Grateful Dawg Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)November 27th, 2001
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Last year, Aiyana Elliott made a documentary called The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack about her father, folk music legend Jack Elliott. Jack was interesting for two reasons - it told the story of an important, influential figure most people had never of, but it was also about Aiyana's dysfunctional relationship with her dad. Without the former, the latter wouldn't have been as remarkable, and without the latter, the former would have seemed like a daughter's desperate attempt to win her daddy's affection by portraying him as an unjustly overlooked icon.
And that's just what Grateful Dawg is. Directed by Gillian Grisman, the film is about her father, David, a world-renowned mandolin player who had an occasional side project with the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia. The two made some great bluegrass music over four decades, from nerdy jug-band standards in the '60s to a wildly eclectic batch of tunes in the '90s, when Jerry bought the farm. Yes, that's right - bluegrass music. Deadheads beware: This isn't that crappy acid jam music you need to be baked to enjoy. It's crisp, toe-tapping stuff with banjos and upright bass and lightning-quick finger-picking that resembles the tunes from O Brother, Where Art Thou? more than what you may ordinarily associate with the Dead.
Dawg, which was Jerry's nickname for David, chronicles the careers of both musicians, beginning with their meeting in the parking lot of a 1964 Bill Monroe concert in Sunset Park, Pennsylvania. A fast friendship based on mutual admiration was established, giving birth to a band called Old and In the Way. They were a hit at bluegrass festivals around the country and their first and only record went on to become one of the best-selling in its genre. But by the time it was released, Jerry and David had parted ways after a falling out that is never adequately explained in the film.
David and Jerry reunited in the late '80s (right around the time the Dead had their big hit single on the charts) and began to record their sessions together. By this time, the two could have passed for twins, with each sporting helmet heads full of crazy gray hair, t-shirts, sweatpants and bushy white beards (David's wife called them "beards of a feather"). Grisman, along with Dead drummer Jerry Kreutzmann's son Justin, filmed as many of the sittings as they could, presumably out of boredom (wait until you hear the mind-numbing banter), and peppers the clips with concert footage, stills and interviews with current and ex-bandmates, family, and contemporaries, as well as the two subjects.
There are some things that work in Dawg, like the portrayal of Jerry and David as The Odd Couple of Bluegrass (one too tight and the other too loose). Grisman also lets each song play in its entirety, which is a very refreshing change considering we're used to learning about music history via five-second song snippets on VH-1's Behind the Music. It's a potentially detrimental move (and was David's only stipulation to his daughter), especially when faced with songs like "Arabia," which approaches 20 minutes, but is handled remarkably well. She also makes sure to offer a decent sample of the duo's diverse music, which includes sea shanties ("Off to Sea Once More"), reggae ("Sitting Here in Limbo"), children's songs ("Jenny Jenkins"), blues ("The Thrill is Gone") and Dead standards ("Friend of the Devil").
But there is plenty that doesn't work, too. There isn't any mention of drug use, and Grisman only hints around the fact that Jerry's non-stop commitment to the Dead probably shaved several years off his life. It's obvious that he saw his collaboration with David as the ultimate escape from that awful music adored by passionate yet smelly fans.
Dawg is only 81 minutes long and includes every second of the only Garcia-Grisman music video ever made (Jerry, dressed as a gangster, looks just like Francis Ford Coppola). In other words, there isn't much movie here. Mostly it's just Grisman's daughter saying, "Look, everyone. This is the music my dad made with Papa Bear. Everyone loves Papa Bear, right? Well, you need to love my dad, too." One wonders if a film would have even been made if Grisman had partnered up with a less famous sidekick whose die-hard fans wouldn't scoop up as many movie tickets. Even the film's press kit seems like more of a tribute to Grisman (the fact that he was hailed as the "the Paganini of the Mandolin" by the New York Times is mentioned three times, and seven pages of his discography are included, too). As a result, Dawg tries too hard to accomplish something the music could have done on its own.
1:21 - PG-13 for brief language
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