David Grier
I’ve Got The House To MyselfDreadnought 0201
Playing time: 46:24
4 Stars
The acoustic guitar is a bewitching combination of new possibilities and technical limitations, and few see more of the former and accept fewer of the latter than David Grier of Nashville.
Son of former Bill Monroe banjo player Lamar Grier, David has been dazzling bluegrass fans since his teens, when he got to spend time with his musical touchstone, the late, great Clarence White.
What White could do like nobody else was play what was then the second dullest instrument in the bluegrass band (after the bass) as a lead instrument, with all the finesse and fire of the fiddle, banjo or mandolin. A small handful can claim to walk in those footsteps, and fans of old-time country music should know about Tony Rice and Doc Watson. But Grier’s quiet decade at the forefront of the art has proven that he has carried
White’s insights to their most complex and musically inviting ends.
It’s hard enough for an acoustic guitar picker to take a good solo in the speedy bluegrass genre with instrumental support. Playing alone is just foolhardy, but here, Grier presents 13 tunes either alone or with his own accompaniment via over-dubbing, and you’d never think you’d need a band. That is to say, you don’t need to be a picker to recognize this as a masterpiece, but it helps.
Traditional tunes such as Bill Cheathum, the opener, breathe with dance-step rhythms and lovely old-time melodies that get interpreted and inverted. Black Mountain Rag, a flatpicker standard, cavorts all over the neck at breakneck speed. John Henry applies Grier’s dexterity to the Maybelle Carter scratching style of yore, using droning notes to perfection.
A hidden track presents the antique Leather Britches with no boundaries. Grier willfully jumps styles, fools around and shows off. It ends with a slow fade of ever-multiplying ideas, as if he could just go on like that forever without repeating himself, and he’s given no indications yet that he couldn’t.
Craig Havighurst, Nashville Tennessean 1/6/2003