Music: Sam and Dave

I was just listening to Hold on We’re Strummin’ by David Grisman and Sam Bush on the way to work and man, is it a great album. In case you don’t know, these guys are masters of the mandolin.

The album suprised me in two ways. First, even though I’m learning to play the mandolin and admire the sound, I think too much of any genre gets a bit long in the tooth after a while. I wondered if a whole album of mando music would get tedious after the first few tracks. Also, as mentioned in the liner notes, usually when well known musicians do an album together, they record the tunes that they all know so you don’t get a lot of new material.

But my misgivings were unfounded. The sound of the album is wonderfully diverse, from the fiddle and banjo on Old Time Medley to the groove of a National steel mandolin (gotta get me one of those!) on Swamp Thing. Also most of the tracks are brand new compositions by Bush and Grisman. And did I mention the perfectly crisp sound of the recording? This album will be on my play list for a long time to come.

B&N has some audio clips, but I’d recommend buying directly from Acoustic Disc because more of the proceeds probably go directly to the artists, and it’s a few dollars cheaper.

1 thought on “Music: Sam and Dave”

Comments are closed.