Friday, 5 January 2018

Album Review: Tommy Emmanuel and David Grisman are a perfect match on their first album together

BY KENNY BERKOWITZ Mandolinist David Grisman is no stranger to playing intimate music with guitarists, having previously released duo albums with Tony Rice, Martin Taylor, Doc Watson, and Jerry Garcia. But on their first recording together, Grisman and guitarist Tommy Emmanuel prove to be perfect partners, matching one another note for note as they move through tunes ranging from “Sweet Georgia Brown” to “Waltzing Matilda,” with five old and five new Grisman compositions scattered in between. Pickin’ opens at a gallop with the new “Zorro’s Last Ride,” on which Grisman plays a Mexican-inflected mandolin melody while Emmanuel flatpicks circles around him in astonishingly fast-fingered runs up and down the neck, mixing country, blues, and newgrass at breakneck speed. On “CGP & Dawg,” they’re in full-on Hot Club mode, trading leads and swinging smoothly from French cool to American cool and back again, as if the Seine were flowing all the way from Paris to the Pacific Northwest. For “Standing Rock,” Emmanuel and Grisman start with a slow, stately Lakota motif in the background, but before long they’re breaking rhythm, layering melody lines, and taking the piece into a series of unlikely directions. The jazzy “Farm & Fun Time” defies expectations, with both...

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