Silly Folks

Look at these silly old guys! They are Jerry Garcia, who is now dead, and David Grisman, whose mandolin sounds pretty. They look really happy in this picture, and they have matching beards. Look at Jerry's leatha' sleeves! He's silly! I like that!

Lately I've been listening to their album Shady Grove every time I'm in the car. It is a compilation of folk standards. My favorite song is "Stealin'," which is about being low-down, it seems. I like when Jerry says, "a married girl comes to see me sometimes." I sing along energetically, making up a third line of harmony sometimes, and imagine being a salty, Janis-Jopliny, one-of-the-boys folk singer.

But what I like most about how these guys play these songs is that they capture exactly what I think folk music is intended to do. Earlier, I called them silly, and I think that's a perfect word to describe this intention, especially considering the word's connotations of plainness and humility. Folk songs, even ones that deal with serious issues, capture something childish and imperfect. It's music that's meant to be sung along to as opposed to just listened to. The lyrics are meant to be changed in the great oral tradition. An example of this silliness and how these guys appreciate it is probably more obviously illustrated with the other folk album they recorded together. It's called The Pizza Tapes and was recorded in a couple of evenings with another gentleman named Tony Rice (who doesn't have a matching beard, but his mustache is pretty kick-ass). A pizza delivery boy stole Jerry's master copy and soon after it was bootlegged. Hence The Pizza Tapes! HaHa!

Great musicianship requires that musicians don't take themselves too seriously. So does folk music. These guys are perfect at both.