Is anyone else grooving on the HI-DEF Version of Dawg ‘90? This album is where it all started for Acoustic Disc, their first release. It is hard to count all the fabulous Acoustic Disc titles in my collection of music. In fact I’d venture to say that these are a big percentage of the soundtrack of my life. That being said, how did I forget so much detail about “Dawg ‘90” in the 23 years it has been out? And why haven’t I listened to this lately or had this music in my current rotation? I think I must be spoiled, Grisman just keeps putting out more great music, but I’ve decided after review that this recording definitely deserves another listen! Back in the day I listened to it a lot, as I remembered it lick for lick upon playing it again, like it was etched in my memory. I find it interesting how strong musical memories can be. Back when it came out this was in heavy rotation on my CD player.

First of all I’d forgotten how good the music is, the nice variety of grooves and tempos..... from a hot “Pupville” to a great loping version of ”O’Banion’s Wake”, or the other Grisman tunes ranging from Samba to Swing, all played with the finesse of a stellar band with great arrangements, and the Dawg leading the way on mandolin. I have fond memories of the DGQ playing the tune ”Sativa” live, at the time, another in a string of major opus large scale pieces that Grisman had penned, clocking in at over 12 minutes. I love these majestic longer Dawg tunes, that transition into different parts, and put it in a category with tunes like “Dawg’s Rag” and “Dawgology.”

Am I the only one that forgot that the great Mark O’Connor plays fiddle on most of the CD? Or that Matt Glaser, head of the Strings Dept. at Berklee rounds out the fiddle chair on a few tunes, with Joe Craven on another. Or that the brilliant guitarist John Carlini plays on this entire album, he is a long time collaborator with Grisman going back to the pre-DGQ bands, and also helping orchestrate the “King of the Gypsy’s” movie soundtrack as well as playing guitar & appearing in the movie. Ask Tony Rice what guitarist taught him a lot about Jazz chords & he’d tell you John Carlini, in fact they made a nice duo album together “River Suite for Two Guitars”. I did remember that the rest of the band was rounded out by long time DGQ member Joe Craven, on percussion, mandolin, and fiddle, as well as Jim Kerwin on bass and Matt Eakle on flute who are still members of the DGQ all these years later!

In studying the liner notes of the original CD, I see where my name was mentioned on a list of people being thanked, now I didn’t forget that! What I’m getting at here is maybe I’m not the only one who needs a review, or some of you younger cats might not even know this music. Not only is the sound up a notch, available to download from the Acoustic Oasis in three options from HI-DEF FLAC to regular MP3, but there are added cuts.

These bonus cuts in this Delux Edition of “Dawg 90” have been previously released on DGQ 20, but here they are in HI-DEF. It must have been hard deciding what tunes to put on the original CD as these bonus tunes are fabulous, some I consider among Dawg’s greatest hits. You get “Telluride”, “Blue Midnight”, “Opus 38” and “EMD”. 'Opus 38' has some incredible mandola playing by Grisman, and a perfect guitar solo from Carlini. The whole band trades fours in a section, and just like how they still play it live, it gets pretty abstract, and live the crowd always goes nuts when they bring it back to the melody at the end. This tune was my introduction to mandola, in ensemble playing, and Grisman can play some seriously hot mandola! “EMD” is played at a medium tempo, I don’t know about you...... but the way the DGQ can blaze away on this tune is a tad faster than I can play along with, I find this tempo is perfect to learn the tune, and play along with the best back up band you could ask for. I’m really glad I revisited this CD, it makes me wonder what other Grisman albums I haven’t played in awhile, and I look forward to other HI-DEF releases from the Acoustic Oasis.