Although it’s not a term that can be applied to many guitarists, as a “solo flatpicking instrumentalist,” David Grier has few peers. He has been one of bluegrass’s premier guitarists since his debut album, Freewheeling, appeared in 1988, but his solo album I’ve Got the House to Myself (2002) was arguably the first to display the full range of his talents. The subsequent unadorned live album Live at the Linda (2007) provided another opportunity to focus on the complex and quirky rhythmic and harmonic sensibility Grier brings to his versions of traditional and original melodies.

Before these revealing albums, Grier’s Clarence White–influenced style was most often heard within an acoustic band context, with bass, mandolin, fiddle, banjo, etc., both as a sideman on progressive acoustic projects, like the Grammy-winning albums True Life Blues: A Tribute to Bill Monroe and The Great Dobro Sessions, and on four defining group recordings under his own name. He became known both for his ease at spinning inventive solos at incredibly fast tempos with progressive bluegrass bands like Psychograss, the Grass Is Greener, and the Big Dogs and a looser, jazz-inflected approach with the acoustic power trio Phillips, Grier, and Flinner.

So it was somewhat of a surprise that this consummate ensemble player’s solo guitar albums were so rich and self-contained. Whether on traditional standards like “Sally Gooden,” “Black Mountain Rag,” and “Ookpic Waltz” (from I’ve Got the House to Myself) or original melodies like “Have You Ever Been to England” and “High Atop Princess Cove” (from Live at the Linda), Grier’s guitar fills the sonic spectrum by itself. Using traditional flatpicking techniques like cross-picking and arpeggiated strums (à la Norman Blake) as well as a hybrid pick-and-fingers technique, Grier hews to each tune’s melody, filling it out with additional bass notes and extended chord tones while unraveling multifaceted variations with ease, but managing to find plenty of room for the sort of syncopated, off-the-cuff licks he’s known for in his band recordings.

For his latest album, Evocative, Grier returns to the band format, but this time he’s surrounded his acoustic guitar with elec­tric bass, drums, keyboards, and his own electric guitars, as well as occasional fiddle, pedal steel, banjo, and pennywhistle. Evocative is the first time Grier has played electric guitar on one of his own recordings, and it’s his first outing of all-original material, some of which he recorded as solo guitar pieces on Live at the Linda.

I recently had the chance to sit down with Grier to talk about his new album, his first steps on the guitar, Clarence White, and the hybrid techniques that enrich both his electric guitar playing and his solo acoustic playing.

Your father played banjo with Bill Monroe in the ’60s, so there must have been a lot of music around the house when you were growing up. When did you start playing?
GRIER I was hearing music from the womb, probably muted, but I was hearing it. Dad and Mom were going to bluegrass festivals and picking parties, so I was always around it. Dad played with Bill from ’65 to ’67. The band was Monroe, Peter Rowan, Richard Greene, James Monroe, and my father. They would come to the house and rehearse, or they would play the Grand Ole Opry and I would be running around backstage.

I was always around the music and it just seemed natural; you see a bunch of people doing it when you’re around it all the time, and you want to do it, too. It’s the same as if your dad was a mechanic and you grew up knowing about tools. I just figured everybody’s dad played music. You go to school and the first thing you say is, “What does your dad play?”

 

How did you choose the guitar?
GRIER I had several of those little plastic guitars you get in Kmart for kids to bang on and break. And my father bought a guitar in Mexico for his brother, a cheap nylon-string guitar, but his brother didn’t take to it. So Dad said, “Well, give it back. I’ll give it to David.” He did and I tore it all to hell—all the knobs came off, you couldn’t tune it, it was missing strings. But Dad had a ’55 D-18 that he would play around the house and let me play occasionally, if he was there supervising. I said, “When can I play it all the time?” And he said, “Well, when you can walk down the hall without banging it into the wall is when you can play it.”

 

I know Clarence White was a big influence on your playing, but who did you listen to when you were just starting?
GRIER Clarence was the one who was on the tape machine more often than not. Dad had live tapes of the Kentucky Colonels, and not only that, he had tapes of himself and Clarence and Roland pickin’ in the basement of our house, with this little kid in the background screaming his head off. I said, “Damn, that kid’s annoying. What’s he crying about?” And Dad said, “I don’t know, but that’s you!” “Oh, sorry, I guess I wanted to pick.” I was just a little kid, probably wasn’t even walking.

 

So I was always hearing these live tapes of Clarence, and as I got older, Dad would point things out: “Did you hear how he’d come in like that.” “Yeah.” “No, you didn’t. Let’s play that again.” “But I heard it.” “No, we’re going to listen to that again.” “OK, I believe I heard it the first time, but I’ll listen again, sure.” So I got an education that way that a lot of folks whose fathers don’t play the music don’t get. If they’re just in their room learning on their own, they don’t have the benefit of that knowledge.

 

I could ask Dad questions. I remember I would play along to records, simple Bill Monroe records. They were doing this song and it was in D, or out of a D position, and I knew a G run [Example 1a], and they did that G run, but out of D. But I didn’t have any idea how to do it, so I tried to think my way through it, which is how most folks do. That’s their downfall. People come up with logical ways to do things, and it’s always wrong. Well I did the same thing. My reasoning was, “Well, a G run starts on a G note and it ends on a G note, that’s why they call it a G run. But a D run, how do you do that? There ain’t no low D note.” So I waited and waited for Dad to come home, and I ran out into the driveway, he hadn’t even cut the engine off of his car and I was knocking on the window saying, “Dad, Dad, can you do a D run?” [Laughs.] He said he could and I was happier than hell. I said, “I’ve been trying all day, I can’t figure it out. Can you show me how to do one?” But he said, “Nah, I think you need to figure it out on your own.” I didn’t like that one bit, of course, because I’d been trying all day. But I finally figured out that you just leave off that first note [Example 1b]. That’s the trouble with trying to think things through. It just messes you up.

 

Did you go through a period of trying to figure out Clarence’s solos?
GRIER Oh yeah. And Doc [Watson] and Tony [Rice]. Some things I could get, and there were times I could only get halfway through a lick. I don’t have the most patience in the world. I would work a half hour or an hour on it, which was a long time for me, and then a week or two weeks or a month later it would just appear—because I’d worked so hard on it and heard it for an hour. Even if I didn’t get it the first time, it was in my memory. To get it, I just had to not try so hard. I think trying too hard gets in the way. Every time I try to do something, it’s never as good as when I just do something. If that makes sense. It’s vague and New Agey and stuff, but I know what I mean [laughs].

With Clarence it was always simpler than I thought it was gonna be. These licks that sound like he had to have been doing something crazy were always something simple, like [Example 2]. Remember that lick? That took me forever. You hear that and think, “Where in the hell are those notes?” But it’s just a C. You just let off your finger [plays lick again]. But the way he did it was just like, “Oh my god, is that the coolest stuff ever?”

 

 

Were there any particular breaks or songs that really opened your mind to what he was doing?
GRIER Well, every song had something cool in it. “Man of Constant Sorrow” [Example 3]. Do you remember how he did that lick? It was just so cool. And it was not guitarlike, but the way he did it, it worked perfectly for the guitar. Another eye-opening thing for me was [Example 4]. I thought, “Whoa, you can play two notes together, in harmony. That’s cool.” So I tried to find other ways [Example 5]. And then I found Amos Garrett did this lick [Example 6]. That is the coolest lick. He did that on the electric guitar, when he was playing with Paul Butterfield and Better Days. It’s from “Please Send Me Someone to Love,” I think.

 

You’re using your fingers there along with the flatpick. When did you start doing that?
GRIER I started using my fingers when I was playing Telecaster, as a teenager. I said, “Dad, Clarence has one.” So I got a Telecaster and a Fender amp, and I practiced some. But I don’t really like the way it sounds when I hear other flatpickers play electric guitar, so I had to learn how to not do that. I didn’t want to hear that sound, so I had to learn how to play a Telecaster, and learn the vocabulary. The players I liked were Tele-specific players, like Don Rich, Roy Nichols, Clarence. There’s a ton of ’em—Amos Garrett, Albert Lee, James Burton. I tried to imitate and learn from those guys. And that’s how I ended up using my fingers with the pick [Example 7].

 

I imagine that’s when Clarence started using his fingers, too, when he was playing electric guitar.
GRIER Yeah, because you don’t have to pull tone [with your hands]. With an acoustic guitar in a band, if you’re taking a solo, and there’s a banjo and mandolin and dobro, they’re loud instruments, so using your fingers won’t really help you much. You won’t be heard. With an electric guitar, you just turn a knob. You can blow on a string and there’s your note.

Is this new record, Evocative, the first time you’ve recorded with the electric guitar?
GRIER It’s the first time on any of my own records, yeah. Evocative has many firsts. It was the first one of my own recordings with drums; the first with pedal steel, pennywhistle, keyboards.

There are a few songs on Evocative that you recorded on Live at the Linda. Did you originally conceive of those as solo guitar tunes?
GRIER Well, that’s how they were written. But actually those songs were already recorded for Evocative [before Live at the Linda was recorded], but they weren’t completed yet. Usually, I’m sitting around the house watching TV, playing the guitar, and one pops out. That’s how a lot of them worked. “Road to Hope” happened that way. I was just watching TV, playing guitar and that just appeared [Example 8].

“As It Rolls to the Sea” is another one where I was watching TV and it just popped out. What’s weird about this tune is this F chord [Example 9]. You just play your F and then you let off your first string and you let off the G string. If I had a bigger thumb, I could use my thumb on the low string, but I can’t get the first string to ring right if I do that, because my hand’s all . . . like holding a baseball bat [Example 10].

 

Some of those songs obviously work as solo tunes as well as band tunes, but there are a few, like “Meditate,” that sound like they were written with a band in mind.
GRIER Yeah, that one’s an easy tune, it’s just the same thing over and over. But I like the shape of [the recording]. I like how it moves and where it goes. It’s the easiest tune you’ll ever hear [Example 11]. That’s it. Not the most difficult thing in the world. But while I’m playing that I’m hearing things, other parts: “Well that would be cool to do here, and that would be in the background.”

 

Did you figure out those parts beforehand, or did they just happen in the studio?
GRIER When I recorded that, it was just drums and guitar. Most of the tracks started with drums and bass and me on acoustic guitar. But there were a couple where the bass player was gone, so we just went ahead. So that was just the drummer and me, live. And then we added electric guitar, so I had to choose where I wanted to take my solo, and then it was, “What else do you want?” “Well, keyboards, maybe pedal steel.” “What else?” “That’s enough right there, let’s move on.” “Should we put bass on it?” “No, I like it just fine.” And that was it.

All of these tunes were written by myself, sitting around my house playing guitar, so the chore, well, it wasn’t much of a chore, was trying to come up with what the electric guitars should do. The melody’s already been played, so I can’t do that on the electric, I have to come up with a solo. I had much more fun playing the electric guitars on this record than I did the acoustic, because I had expectations [of the acoustic parts] and they were much more exacting. Whereas with the electric guitar, I didn’t have any idea. I just knew I wanted, say, an electric guitar solo here and some stuff in the background. “Hit the red button, let’s do it.” I was just winging it.

For the solo on “Teela” I was sitting there in the control room, plugged into the board, and I took a couple solos, and I said, “OK, hit me again, I’ll take another one.” And Brent [Truitt, who produced the record] said, “You oughta listen to that one.” “Nah, that’s no good.” “No, let’s listen to it.” So we listened to it. “Well damn, that’s pretty good, let’s leave that.” I was ready to record right over it. It’s always nice to have another pair of ears in the studio.

David Grier recorded a solo version of this flatpicking standard on I’ve Got the House to Myself, but this transcription is taken from a recording made for Acoustic Guitar. Grier plays it in two different keys, starting in A, modulating to D for the second pass through the melody, and then finishing in A. Like his hero Clarence White, Grier’s rhythmic variations are highlighted by setting them in direct contrast to straight versions of the melody. Notice, for example, the difference between bars 9 and 13—it’s the same melody, played fairly straight, but Grier swaps the timing of the open D and G strings, making it sound as if he’s added a beat to bar 9. Notice also how he fills out the sound not just with cross-picking but with judiciously added bass notes and chord tones below the melody. For example, he often adds a lower note with a downstroke when he begins a slur with an upstroke, so that the lower picked note occurs at the same time as the slur—as in the D notes below the Bb–B hammer-ons and slides in numerous places in the transcription.

 

DAVID GRIER’S GUITARS AND GEAR

• ACOUSTIC GUITARS: 1946 Martin D-28 (used on Live at the Linda). 2000 Jim Merrill C-21 dreadnought with Brazilian rosewood back and sides. 1998 Darren Webb dreadnought (used on Evocative) with an enlarged soundhole. “Darren works at the Santa Cruz Guitar Company, and he built this guitar for himself,” Grier says. “I played it and liked it and he let me borrow it; and then he sold it to me.” Oliver Specht baritone guitar.
• ELECTRIC GUITARS: 1951 Gibson ES-175. 1952 Fender Esquire with an added Lindy Fralin Tele-style neck pickup.
• STRINGS: D’Addario phosphor-bronze medium.
• FLATPICKS: Tortoiseshell.
• CAPO: Elliott.

 

 

This article also appears in Acoustic Guitar, April 2010