Grisman, Rowan bringing bluegrass, folk ‘Dawg’ music tradition to EKU

Sam Grisman doesn’t hesitate to reveal the first word he spoke as a child. It was comprised of one syllable and four letters, a seemingly easy utterance even for the youngest of inquisitive minds. That single, simple word would prove to be wildly prophetic. It was almost as though the young Grisman had his professional life mapped out before he could even talk.

“‘Bass’ was my first word,” Grisman said. “That sounds cliched and ridiculous, but I think I always wanted to play the bass. I don’t remember a time where I wasn’t really aspiring to play the instrument. I guess when you’re a small person, part of you wants to do things that you’re physically, maybe, not able to do, so there was something aspirational about playing the bass for me.”

Now at age 35, Grisman’s command of the upright bass has made him heir to a hybrid brand of acoustic sounds called Dawg music. The genre name was coined by his father, the groundbreaking mandolinist David Grisman, in the 1970s. It was under the latter’s tutelage that the musicianship of bluegrass-rooted contemporaries and protégés expanded into areas of jazz and swing. As a result, folk, country and string band traditions were recast with a level of improvisational daring that soared beyond the normal confines of bluegrass.

It’s a music richly engrained in the younger Grisman’s musical psyche because there has never been a time in his life when he wasn’t surrounded by it. Being the son of David Grisman didn’t just mean he could learn Dawg music directly from the mandolin innovator who popularized it. It meant lifelong friendships with the musical giants his dad rubbed shoulders with — artists like Ralph Stanley, Tony Rice and the song stylist Sam Grisman will share the stage with this weekend at the EKU Center for the Arts in Richmond, Peter Rowan.

“I was the luckiest kid that I knew, Grisman said. “It’s definitely not lost on me what a privilege it was to grow up in that environment, to have family friends like Doc Watson, John Hartford and Jerry Garcia, Tony Rice and Martin Taylor and Edgar Meyer coming over to the house. I would have this unbelievable access and proximity to just very high-level musicianship.”

The relationship with Rowan, though, has become more sharply defined though the years. In the early ’70s, Rowan — a champion folk/bluegrass songwriter who served as one Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys a decade earlier — teamed with Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia (a well-documented bluegrass enthusiast), David Grisman and other like-minded string music renegades to form Old and in the Way. Offering a new generational spin on bluegrass inspiration, the band released only one album, a self-titled live set pulled from an October 1973 concert engagement (David Grisman oversaw the release of several subsequent recordings beginning in 1996, all pulling from the same set of shows.)

Old and in the Way’s lifespan was limited largely to 1973, but its popularity with young audiences, especially within Dead Head culture, never abated. Rowan would continue to perform songs he penned for and/or performed with the band — especially “Midnight Moonlight,” “Panama Red” and the otherworldly “Land of the Navajo” — through the ensuing decades. That repertoire will be generously mined when Rowan and the younger Grisman visit Richmond.

“I’d say about 80 percent of the stuff we play with Peter I haven’t had to necessarily sit down and explicitly learn,” Rowan said. “It just felt like it’s always been there. It’s part of my musical subconscious. He’s such an amazing free-spirit and such an adventurist. He’s also been a really good sport about playing the whole spectrum of material at our shows that he might not have played in a long time. We’re all just kind of throwing ourselves into the fire night after night and having a great time doing it.

“One of the most beautiful things about getting to spend all this time with Peter making music is he is a hero of ours. This music has been part of the soundtrack to all of our lives, but, also, we have many of the same heroes. We’re drawing on a pool of influences that we share with Peter, folks like Bill Monroe and Doc Watson, Roscoe Holcomb and Leadbelly. And he’s a huge Rolling Stones fan and a huge Bob Dylan fan, so we have some shared ground on those levels, as well. He’s just an amazing person — someone I’ve known my whole life. It’s really an honor to get to celebrate his music with so many new fans.”

But playing with Rowan and a repertoire Grisman literally grew up with reflects only one aspect of life in the musical Dawg house. The adaptability of the music his father passed down also called for stylistic flexibility. That was underscored earlier this month when the younger Grisman’s ensemble, the Sam Grisman Project, served as the house band at a benefit concert for counterculture activist Wavy Gravy’s Camp Winnarainbow. That meant playing behind headliners Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi and Steve Earle.

“I guess the reason we’re so comfortable and familiar with that level of adaptability is that we all kind of grew up on the peripheries of the bluegrass scene and the acoustic music scene,” Grisman said. “There is just a lot of collaboration and a lot of shared repertoire, as well as a lot of willingness to learn music on the fly. It’s an aural tradition, as in a-u-r-a-l, so we’re just constantly teaching each other things by ear and learning by ear. In the case of this benefit, our band was learning a bunch of other folks’ music for the best possible cause.

“One of the most beautiful things about folk music is how accessible but also adaptable it all is to everybody’s individuality. There’s just a lot of different ways you can interpret a simple song and maybe have a little more of your own personal inflection in it.

“I feel like it is sort of my duty to play the music that I had the privilege of growing up around, that has made me the person that I am today. But being able to play that music also affords us the space to play our own music. It brings us an audience and community of folks that are all passionate about the same kind of music. It’s really just been a beautiful, positive thing.”

Peter Rowan with the Sam Grisman Project

When: Oct. 17 at 7:30 p.m.

Where: EKU Center for the Arts, 822 Hall Drive in Richmond

Tickets: $22.14 -$50.74

Online: ekucenter.com