Sam Grisman

Samson Grisman grew up in his father’s house in Mill Valley, where David Grisman had a home studio and friends such as Doc Watson, Jerry Garcia, John Hartford, Mike Seeger and Tony Rice came to record and rehearse. Family friends Sam Bush and Jim Kerwin, the bassist of the David Grisman Quintet, were early influences, and he was playing the bass as soon as he could hold up a half-size instrument. At eight he made his recording debut on Retrograss (Acoustic Disc, 1999), the Grammy-nominated album of his father, Hartford and Seeger.

By 2006, at sixteen and still in high school, he was the bassist in the David Grisman Bluegrass Experience, with Keith Little, Jim Nunally and Chad Manning. The band toured that summer and recorded DGBX (Acoustic Disc, 2006), on which he takes a bass solo on “Are You Afraid to Die?”; on its second album, Muddy Roads (2013), devoted to the old-time music of Clarence Ashley and Doc Watson, he sang as well. In 2011 he and his father formed a trio with the guitarist and singer Jim Hurst, whom they had met years before at a bluegrass camp in Oregon, and David Grisman’s Folk Jazz Trio came out that year on Acoustic Oasis, with Sam’s bass solos and his lead vocal on John Hartford’s “I Wish We Had Our Time Again.” In 2015 David Grisman formed the Dawg Trio with the banjo player Danny Barnes and Sam.

From 2011 to 2017 he lived in Nashville and played with the flatpicking guitarist Bryan Sutton. Through his twenties he worked as a sideman, with the Deadly Gentlemen and, as his main job outside his father’s bands, with the country singer Lee Ann Womack, and he has also played and recorded with Darol Anger, Noam Pikelny, Tim O’Brien, Martin Taylor, Eric Krasno and Billy Strings.

Early in 2023 he launched the Sam Grisman Project, describing its aim as showcasing his and his friends’ love for the legacy of “Dawg and Jerry’s music.” He leads it on upright bass and sings, with a changing cast of players. Its first record, Temple Cabin Sessions, Volume 1 (2023), took on songs from the Grateful Dead, Garcia and Garcia–Grisman catalogs. On 9 January 2025 the band played the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in a show billed as Peter Rowan and the Sam Grisman Project playing Old & In the Way, with guests including Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Billy Strings, Jerry Douglas and Sam Bush, and a double album recorded in the days before, Sam Grisman Project, was released through Acoustic Disc in December 2025. As of 2023 he was based in Nashville.