Grateful Dawg Reviews

A fascinating filmic scrapbook of a decades-long collaboration between two of the more interesting musicians of their time, Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia and mandolin virtuoso David Grisman. Garcia, of course, was a genuine cultural icon, the only rock guitarist to have been immortalized as both an action figure and an ice cream flavor. But even some of his most devoted fans are relatively unaware of his roots in bluegrass and folk. This appropriately roughhewn documentary is an attempt to set the record straight, with lots of interesting archival footage going back to the early '70s. But the bulk of its running time is taken up by an examination of Garcia's collaborations in the 1990s with Grisman, a similarly-minded picker and Garcia look-alike: As someone observes, they might have come out of the same cosmic egg. Director Gillian Grisman — David's daughter — juggles all this quite artfully, with a more-or-less equal mix of concert footage and living-room jam sessions. It's especially nice that all the songs on the soundtrack are heard in their entirety, even if the accompanying video footage is sometimes drawn from performances of different vintage. The film's highlights are almost too numerous to mention, although there are particularly memorable versions of the Dead classic "Friend of the Devil," with one of Garcia's most poignant vocals, and the children's classic "Freight Train," which seems to absolutely delight both of the principals. The film's finale is also worth the wait — a heretofore unreleased, and very stylish, B&W video (directed by Justin Kreutzmann, son of the Dead's longtime drummer) in which Garcia and Grisman dress up in '30s gangster suits and render a quietly intense take on B.B. King's "The Thrill is Gone." Deadheads aren't the only ones who just might be moved to tears.