Speaking of Jesse McReynolds, you mentioned he has an album of Grateful Dead songs, which has been getting a lot of airplay on radio stations. I actually read an interesting story that he actually had never really even heard the Grateful Dead’s music until they approached him about doing the record.

No kidding. Well, you know, I’ve known Dave Grisman a really long time. In fact, I knew him before he started playing music, I think. When I was working for Bill Monroe in 1963, they had us stay at David’s parents’ house. We were playing up in that part of the country so we stayed there. And the only person that was there was David and the maid. And David was just a kid—oh he was a mischievous little kid. When I was working for Monroe, Garcia and him came to see me since he wanted to be a Bluegrass Boy. But he did better with what he started than if he had been a Bluegrass Boy [laughter].

David has moved now from where he had his old studio. He moved up to another town. He was there in, oh gosh what’s that valley there? I’ve been to his house several times and recorded stuff right in his house when he had his studio in Mill Valley. He and his wife divorced and he moved on up north of there, about 30 or 40 miles north of there. And he’s got a studio in that house too now. And I recorded in there too. I recorded in that studio. We’ve been great friends. And he’s played my festival twice I think since we started.

In terms of festivals and the jamband scene, this year is the 10th annual Bonnaroo and you will perform with Preservation Hall. You actually played the first Bonnaroo in 2002. Do you have any specific memories or favorite moments from that event?

Yeah, I do. For one thing, it was hot [laughter], and we played in this tent. We were out on the West Coast and flew home, and I think we played Sunday. We were worried about getting into the place because people were talking about oh this traffic jam on I-24. We thought, “we may not even be able to get in the place.”

We flew the evening before or that morning from the West Coast, and we bussed it from there, and we got down there and it was nothing man [laughter]. We just pulled. The bands are registered at the Holiday Inn just off the Interstate there and they said, “Oh no, the traffic jam is always like in the middle of the week when the festival starts—there’s nobody going in there now, they’re already in there.”

They had us pull our bus right up to the tent that we were going to play in back then—. it’s a little different now, but I thought, “I wonder what this is going to be like.” And you know, we got in time for show time, and we got up on stage, and we saw people gathering in real fast. Man, before any amount of time there were people out in front of that tent as far as you could see!

I always do requests so I started telling folks, “Now, if you got any requests just holler them up here.” Well, they were so loud man. You couldn’t tell—I couldn’t tell what they were saying. So they start holding up signs with the name of the song they wanted to hear and so we still did an all-request show. That was really great. And I found out all those young people that requested songs requested songs that I recorded maybe 30 years ago.

It keeps you on your toes. Yeah, they go back and listen to old records and then makes you want to revisit the old catalogue.

Sometimes they’ll request something that I’ve completely forgot [laughter]. But for the most part the band will know them. They’ll know the kick off or whatever, the introduction to the song. A lot of times that helps. After you hear the intro of the song it will kind of click up in your head like, “I know what the first verse of this is.” So we do a lot of obscure stuff, really.” I introduce the four guys in the band and then I just do requests a lot of times, you know? I’ll try to get something from the newest album that we have out sometime during the show but for the most part the rest of the show is all-request show. It fits 90 minutes that’s mostly requests.

It keeps you on your toes. It keeps the band on their toes, and it keeps the show pretty fresh. And it’s exciting for me because I am worried about remembering all these songs. But I don’t like to get settled in—I don’t like to get too comfortable, you know? I think if you do, it’s kind of boring for everybody concerned you know.

Yeah, that goes back to the idea of improvisation.

It does, yeah. It’s true. And that way too, people they come to the show, a lot of them get to hear exactly the song that they want to hear. Which the fan kind of dictates what you should do I think anyway.

Right and as you said you know it’s such a breadth of material now especially now with all the different stuff.

Yeah. Yeah there’s some things we can’t do but then most, for the most part we can you know.

You have also always embraced collaborations with musicians from different backgrounds.

The last time I was in New York was with Dierks Bentley. He put out this album of bluegrass songs, and he had me sing that song with him called “In the Name of Love”—that was my line in that song. Anyway, he recorded all his bluegrass numbers and wrote some stuff. And my boys, my band just so happened wasn’t working for like a week because I was off the road so they went on tour with Dierks and did all these bluegrass numbers. I think this was one of the dates. I can’t remember the name of the place but he played there in New York. And he wanted me to come and do that one show with him. They did all the other stuff.

The first time I played New York was with Bill Monroe. He hired Bill Keith on banjo and me on guitar. Bill Keith remembers things that I forgot and I remember things that he forgot, cause it’s been a while. He had been playing all these country shows before this. He started playing the folk festivals then and eventually bluegrass festivals. I played Newport Folk Festival with him. He played Chicago Folk Festival, several places. But Ralph Rinzler was the guy that got him kind of away from the country music scene. Ralph was starting to manage Bill about the time I started playing for him. And he started booking him in you know like NYC, Newport, California and some of the folk clubs and folk festivals. And then eventually some of the bluegrass festivals and then he had his own venues. Ralph was really good. He was good for Bill Monroe and good for bluegrass music. Because he was the one, Bill recorded for Decca Records then and on all of Bill’s records, there’s no personnel, the personnel played on those records was not listed on the records. It was on file but it wasn’t n the records. Bluegrass musicians wanted to know who all played on, who played the fiddle and banjo. So they reissued a lot of it and Ralph Rinzler was back in the files and got all the names of the people who had recorded all that good stuff before that. They put it on the record. We owe a lot to him. We really do.

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