jerry Garcia / David grisman
JERRY GARCIA/DAVID GRISMAN
Jerry Garcia / David Grisman is an album of folk music by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman. It was the second album released under Grisman's record label Acoustic Disc and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1991.
Jerry Garcia and David Grisman met in 1964, and played together in a number of different musical arrangements. They only started performing and recording together as Garcia & Grisman in 1990, usually supported in concert by Jim Kerwin on bass, and Joe Craven on violin and percussion. Sometimes performing live, they recorded at least forty sessions together.
Side Notes:
In 1991, Jerry Garcia and David Grisman teamed up with Justin Kreutzmann, son of Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann, to film a video for the first track on the album. Justin shares his recollection on directing the video:
“This was on David Grisman’s Acoustic Disc label, so it’s not like there was a music video budget. But I had heard the song so many times and my friend Gio Coppola had done the Cotton Club montages—there are these two sequences in The Cotton Club that are really visually striking. So I thought that if I did a video to this kind of 40s-sounding kind of song they could really complement each other.
I knew a lot of successful Deadheads, so I figured we could independently finance it. Since I wasn’t dealing with Arista or one of the big record labels, I just went to David Grisman’s company and was like, “Hey, if I pay for it, can I do the video?” They were like, “Sure, go ahead, whatever.”
So we did it. One of the funny things I remember about that day is that we shot at a place called On Broadway, which was right across the street from where The Stone had been. It was two in the morning, we had been there for like 12 hours and for one of the sequences he and David were out on the street corner. I can remember Jerry looking around and he was like, “I’ve spent my whole life on this street. I’ve played music on this street, I’ve gotten sick on this street. I’ve done nefarious things on this street and I’m still on this fucking street.” That was when I said to myself, “Oh God, let’s get this guy out of here.
The funny thing then was trying to get that out without a big record company. Everyone was like, “Whatever.” Nobody wanted to show it. Then MTV called Bill Graham, so I got this call from Bill’s office, and he told me, “If you can get Jerry to give out an award at the MTV Music Awards, they’ll show your video.” And I’m like, “Well, that’s never gonna happen.”
But I can remember making two VHS tapes, going down to BGP and giving it to Bill. I was like, “Wow, the only way they’ll show this video is if Jerry gives away an award.” So that wasn’t in the cards, but Bill tried. It was funny.”