John Sebastian & David Grisman - Satisfied

Dawg musicians for life

If you got together with your best music buddy and played 14 songs that you both knew well, it would probably sound OK, right? Try it with two experienced and highly accomplished musicians who have known each other since 1963, and the results will be somewhat more than just alright – as this disc is. But unlike, say, Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen, who manage to sound fresh and eager on The Other Side, Sebastian and Grisman seem to have settled for the rocking chair on the porch.

Satisfied sits easy on the borders of country, blues, folk and jug band. It contains 55 minutes of music that won’t – and are not intended to – set the world on fire, but won’t do any harm either. The physical equivalent would be fishing in a creek on a sunny afternoon with a crate of beer and a stash of mild grass. Hello clouds, hello sky…

We wonder, though, if Grisman’s philosophy of “dawg music” (hardly genre-defying, as the publicity suggests) precludes the use of capos or transposition, because there are times when Sebastian sounds distinctly uncomfortable singing in the chosen keys. Other than that, it slides by like a lazy ol’ river.

Acoustic Disc | ACD-67

Reviewed by Tim Holmes
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