Grisman has since pioneered his own style of music, which he simply calls Dawg music, an improvisational mix of traditional and ethnic acoustic styles he plays in nearly as many different configurations. The David Grisman Quintet has showcased Dawg music ever since he started the first DGQ in the fall of 1975. That band featured Grisman on mandolin, Todd Phillips on mandolin, Joe Carroll on bass, Tony Rice on guitar, and Darol Anger on fiddle.

Through the years, the DGQ has been a breeding ground for new acoustic talent. Rice is a Nashville super-session picker and respected recording artist in his own right. Like Grisman, champion fiddler and Grammy-winning violinist Mark O'Connor worked extensively with jazz great Stephane Grappelli. Angor, a violinist with the Turtle Island String Quartet, formed the Modern Mandolin Quartet, the Angor-Marshall Band and Psychograss with DGQ mate Mike Marshall (Psychograss also features Phillips).

Grisman and his bands have also had a strong impact on a new generation of musicians, like banjo phenomenon Bela Fleck who saw a traditional bluegrass instrument like the mandolin being taken beyond the bounds of one idiom. Grisman has performed and recorded with Fleck over a span of 20 years. The DGQ soon will hit the road again with Bela Fleck & the Flecktones. Stops will include their first New York date together in mid-April.

A tireless musician, Grisman also will play the Telluride Festival in Colorado and The Gathering of the Vibes in Bridgeport, Conn. Then he'll work with the Grammy-nominated Retrograss, featuring banjo greats Mike Seeger and John Hartford. The trio plays acoustic versions of rock oldies.

Grisman also is a energetic musicologist. Whether with the DGQ (now bassist Jim Kerwin, flutist-percussionist Matt Eakie, guitarist Enrique Coria and violinist-mandolinist-percussionist Joe Craven, also a member of Psychograss); the David Grisman-Martin Taylor Quartet; Retrograss; his late, great Old and In the Way mate Jerry Garcia, who gave Grisman the nickname Dawg; or any of the special projects he has created for his own Acoustic Disc label (800-221-DISC, www.dawgnet.com), such as the Grammy-nominated "Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza" with Sam Bush, Ronnie McCoury, Bobby Osborne, Ricky Skaggs, Frank Wakefield and guitarist Del McCoury; the three-disc "Tone Poems" series, a meticulous history and demonstration of superbly crafted string instruments featuring guitarists Martin Taylor and Tony Rice, National guitarist Bob Brozman, dorbroist Mike Auldridge, and Grisman on mandolins; "Dawg Duos," his latest release featuring pairings with the likes of Fleck, Seeger, Brozman, bassist Edgar Meyer, percussionist Zakir Hussain and fiddler Vassar Clements (another Old & In the Way mate) or well-packaged anthologies honoring Brazilian mandolin master Jacob do Bandolim, mandolin innovator Dave Apollon and swing guitarist Oscar Alemán, Grisman has kept traditional acoustic styles and their instruments alive by simultaneously preserving and reinterpreting them. His efforts recently were recognized with a INDIE Award nomination in the Acoustic Instrumental Category for "Dawg Duos."

One of Garcia's best friends (and greatest lookalikes), Grisman also may end up adding more to the sorely missed guitarist's legacy than the increasingly dysfunctional Grateful Dead family. The forthcoming "Pizza Tapes," a studio summit between Grisman, Garcia and Rice, will follow the recently released video of Garcia/Grisman playing B.B. King's "The Thrill Is Gone," a track off the duo's eclectic Grammy-nominated self-titled 1990 Acoustic Disc debut. Since then, Acoustic Disc has released four Garcia/Grisman CDs: the traditional folk of "Shady Grove," the acoustic jazz of "So What" and the children's album "Not For Kids Only."

Many more Garcia/Grisman discs will follow "The Pizza Tapes," says Grisman, who met Garcia in 1964 while he was picking banjo in the parking lot of a bluegrass festival in Sunset Park, Pa. Six years later, Grisman furnished mandolin for "Friend of the Devil" and "Ripple" on the Dead's "American Beauty" masterpiece. In 1973, the pair formed Old and In the Way, a quirky, ragged-but-right bluegrass band with Garcia on banjo, Clements on fiddle, John Kahn on bass and guitarist/vocalist Peter Rowan, one of Bill Monroe's latter day Bluegrass Boys. Old and In the Way imploded after nine months, leaving a self-titled live album in its wake.

When Grisman put together his seminal Great American Music Band in 1974, Garcia sat in on banjo on several occasions. Their paths diverged until the concept for Garcia/Grisman began in the winter of 1990 when the pair bumped into each other at a party. I spoke with Grisman about Dawg music, Acoustic Disc, his friendship with Garcia and the impact all three have had on the jam band and bluegrass scenes. He also spoke lovingly about acoustic music and instrumentation and critically about jam bands who approach bluegrass with electric instruments. Step inside Dr. Dawg's classroom. He'll definitely school ya'.

What is the difference between bluegrass and Dawg music?

For the most part, it has very little to do with bluegrass. Bluegrass is at least 50 percent a vocal style. So that part goes out the door because Dawg Music is instrumental.

Dawg music is mostly tunes that I write, and I try to write in a number of styles: swing, Latin, tunes based on various ethnic traditions. Everything about Dawg music is pretty different from bluegrass. Although some tunes I write are influenced by bluegrass. Bluegrass is an element in Dawg music.

You're often described as a bluegrass musician, but that's only partly true.

Right. That's been an albatross around my neck. I love bluegrass. I probably help confuse the issue by continuing to do bluegrass from time to time. In fact, my band turns into a bluegrass band often at shows. We have another band that we become that does play bluegrass for comic relief.

The problem with all these musical terms is that music is like an evolutionary process. Disc jockeys, newspaper reporters, historians, writers try to label some of this stuff. Bluegrass is a term that disc jockeys came up with in the early '50s.

Like rock 'n' roll.

Right. The problem is that the term immediately becomes so general that I wouldn't even know what you mean when you say bluegrass or what the next guy means. I know what Bill Monroe means. I know what I mean when I use the term bluegrass, but half the stuff that's called bluegrass isn't even bluegrass in my opinion.

It's like, what is jazz? Is jazz Louis Armstrong in 1927 or Miles Davis in 1958 or Miles Davis in 1968? Or Thelonious Monk or Art Tatum or John Coltrane? The truth is that great musicians -- or even bad musicians -- like to be known as themselves. So Dawg music is my personal music. It's the music that I do, and nobody else really does that. They might do similar kinds of music. Like Ralph Stanley doesn't like to be called bluegrass. Flatt & Scruggs didn't like to be called bluegrass because to all those guys, bluegrass was Bill Monroe's music. He called his band the Bluegrass Boys because they were in Kentucky. That was originally intended to just be his music. He didn't have a name for it. But there's the dilemma for you guys trying to write about this stuff. You have to come up with terms.

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.

Do you think the bluegrass-oriented jam bands need to go back more?

I'm not saying anybody needs to do anything, but that's what gets me off. It's also out of a cultural thing. Bluegrass was not created by people who grew up watching 'Sesame Street.' I'll put it to you that way. Nor was jazz. You can't separate the music from the cultural atmosphere that it came out of. It wasn't easy for those people. Jazz was made by black musicians who were getting beat up by cops in the '50s. Bluegrass was created by guys that were scrunched together in Cadillacs eating bologna sandwiches and not sleeping. This music wasn't created by college kids. There's nothing wrong with education, but these great styles didn't come about by book and video. Now you have a book and video on how to play bluegrass and how to play jazz. That's not the way to learn to play bluegrass or how to play jazz. That's good that that exists, and I probably wish I had it when I was learning, but I got to work with real bluegrass musicians. That's the way to learn the style, to work with masters of that style.

People like the Del McCoury Band are really carrying on bluegrass. Ricky Skaggs, The Nashville Bluegrass Band, these people are rooted in bluegrass. They are contemporary, but they're well-grounded. People like Alison Krauss,

to me, that's not bluegrass. That's a kind of permutated pop-grass or 'pink-grass.' That's what we call Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris.

You're playing Boston and for the first time in New York with Bela in April. Do you think you'll do more dates with him this year?

Yeah. Every year for the past few years we've played some dates with Bela. It's the only time we've played New York, and I think that's sold out already without any advertising. I think they're going to put us on the cover of 'Downbeat' for the April issue around that time.

Do you think you'll tour with any of the other folks on 'Dawg Duos?'

I'd like to, but I don't create the gigs. I'm not a promoter. I've been doing a few things with the Retrograss band. And I do things with Doc Watson from time to time.

You guys are going to miss each other by two weeks. Doc is playing the Bottom Line two weeks before you with his grandson. You know who'd be really neat to see you play live with is this young kid Julian Lange (the 11-year-old guitarist on 'Dawg Duos' who is the subject of the Academy Award-nominated documentary 'Jules at Eight').

Yeah, he may be opening a show for us in a few weeks.

Does he scare you or what?

I'm not a guitar player so he doesn't scare me. But I won't let him touch a mandolin (laughs).

I'm surprised 'Dawg Duos' doesn't have Sam Bush (the influential founding mandolinist of Newgrass Revival). But how's the Sam & Dave project coming?

Well, we keep talking about making a record. We've got the name for it, 'Hold on We're Strummin'.' I just saw Sam at the Grammys. We keep talking about that. I don't know when or if it will happen. We did 'Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza.'

Yeah, that was great. That and 'Tone Poems' are two of my favorite records.

I've got 'Tone Poems III' coming later this year. Vol. III will have Bob Brozman and Mike Auldridge. It'll be National guitars and dobros. Brozman is Mr. National guitar and Mike is the great modern dobro player from Seldom Scene. Vol. II with Martin Taylor was the Arch Top jazz guitars and mandolins. The concept was better refined than Vol. 1 (which featured Tony Rice). Vol. III will be out late summer, early fall.

The next one is 'The Pizza Tapes.' Jerry Garcia, myself and Tony Rice. That'll be out April 25. Tony and Jerry had never played together. When we were making the original 'Tone Poems,' I invited Jerry over to meet Tony. We did a bunch of jamming in the studio. A tape was bootlegged from that. The only tape that ever got out of my studio. The story that we got was that a pizza delivery guy swiped the cassette off Jerry's kitchen counter. That's called 'The Pizza Tapes.' I finally decided to release the official version. That was from February of '93. It's really good. Jerry was really having a good time. We all were, but he was really getting off on Tony. I left a lot of the laughing in there. You'll have to check it out.

I can't wait. Is that the best part of having your own label, putting out special projects that otherwise would never get released, at least not with the love you bring to them?

Yeah, if they go well.

'Tone Poems' and 'Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza' are just chockfull of stuff. Is that the best part of the label but also the most difficult?

It's a lot of hard work. I try to do things that nobody else is doing. And I try to do things that have some sort of historical or educational component. I've also released Jacob do Bandolim (Brazilian mandolin master of the 1930s-50s), (mandolin innovator) Dave Apollon and (swing guitarist) Oscar Alemán. They're all dead. They're all great string musicians. Jacob do Bandolim was the master of a style of music called choro music from Brazil. There's two volumes of recordings from the 1950s. Dave Apollon was a great mandolinist who didn't record very much, but he was an amazing virtuoso. There's a double CD of all his great stuff. Oscar Alemán was a lesser-known but amazing swing guitarist who was a contemporary of Django Reinhardt. He was from Argentina.

There's music that I've discovered that's gotten lost. If there's a way that I can expose it, at least get it in print, then that's part of my mission. It's not just to do my own stuff, but at least make the other stuff available.

Do you think A Bluegrass Reunion, the new version of Old and In the Way without Garcia, will work together again?

We haven't done that in a while. I love playing with those guys, but my main agenda is my band and my music. That's my contribution. I can't create this other stuff. If somebody else creates it and pays for it, I'm into it. Like say a festival if I'm playing there and Pete Rowan is playing there, they'll want that to play there. I'm making five to six albums a year that are involved and touring and writing material for my band. That does not give me much time to create other things. If somebody says, 'We want you to do this,' then I'll consider it.

Was 'The Thrill Is Gone' directed by Justin Kreutzman, the son of Dead drummer Bill Kreutzman?

Yeah, and my daughter, Gillian. Both plan to do a Garcia/Grisman video.

Long form?

Yeah.

What was the last thing you did with Jerry?

Well, it was his last recording session. We recorded a Jimmie Rodgers song called 'Blue Yodel No. 9' for a project of Jimmie Rodgers songs that was put together by Bob Dylan. We also released that track on one of our samplers. We put out samplers every eight records called '100% Handmade Music.' We just put out 'Vol. V.' We have two tracks from the previous seven CDs and then something that's not available anywhere else. 'Vol. IV' has that last recording with Jerry. 'Vol. V' has a track that we just recorded recently with Martin Taylor, Julian and myself. That's just about to come out.

What do you miss most about Garcia?

Oh boy. Well, you know, the whole nine yards. I kind of keep him around. I feel like I keep him hanging around. That he's still around. His influence is still there. I try not focus on missing stuff. We recorded an awful lot of music, and there's still a lot more to delve into. I've just been putting together this 'Pizza Tapes.'

You may keep his legacy alive even more than the Dead does.

The Dead was something Jerry was getting tired of. He had just done that too much. When we got together, we played what he wanted to play, music that interested him. All the traditional folk stuff, kind of revisiting our influences.

Given all that music that you've explored and you've created, what is it about acoustic music, string music that makes you seemingly tireless in playing and promoting it? What is it about it that makes you work so hard and at the same time have so much fun?

I love it. I have this opportunity now that I have this company. I can do all these things. I'm at the point in my life where I'm an old guy, but I'm not that old. I still have a lot of energy. So I'm making hay while the sun shines. I might have done this earlier, but I didn't have the opportunity. Before Acoustic Disc, if I had an idea, I had to sell it to a record company. That was hard to do.

You've been recording since '63. What is it about this kind of music? It's very varied, very diverse, but you can still trace all of its roots to a similar place. What is it about it that you love so much?

I love music. Part of music is just the sound of it, making the sound. That's the thing about acoustic instruments. The sound is the job of the musician to produce that sound; other than the instrument builder. It's not like a synthesizer that comes off the assembly line. You push button No. 74, and it's going to sound exactly the same as button No. 74. And no matter who pushes button No. 74, it's going to sound like that. If you have a mandolin that was made in 1922 by craftsmen the likes of which don't exist anymore because you couldn't afford to pay them, they knew what they were doing. They hadn't discovered a way to make everything real loud. I just think those are the real tones of music, acoustic instruments.

Electric instruments and synthesizers, I'm not saying there's no artistry involved in that. But there's much more artistry involved in acoustic music. Look at all the violin players there are in the world, and yet a guy like Stephane Grappelli could play one bar and you know it's him. To me that's artistry. Whereas a guy like Jean-Luc Ponty is a great player, but he's devoted a lot of energy into making his violin sound like an electric guitar. You can still recognize who it is, but I think acoustic musicians have to make the sound too. If they want it loud, they have to play loud. They have to make the tone. To me, that's a big part of musicianship that a lot of musicians just lose out on because they let technology do it for them. I don't think they come up with a superior tone. I know I'm in the minority on that.

I mean, Carlos Santana just sold eight zillion records, and that's fine. I like what he does. But I'm in this other field. It's a smaller field. Basically, they developed the electric guitar so it could be louder. They never really got a prettier sound out of it to my ears.