If Jerry Garcia had never met and played with David Grisman, Jerry’s hilljack streak would still be pretty well known from his efforts in Old and in the Way as well as New Riders of the Purple Sage. It’s good that Garcia and Grisman got together, though. As a result, there’re literally tens of hours of music the two recorded for folks to peruse and probably learn a thing or two about auld tyme American music.

Been All Around This World isn’t a history lesson – nor are the other recorded works by this duo. There are, however, a spate of covers on this offering. That’s not bad or good. It just is. And while a few are going to familiar to anyone with an affinity for the Dead or Grisman’s solo career, there’s a different magic at work here.

Released just about a decade after Garcia’s death, the album is obviously culled from a variety of dates and really seems like a collection of outtakes as much as anything else. There’re dropped rhythms, flubbed notes and shaky singing. And while that’s not untoward in a live hilljack ham setting, getting an earful of that on a proper album is a bit of a bummer.

Of course, Been All Around This World takes on a new cast of players either not present on earlier efforts or maybe those previous groups just sported different instrumentation. Whatever the case, this disc feels more closely tied to Grisman’s work as a date leader than any other Garcia/Grisman release. The mandolin player assembling the disc might have something to do with that, though.

Tossing on “Sitting Here in Limbo” from Jimmy Cliff’s songbook is a nice touch and does work to fake a sort of persistence in sound here as the shuffling percussion instrument finds its way onto more than a few efforts here. Hearing Garcia’s wavering voice take over such a recognizable Cliff song is a bit odd, but only for a moment. And while those vocals might not be as strong as they would have been if recorded a bit earlier in Garcia’s career, they’re still affecting.

Apart from the duo’s So What, which simply sports a number of different takes on the Miles Davis composition, Been All Around This World is probably the only other release from these folks that’s for the die hards. Of course, even if this is the first exposure someone gets to the Garcia and Grisman duo there’s a great likelyhood that more material’s gonna be sought out.