Del & Dawg / check them out if they come your way!

[SternART]

Just caught Del McCoury and David Grisman playing duets at Berkeley's Freight & Salvage last night. It was FABULOUS!!! It was educational, and they were funny, obviously enjoying playing with each other. Dawg was on fire.......they played the standards, Bluegrass & Folk tunes in the "Brothers" style, with Del being a dream rhythm picker and stellar singer.......and Grisman improvising 3 or 4 solos per tune.......every one out of his deep vocabulary, he was weaned on these kind of tunes....but you could always hear the melody, and every solo was creative and different, this really showed off his BG improvisation chops. He made a joke one time saying all these solos are tabbed out on Mandolin Cafe. And Del's precise rhythm playing and interspersed runs were a superb foundation that Dawg enjoyed playing over.

We know Del is a great singer, the voice of his generation of BG singers, but their singing in harmony was really good too Their ease on stage and enjoyment of each other made it a great night. They even started tunes over when they made mistakes, laughing about it .......as this was only their 2nd gig as a duet. The audience loved Del.......before the 2nd set the MC even asked how many in the sold out audience were there for the first time & 1/3 of the audience held up their hands & were new to the Freight. Hey.....it is Grisman's home turf.... but Del wins Grammy awards & has a following, and both their fans were there for a chance to see a rare performance pairing.

It was educational too, as they talked about when they first heard a tune, or who recorded it first, who wrote it, who played on it, etc. Between the two of them it was like Bluegrass History 101 just listening to the between tune stories and banter. These guys have lived it and played with many of the greats.

They are playing a sold out show in Portland tonight........then in Nov. a two night stand in Chicago after gigs DC, NY, OH, and PA. Check them out if you can, I hope Acoustic Disc is recording these, it would make a great CD!!!