By Scott McLennan

Along with the legendary Peter Rowan, other multi-generational participants in this leg of the Sam Grisman Project tour are well versed in the bluegrass songbook.

Sam Grisman grew up seeing — firsthand  — the joyous community of bluegrass musicians and the grueling aspects of band life.

Grisman is the son of revered mandolinist David Grisman. The elder Grisman, now 80, has a storied career that weaves through traditional and progressive acoustic music projects, most typically fusing his passions and interests together into what has come to be known as “Dawg music.”

Sam Grisman plays bass, and a few years ago he decided to move from being a sideman to becoming a band leader – just not with a specific band.

“I play with a rotating cast. I know so many folks who this music matters a lot to and who want to be part of a project that uplifts it,” the bassist said about the origins of Sam Grisman Project. “I wanted to approach this in a way that kept everyone healthy, thinking about their musical health and their mental health.”

Grisman knows both the bluegrass veterans – Tony Rice and Doc Watson were houseguests, after all – and the up-and-comers who are heating up the high lonesome sound. And when everything aligns, Sam Grisman Project bridges the generations on the concert stage.

That will be the case when the project comes to the Cabot Theater in Beverly on June 14 and Treehouse Brewing in Charlton on June 16. On those dates, Grisman will have the legendary Peter Rowan joining the group.

Rowan, who turns 83 on July 4, joined bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe’s band in 1964 after developing his skills on guitar and other instruments in the Northeast’s fertile folk scene. Rowan and David Grisman first teamed up in 1967 with the band Earth Opera. In 1973, Rowan and Grisman formed Old & In the Way with Jerry Garcia on banjo, John Kahn on bass, and Richard Greene on fiddle, later replaced by Vassar Clements, another alum of Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys.

The short-lived band released one self-titled live album in 1975 that broke through to a broad audience, thanks in part to the attention brought to it by Garcia, whose fame for being in the Grateful Dead was well established by then. (The elder Grisman has gone on to release recordings of the four 1973 Old & In the Way concerts performed at the Boarding House in San Francisco, gigs that were the source of the original album.)

Sam Grisman and Peter Rowan in performance. Photo: Jean Frank Photography

The 1975 record remains a touchstone for bluegrass fans old and new because it features signature renditions of some of Rowan’s best-known original songs – “Panama Red,” “Land of the Navajo,” “Midnight Moonlight” – not to mention the namesake “Old and in the Way,” the only song Grisman ever wrote with lyrics.

Rowan lives in Northern California and the bassist — who was born there and now lives in Nashville — invited the guitarist to sit in at a Sam Grisman Project show at the Sweetwater music club in Mill Valley. “Part of my vision for this project is to honor elders and heroes. We want to show people where the music comes from,” Grisman said.

Unsurprisingly, Grisman is a big fan of Rowan’s work well beyond that of Old & In the Way. He recalls being a preschool kid watching a video over and over of the band Muleskinner, which featured his dad, Rowan, and others playing the passed-around tune “Red Rocking Chair.” He was as mesmerized as most kids his age were smitten by a Sesame Street song.

Later, the younger Grisman fell for Rowan’s 1980 album Texican Badman, a showcase of the Marin County music scene.

Since the first Sweetwater sit-in, Rowan has made a few appearances with Sam Grisman Project, including a concert staged in Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in January that celebrated the Old & In the Way album with a cast that included appearances by Tim O’Brien, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, and other bluegrass luminaries, young and old.

“He is gracious and lets me write the set list, so this may be a ‘Peter Rowan Eras’ tour. We definitely go beyond the Old & In the Way album,” Grisman said.

The other multi-generational participants in this leg of the Grisman Project shows are likewise well versed in the bluegrass songbook, which has its roots in the Appalachian  mountains and has absorbed regional influences from every corner of the country. Grisman’s troupe includes fiddle player John Mailander, a member of Bruce Hornsby’s Noisemakers and a featured artist on a few Billy Strings albums; claw hammer banjo virtuoso Victor Furtado, who has honed his self-taught skills at Berklee College of Music; mandolin player Matt Flinner, who, like the senior Grisman, has crossed the traditional and progressive borderlines many times over; and guitarist Max Flansburg, a guitarist from Upstate New York and member of the bluegrass band Dirty Blanket, who has become a frequent collaborator with the younger Grisman.

Sam Grisman and Peter Rowan in performance. Photo: Jean Frank

The Sam Grisman Project grounded itself as a tribute to the musical partnership of Garcia and Grisman, which, after Old & In the Way, was rekindled in 1990, yielding a series of recordings exploring their shared love of bluegrass and progressive acoustic music.

“When they reconnected, they were older, they had young kids and new partners. They just wanted to make music they enjoyed,” Grisman recalled, without noting that Garcia at the time was probably at the peak of his popular stardom with the Grateful Dead. “My dad never saw anyone as larger than life. The people he played with, he just saw them as good people. To him, everyone mattered. That’s an important lesson he taught me.”

Scott McLennan covered music for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from 1993 to 2008. He then contributed music reviews and features to The Boston Globe, Providence Journal, Portland Press Herald, and WGBH, as well as to The Arts Fuse. He also operated the NE Metal blog to provide in-depth coverage of the region’s heavy metal scene.