A New Breed

Posted on Nov 16, 2009 in Reviews | Comments Off on A New Breed

Eliza Welch Mulvaney

David Grisman’s band has been through several incarnations in the 11 years since his first group album, The David Grisman Quintet. With each change in personnel, David has met the challenge of making the best use available talent in his arrangements and compositions,

The current Quartet provides him with considerable talent indeed: jazz Veteran George Marsh on drums, and two classically trained players, Dimitri Vandellos on guitar and James Kerwin on bass. As has happened with previous Dawg productions, this group began getting together with no business plans in mind.

George Marsh was busy enough when he began playing with David. “At the time I was playing with a lot of different people, exploring music on a jam basis,” he says. “That’s how David and I started to play-just for the music of it.  I still play with jazz pianist Mose Allison.  He travels around by himself and he has rhythm sections in different areas of the country.  When he’s here he plays with me and bassist Mel Graves.  I’ve been doing that for about six years.  And I played with pianist Denny Zeitlin for ten years.”

James Kerwin remembers when the current Quartet first played together: “It was September of ’85.  Dimitri and I had been playing together a lot, and we decided to call the best drummer I knew in town, George Marsh.  We got together and George said, ‘You know, David Grisman is going to be coming by later on. You guys want to hang around?’  It was a real neat day, David played some of our music and we played some of his.  Everything seemed to fit together real nice.”

Soon the informal session paid off for Kerwin.  About a week later he got a call from David who needed a bass player, pronto, after the unexpected departure of long time associate Rob Wasserman. “We went to Arkansas and I played a date,” says James.  After the first show I said, ‘Well, what do you think, Dave?’ And he said, ‘You’ve got the job for as long as you want it'”

Meanwhile the four musicians continued to jam in George’s studio on in informal basis.  David explains, “A couple of months after that, (then Quartet guitarist] John Sholle wanted some time off. And I figured, ‘Well, I’m already playing with these guys, and I’ll need another guitar player in the Quartet at least for a few months.”  As Dimitri Vandellos says, “It was my first big break.”

Fiddler Jim Buchanan continued to play with the new band frequently.  “Everybody else in the, band was rehearsing every week and Jimmy was living in North Carolina.” says Grisman.  “And then we did a tour with Svend Asmussen [late 1986) and Jimmy went back to work with Mel Tillis. But I don’t fee like he’s really left.  I could call him up and probably get him, to play some gigs some time.”

When asked what each player brings to the: quartet, Grisman laughs, “Dimitri brings the electric guitar into the group!  It’s a traditional sound in modem jazz, from Charlie Christian to Wes Montgomery. I must say it does work for our style.”  Although it proves that I’m not the purist some people would think I might be.

Dimitri’s electric is an Ibanez GB-10.  His acoustics are a classical guitar hand-made by Ron Hachez, and a Martin OM·28.  He purchased the Martin when he joined the Quartet, prior to that he had never owned a steel· string acoustic.  David says. “I’ve shown him some bluegrass runs that only the initiated know.”

Dimitri is enjoying the challenge of developing a new voice on a new instrument  “Guitar accompaniment in bluegrass is different from jazz comping.  You’re feeling the ‘one’ and ‘three’ more, while the mandolin is chunking out the ‘two’ and ‘four’.  And I’m learning to play on a steel string acoustic, getting volume.  That’s true with the classical, too.  Since we play with drums, George had to bring his volume level down as I was bringing mine up to get enough sound.  When we rehearse we do it completely acoustically.”

For George Marsh, playing with a mostly acoustic band required very little transition.  “I prefer acoustic instruments,” he says. ”I’ve played with acoustic bass for a longtime; but then again, usually they’re amplified.  I played a lot of fusion music in the late ’60s, early 70s. I was in a band called the Loading Zone.  But I turned my back on that because it was too loud.  Since then my technique has been evolving so I could get the drums down to the dynamics that I think are much preferable for me personally.”

George supplements his basic jazz drum set with a conga drum, positioned at his left under the high-hat cymbal.  On some of Grisman’s faster bluegrass-type tunes, George will twist all the way around and play long passages on the conga alone or quietly accompanied by bass drum and high-hat (both are operated with foot pedals).  “I find the conga drum is a very good blend with the higher pitched string instruments.”  George says “Rather than competing with the rhythm/chunk sound of the mandolin or guitar; it’s in another range. Yet it’s not so low that it muddles up the bass.

“In the case of being in David’s band what I enjoy is direction,” says Marsh.  It’s a great learning process, because David will often think of things that another percussionist might not think of because he isn’t a percussionist.  He’s one of the people that brought up the idea of my playing conga at the same time as playing the drum set.  Not very many drummers do that.”

James Kerwin owns two basses, both 3/4 sizes.  The one he usually plays in the Quartet has a slightly smaller body. ‘They’re both German flat backed design instruments,” he says.  “The small one has a particularly good sound.  Lately, doing this project with David playing bluegrass music I’ve been using gut strings – D’Addario Kaplan.  On a bluegrass type tune or a slow ballad where you want a big fat sound, there’s nothing like the old-fashioned gut-string sound.  Gut strings are usually pretty tough to keep in tune.  But these have kind of a nylon taping on the gut and a special nickel silver winding on the metal lower strings.

“A lot of the fast jazz things we do with David-things I play with the bow-are tough to play with gut strings.  Generally, I use Thomastik metal strings, German style.  But I have a different setup, what they call veich, or soft gauge on the high strings and regular gauge on the low strings and that seems to work well on my bass.

The current Quartet actually sounds more like a traditional jazz combo than any previous Grisman lineup – Is this intentional?  “Well,” says it, leader, ”I’m a lover and a student of jazz. I like being able to do that authentically.  But as far as the direction, l’ve always liked all kinds of music.  It’s an ongoing problem that the whole industry likes to pigeonhole music. “If you’re this, you can’t be that.” and  “Are you this, or are you that?”  One day you could put on a T-shirt and the next day you could wear a suit.  It’s still music.  I don’t put up those barriers.”