And it worked. People heard something that they might not hear and they liked it. That’s been a big help.

At one of your shows, it’s Dawgheads and Deadheads. It’s the same with Bela. There’ll be all these Phish Phans there and there’ll be folks who are more into his jazz and bluegrass sides who don’t even know who Phish is.

Right.

What do you think of some of these jam bands that have been inspired by you and Old and in the Way and Bela and even Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs, like Leftover Salmon and String Cheese Incident?

I’m not a big fan of what I call electric bluegrass. Bluegrass, to me, with the drums and electric instruments, it loses its subtlety and beauty. Bela understands how to use his instrument. He’s an electric group but he’s not really playing the same music that he would acoustically. He knows how to adapt music to the instrumentation, whereas a lot of what these other guys are doing is pretty much playing bluegrass the way they play it on acoustic instruments but on electric instruments. That, to me, doesn’t work.

That music has a different sensibility and dynamic range. It’s just not a question of plugging in and playing ‘How Mountain Girls Can Love.’ If you’re going to plug in, you should play plugged-in music, music that works more with those sounds. And that’s what Bela understands.

I kind of do the opposite. I play a lot of music that’s electric-based but on acoustic instruments.

Like ‘Hound Dog?’

Well, yeah, that’s ‘Retrograss.’ But I’ve done some funk tunes. I did an album called ‘Acousticity.’ I’m taking music that’s not usually heard on these instruments and adapting it. For me, it works, but it’s not the same music either. I think a lot of those bands you mentioned, they’re young bands. They’re developing their sound. It takes a long time to do that. I produced my first record in 1963 so that’s almost 40 years of experimenting.

Plus, I’m not the best person to ask because I haven’t heard them all that much. I’ve played some gigs with them, but I haven’t really heard them in the past year or so. But they are attracting a lot of attention, and that’s good.

When I listen to music, I go back to the real architects of style. The masters. Bluegrass, I listen to Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers. For jazz, if you listen to be-bop, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, the true architects of music, the true creators. John Coltrane, you know? This is the real deal. This is what people imitate.

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