Great article @patrickdowns, thanks. The bassist mentioned in it (Todd Phillips) is an old friend of mine from San Jose. He was leaving a band I was just joining in '71, to focus on studying mandolin with David Grisman up in Marin County. David encouraged him to instead learn upright bass (Todd was playing a Fender P-bass at that time), as there were a lot of good mandolin players around, not so many good upright players. Todd took his advice, and ended up in David's band, as well as working with Tony on a number of his albums (Todd also made a couple of albums as band leader). Nice work if you can get it---all it takes is talent ;-) .
