Grateful Dawg

To their friends, family and admirers they were "beards of a feather", hatched from the same "cosmic egg" (don't'cha love hippies?). That's the late Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia and bluegrass maestro David Grisman - literally plucking Bluegrass back from the 'Special Interest' bracket to continued acclaim.

In this sweet-natured, hugely subjective documentary, the history of their on-off artistic partnership, including five collaborative albums, is explored via jams, home movies and live footage, and their particular strand of folk-tinged music showcased to varying levels of self-indulgence.

As one would expect, the performances here - whether knocked out impromptu in David's living room or on stage - are virtuoso in range and delivery, with pieces including a cover of Jimmy Cliff's 'Sitting Here in Limbo', Dead classic 'Friend Of The Devil', and a sprawling 17 minute opus called 'Arabia' - "cos there was that Gulf War thing going on at the time..."

Fans of either party (and of banjo and mandolin-based music in particular) will love it: casual moviegoers and record-buyers, possibly less so. Nonetheless, a pleasing enough eulogy for Mr Garcia (who died in 1995).

Nice historical glimpses into Jerry bluegrass side, wonderfully captures the creative process of Garcia/Grisman, especially the making/performance of "Arabia". This part of the movie interweaves the performance of the 12 + minute opus with the creation and recording of it.

It's really nice to see Jerry in a relaxed setting with Grisman's family, especially during this time that he was under tremendous pressure from his commitments to the Dead. It is well documented that Jerry wanted to take a break from touring with Dead and you can see the stress creep in when he speaks of the grueling touring schedule the Dead was requiring of him.

You really get the feeling of the friendship and joy Garcia and Grisman shared. Most of all, the music is warm and uplifting... Love this movie.

A great simple movie about the side many Deadheads did not follow. I was so impressed with the music that I bought two new CD's today! Any music lover will truly appreciate two friends expressing themselves through their playing. I will see this movie again!

You can say that it's not great documentary filmmaking, however, the two men that this film is about are. Being a young dead-head, I never had the opportunity to go west and experience the Grisman - Garcia energy live and first hand. This film allows me to explore an area that I have always held close to my heart. I could always feel the love and joy of music these two had together in the recordings. With the home movies and live footage that is shown, you can actually see it. Seeing this side of Jerry completely relaxed and hanging out, conjers up memories of why I loved his music so much in the first place. It brought back that feeling that motivates the dead head to chase tickets, go to shows many nights in a row, and feel that powerful energy that only Jerry could convey. He may not be the best vocalist, but he always gave it all he had by putting every ounce of his love for music in his music and that is what matters. I recommend this film to anyone who wants to learn about traditional american music or just see a rock icon show his softer side.

Back in June at the Newport Film Festival (Newport RI) I stumbled across this film between two other shows I had been planning on seeing. It turns out that this was the first showing of the film. This documentary was a very pleasing suprise to me. This film uses interviews and such as do most documentaries. What sets this apart is the intimate "home movie" footage that is present in a lot of the film. This shows Grisiam and Garcia simply playing for the family. After the showing of the film we were lucky enough for Gillian Grisiam to be there and to discuss the film. Much of the footage actual was home movies where a camera was "just set on the TV and turned on." Thank you much for this wonderful documentary.