A Conversation with David Grisman  (continued)

PM: So on top of being a musical inspiration to a whole generation of musicians, as the co-founder of Acoustic Disc, you also helped pave the way for small companies and musicians actually marketing themselves. As such, do you have any advice or observations to share in that domain?

DG: Find a Jerry. [laughs]

PM: [laughs]

DG: No, I don't know. It wasn't like a big plan of mine. It really was, believe it or not, happenstance, more than anything else. Two friends of mine, Artie and Harriet Rose --

PM: Himself a great mandolinist, right, Artie Rose?

DG: Yeah, he is.

PM: Sure. I had the Even Dozen Jug Band album --

PM: Right. The Ragtime Jug Stompers.

DG: Right. In fact, I go back to the day I met Artie Rose, I was like 15 or 16, in the basement of Gertie's Folk City. And I asked him -- he had a fancy Gibson mandolin, and I asked him if I could play it, and he said no.

PM: [laughs]

DG: So now I tell everybody, "Now he's working in the stockroom."

PM: [laughs]

DG: Anyhow, he and his wife Harriet were looking to relocate to the Bay Area from New York, and they wanted to start a business. And they were first thinking about opening a little CD store. And I was kind of helping them research that. We soon discovered there was no way to compete with Tower Records. It was right when CDs were taking over, just a big transition.

And at the same time, I was building a studio in my house. That was not my idea, either. It was instigated by an engineer who worked for me. This equipment from the studio I had been using in Berkeley, California, a place called 1750 Arch Street, they had closed that studio down, and this equipment was all sitting in storage. And the engineer, Bob Schumaker, just said, "You know, you should have that. You should build a studio here." And I said, "Ahh, I don't know." But he arranged it so I could get the stuff so inexpensively that there was no way I couldn't build a studio. So I was building a studio. And then I was ready to make a record. And I'd just been dumped by MCA -- or given an ultimatum, which I turned down.

PM: What kind of an ultimatum?

DG: Well, I had a contract for, I think, two records with them. And I had done an outside record, this Swingin' with Svend record, that was largely a live record. And I had sold that to them as an extra record. And they put a clause in the contract that if it didn't sell 25,000 copies in nine months that they could get out of my regular deal. Nice guys, you know.

PM: Wow, nice guys.

DG: And so I kept telling my manager, "I'm ready to make my next record, and I have the material." But somehow it wasn't moving forward. So finally they sent me a letter and said, "Well, this record only sold 19,000 copies, and we're ready to exercise this option. But we'll give you an extra six weeks if you send us a tape of the tunes you're planning to record." In other words, they wanted me to audition.

PM: [laughs]

DG: So I just told them -- well, I didn't tell them anything, but I had Craig tell them.

PM: "Go exercise your option."

DG: Yeah. "Go ahead. I don't care." So they dropped me. Then I was ready to make a record, but didn't have a label. And here were my two friends looking to start a business, and it just sort of happened. One day we said, "Well, why don't we start a CD company?" And it was the perfect time to just start making CDs, because every other company was in the throws of dumping vinyl and changing over. We knew we weren't even going to bother with vinyl. We just did it, you know. And that was Dawg '90, that record.

PM: What do you think about satellite radio or internet radio? You think that either of those are going to play any significant role in the next decade? Any sense of that?

DG: Well, I don't even know what satellite radio is, but --

PM: It's a pay radio thing.

DG: Oh, really? Well, I'm a guy that -- you know, I don't rely on radio. I practice my own music. I mean, I just went and bought four CDs yesterday, so I don't know --

PM: Right. When you're in the car, you're listening to what you intend to listen to.

DG: Yeah. So I don't really listen to radio. I pulled the plug on TV almost three years ago, too.

PM: Really?

DG: Yeah.

PM: Completely?

DG: Completely.  continue