Joe Craven

His first record with Grisman was Dawg ’90, issued as Acoustic Disc ACD-1 in June 1990, on which he played percussion on most tracks, rhythm mandolin on “Pupville,” “O’Banion’s Wake” and “Gypsy Nights,” fiddle on “Dawg Daze” and mandola on “Hot Club Swing.” He played percussion and fiddle on Jerry Garcia / David Grisman (Acoustic Disc ACD-2, 1991), recorded at Grisman’s studio in the spring of 1991 with Jim Kerwin on bass, and he was on stage with Garcia and Grisman in their concerts of 1990 and 1991, among them two at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco in February and December 1991. He is also on their later albums, Not for Kids Only (1993), Shady Grove (1996), So What (1998) and Been All Around This World (2004), and a 2018 release of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” was credited to Garcia, Grisman, Kerwin and Craven together. With the Quintet he played fiddle and percussion on Dawgwood and recorded Dawganova (1995), the retrospective DGQ-20 (1996) and Dawgnation (2002), the last with Kerwin, the flautist Matt Eakle and the Argentine guitarist Enrique Coria.

Outside the Grisman circle he played percussion on the banjo player Alison Brown’s Simple Pleasures (Vanguard, 1990), and he later spent seven years recording and touring with her; the Alison Brown Quartet with Joe Craven made Evergreen (Compass, 2008), with Craven on fiddle, mandolin and percussion, and Live at Blair (2009). He was the percussionist on Psychograss (Windham Hill, 1993), the album by Darol Anger and Mike Marshall’s group, playing a violin case, sheet metal, talking drum and dumbek among other things. He has also played with Stéphane Grappelli, on stage at Carnegie Hall, and with David Lindley, Howard Levy, Vassar Clements, Rob Ickes and others, and his session credits run from Tony Furtado and Laurie Lewis to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s The Long Ride (1999).

His own records began with Camptown (Acorn, 1996), which he produced, arranged and mixed himself: fiddle tunes such as “Soldier’s Joy,” “Kitchen Girl” and “Bonaparte” alongside “Star of the County Down,” played on mandolins, violins, ukulele, Puerto Rican cuatro and a kitchenful of percussion. Mo’ Joe followed in 2001, and Django Latino (2004) recast Django Reinhardt pieces such as “Minor Swing,” “Nuages” and “Djangology” with Latin rhythms, Craven playing mandola, violin, cavaquinho, mandolin and hand percussion. Later came Foakee (2009), with the bassist and pianist Sam Bevan; All Four One (2010), by the Joe Craven Trio; and Garcia Songbook (2018), songs written or played by Jerry Garcia, with the Sometimers. He has also composed music and sound effects for commercials, soundtracks and computer games.

A former museum curator, Craven has worked as a music educator for more than twenty-five years. He has presented at more than 500 schools, colleges and universities, appeared in the PBS series Music Gone Public, was for more than ten years a co-director of the youth academy at Wintergrass in Seattle, and directs the RiverTunes camps in California, among them JAMboree and WinterTunes. He has been master of ceremonies at DelFest for fifteen years, at the Live Oak festival for twenty-five, at the 40th and 41st Telluride Bluegrass Festivals, and at Grand Targhee, High Sierra, Wintergrass and RockyGrass. He received the Folk Alliance Far-West Performer of the Year award in 2009 and the Swannanoa Gathering’s Master Music Maker Award.