David Grier at Empty Sea Studio -- Concert Review
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We first became aware of David Grier at the River City Bluegrass Festival January '08 in an advanced guitar workshop with him, Scott Nygaard and Jim Nunally. We also had the joy of listening to his live CD on the way home from Chelan this fall. The very intimate Empty Sea Studio stage was the setting for David's noodling on the guitar as he perfected his tuning on strings he said were "older than Elvis". It takes focus to get ready in such a small place as folks arrive, and focus he did, interacting with people only after the task was done. When he greeted the crowd, someone said, "Good evening, sir". He set the tone of the evening to something a bit less formal as he answered, "Howdy, Ma'am!" in his 'aw shucks' manner.
All the music is instrumental, all guitar, and if you've ever seen David play, you will know that he is a consumate bluegrass player. Oh but he is so much more. He writes his own tunes, and rewrites well known tunes to be something more, something rather spellbinding. He names the tunes he
writes only because he has to, so folks can tell which one it is by some name. For instance, "As It Rolls to the Sea" is so named because he plays a C position with his left hand.
From the moment he began to play we gladly silenced our cell phones. The audience was spellbound. We were too--sitting only 8 feet from his right hadn gave us a chance to see every detail, from the $1.50 decal on the headstock to where his fingers were going -- if only your eyes could keep up!
David's knowledge of the neck comes from a lifetime of playing guitar. He's played since he was 6 years old, and his father, a banjo player ("You can't outrun the sound of a banjo...") took him to pickin' parties when he was a kid. Family and friends gathered and played and all the kids goofed around, free to do pretty much what they wanted since the adults were so busy with their music. He had a guitar from early on. One day an old man invited him to play. He was about 12. He thought that was cool and from that day left the kids behind to play guitar with his father's peers.
Most boys that learn guitar start out thinking that they are going to meet girls because of it. Now, he says, "All I get are a bunch of old men wanting to see my callouses."
From some angles you might expect David Grier to be a pretty straightforward bluegrass player. You might expect flat picking and a straw hay coming out of his teeth. Instead what you get is among the finest ticklers of ebony and brass. His knowledge of chord shape and voicings, his effortless sliding from fret to fret, chord to chord and fingering to fingering puts him up there with the finest players I've ever seen.
To finish up he played a double speed version of John Henry, saying, "If you can't go out pretty, then go out fast!"
Review by Larry Baumgartner and Lynette Hensley