Track 49: "Jamgrass 741" by Sam Bush and David Grisman

Another instrumental "bluegrass" number for ya...

Sometimes it's just amazing what a man and a chunk of wood can do. That's sort of the underlying appeal to me of bluegrass and acoustic music. There are no no effect pedals to hide behind or any of that reprehensible auto-tuning, it's just simply the music. A few dudes and a few chunks of wood.

I heard the term 'hill billy jazz' from mandolin stud Sam Bush. Bush was the 3rd article I ever had published, and was sort of my first big-fat-hairy-deal musician I got to speak to on the telephone. Here's a link to that story: http://tinyurl.com/32m8c5k

And it's cool to think of bluegrass that way...at least the more modern stuff that Sam Bush and his ilk created. There's a group of badass musicians (Sam Bush, David Grisman, Tony Rice, Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, etc) who all have their own groups and various side-projects that sort of keep them in open-door musical relationships. And each musician puts their own unique spin on the traditional music.

By this point you read the article on Sam Bush (ha!), so you know he's the real deal. So when I learned that he and David Grisman were cutting an album together I was pretty damn excited. Grisman is also a mandolin stud, putting his own Latin-tinged improvisational jazz spin on the instrument. Grisman was my first cover story, a big-fat-hairy-deal in its own right. Here's a link to the story: Grisman: http://tinyurl.com/2g56bhf

Now that you're two articles and several wasted minutes deep in this track on the Ultimate Playlist, you should at least have a basic comprehension on how great just the notion of an album by Bush and Grisman would be. And I must say the actual record is even better. Though musicians from Grisman's quintet make appearances, most of the tracks are just two giants throwing down. Again, it's a testament to what two dudes with chunks of wood can do: Sam Bush can also saw a mean one off on the fiddle, and Grisman picks just about every mandolin-related instrument on the planet on the album "Hold On We're Strummin."

I'll always be a sucker for a pretty melody in a bluegrass song (and you'll assuredly here more soon) but "Jamgrass 741" is a bit aggressive. A tad in your face. A musical exploration of two dudes and two chunks of wood. There is some mighty fine pickin on this one.



--Music is good.