Our Saturday morning folk show (see Jesse James behind the wheel) at the undergraduate station was a hybrid of music, a juxtaposition of sounds that didn't always sound the best together but we made them work the best we could. One of the types of music featured was what might be thought of as "acoustic music" – instrumental tracks featuring guitars, banjos, mandolins, or some other sort of stringed instrument.
When the format was launched, I think its creator (Brad Phasner) wasn't sure what sort of music we were going to wind up with. He had his own private stash of music that he started off with but we would need more to make this new endeavor work. I had become interested in the new format early on and assisted Brad with promotion, including notifying record labels, magazines and online portals that the station was looking to start a new format that was sort of an "anything goes." Easily, more than half of what we ended up with was the contemporary folk music, with the discs of acoustic music probably made up another quarter percent. The remainder of the folk show's library was...was...well, that's another story. Looking back, I always found it odd how it all fit together.
Our library of acoustic music was probably the second largest category of the folk show; a lot of the discs were compilation albums, usually samplers from an all-acoustic label – like David Grisman's Acoustic Disc label. Grisman is a renowned mandolin player, whose nickname "Dawg" features into many of his album that are of a bluegrass/acoustic jazz variety. Grisman, or at least his label's promotional department, unloaded a number of complimentary discs on our station (and continued to provide an occasional compilation from time to time). Listeners seemed to like the sound, as calls asked for further album information. Brad was so impressed with listeners' reactions that he soon began announcing all album titles and labels and release year, along with song title and artist. Dawganova was one such album that got a lot of airtime, notably for its leadoff track.
In the pursuing years, and under my brief leadership, the format expanded the number of acoustic tracks in rotation and the number of times they were played each hour. Since the program was initially four hours and usually favored the contemporary folk singers, we sort of "flipped" the format – two hours would be 60-40 favoring the acoustic, instrumental tracks, the other two for everything else. And to add whatever variety we could to the format that semester, we always switched around the hours: one week the first and third hours would be acoustic, the next week the second and third, and maybe the week after that just the first and fourth.
Grisman continues recording music (recent album titles – Dawgnation and Dwag's Groove – suggest you can't keep a good dawg down), with his most recent work titled DGBX, the David Grisman Bluegrass Experience (2006).
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Dawganova
(Grisman)
David Grisman Quintet
From the album Dawganova
1995
