A 17-year-old from New Jersey stepping on stage to play mandolin with Doc Watson is where this story begins. This episode follows David Grisman from a Hackensack childhood with a trombonist father, through piano and saxophone lessons that gave him a jazz horn player's mindset, to the Greenwich Village folk scene, the Even Dozen Jug Band, Red Allen's Kentuckians and the psychedelic band Earth Opera with Peter Rowan.

The hosts explain how Grisman's move to San Francisco led to playing on the Grateful Dead's American Beauty, forming Old and In the Way with Jerry Garcia, Peter Rowan and Vassar Clements, and picking up the nickname Dawg from Garcia. They unpack how dawg music mapped bluegrass picking onto the swinging rhythm of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli, the original David Grisman Quintet with Darol Anger, Todd Phillips, Joe Carrol ...