AMG Review of Dawg Duos

Joslyn Layne
All Music Guide

With Dawg Duos, David Grisman presents an album of duos with a variety of acclaimed musicians, including Indian classical percussionist Zakir Hussain, the New Lost City Ramblers' Mike Seeger, and Edgar Meyer and Béla Fleck, genre-crossers who are nonetheless well-known to modern bluegrass fans. These accomplished musicians bring complex techniques and impressive virtuosity, and turn it all into enjoyable bluegrass music with a simple, relaxed feel. The music is pretty, in much the same way that Bill Frisell's Good Dog, Happy Man is. There are tunes that pour world music into the bluegrass vocabulary, such as "New Deli Duo," a tune Grisman describes as the closest he'll probably come to playing a raga; the duo with Bob Brozman, "Trinidadian Rag"; and the somewhat gypsy feel and klezmer moments in "Clinch Mountain Windmills," a piece melding Ralph Stanley's "Clinch Mountain Backstep" and Michel Legrand's "Windmills of Your Mind" (from #The Thomas Crown Affair). There are moments of liteness -- such as with the mall-music-like quietude of Grisman's duo with Denny Zeitlin -- but too few to detract from the fact that this is an album modern bluegrass fans will find well worth having. Overall, an airy, light-pickin' album with a peaceful center.