ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 6, 1990                   TAG: 9004060488
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: TRACY WIMMER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HIS MUSIC IS FOR THE 'DAWGS'

David Grisman has been called the "Paganini of the Mandolin." And with good reason.

For more than 20 years, with his antique Gibson mandolin, Grisman has been merging bluegrass, jazz and improvisational modern music. While he uses a more modest label for his mongrel repertoire, "dawg music," other artists who took his lead have named it new-grass or grazz. Whatever the moniker, Grisman's imagination is credited for sparking his own mini-musical genre.

It was Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass, who inspired Grisman to take his "rock records down to a garbage dump and leave them there" when he was a teen-ager growing up in Passaic, N.J.

And while he has occasionally strayed from his roots, Grisman is now proving that what goes around does indeed come around. His latest release on Rounder Records, "Home is Where the Heart Is," is a definitive effort that collects 21 significant bluegrass talents: Ricky Skaggs, Doc Watson, Tony Rice and Del McCoury among them.

McCoury and his band will appear with Grisman on Sunday night at Roanoke's Iroquois Club.

Since working as lead singer and guitarist with Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys on the Grand Ole Opry in the early '60s, McCoury has remained one of the finest artists in bluegrass music. His name is virtually synonymous with the classic form from which all bluegrass derives, the coalition of Monroe, Earl Scruggs, Lester Flatt and Charlie Wise from 1945-48.

Publicists say anything goes at a Grisman concert, but with McCoury and the boys along, the performance is sure to be one where the boundaries of traditional mountain music are stretched on all fronts.

David Grisman will perform with the Del McCoury band at the Iroquois Club, 324 Salem Ave. on Sunday. The doors will open 4 p.m. The show begins at 5 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Tickets may be purchased at the Fret Mill or the Iroquois Club. For more information, call 982-8972. 


 by CNB