NEW HAVEN - Fifty years ago, two friends who would could only be described as institutions in the world of bluegrass played their first gigs together. A half-century later, Del McCoury and David "Dawg" Grisman will bring their talents along with an intimate familiarity of each other and this uniquely American music to College Street Music Hall on Thursday, February 25.Hardcore Bluegrass, a unique collection of bluegrass classics, made at two Dawg studio jam sessions in the 1990s." music (the nickname given him by Jerry Garcia.)  In doing so, he's inspired new generations of acoustic string musicians, while creating his own niche in contemporary music.In 1963 Grisman made his first recordings both as an artist and producer. In 1966 Red Allen offered Grisman his first job with an authentic bluegrass band, the Kentuckians. Grisman began composing original tunes and playing with other urban bluegrass contemporaries like Peter Rowan and Garcia, with whom he would later form Old & In The Way. AcousticOasis.com, the first download website devoted to acoustic music.The Newtown Bee for an extended chat that opened with a friendly greeting for an old friend from Sandy Hook:Newtown Bee: So you know I'm sitting here just a few miles away from another bluegrass pioneer named Roger Sprung. Have you had the opportunity to ever play with him?Del McCoury: I haven't seen him in years and years, but I've known Roger since I met him at the Camp Springs Bluegrass Festival in North Carolina, and I met up with him again in Barryville, Virginia. I'm talkin' back in the '60s. Well, hey - tell Roger I said hello!Bee: Tell me about your memories of hearing and meeting Grisman for the first time...McCoury: That guy - (laughing) - I mean, he's different. He's not a cookie cutter musician. And he did learn from Bill Monroe and Frank Wakefield.Early Dawg. We never played in a band together, but we played a lot together, you know? And when we'd go to California, Dave would have us up to his studio and he's record every time we'd go up there.Bee: Jerry Garcia apparently told more than a few people that seeing you with Bill Monroe inspired his love of bluegrass music. Was it Bill who decided to stick you up in front singing or was it something you were eager to try?McCoury: I started out playing guitar, but when I heard Earl Scruggs that was it, I said I wanna learn to play like that. (laughing). I was playin' banjo when I first met Bill Monroe, but he needed a guitar player and lead singer, and he wanted me to do that, so I did. That's how it happened for me. That was in 1963.Bee: Did you already have confidence in your ability to do the job out front, or did you take those first few steps as a front man because Monroe asked you to do it?McCoury: Well, he kind of just stuck me out there to sink or swim. But I'll tell you, John, I had the confidence to know that I could play guitar for Bill Monroe. I could play up to speed and cover whatever it was he needed. I played a lot of banjo but I never forsake playin' the guitar. I'd pick it up every once in awhile with a band or something like that. But I had no trouble keeping up wth Bill. The hardest part was actually learning the verses of all those songs.Bee: What was it like back in the 1960s when you were touring playing bluegrass and the rock music scene was sort of blooming in the garden next door?McCoury: I didn't even listen to any of that stuff. I didn't have any animosity toward them, but once I started playing bluegrass as a kid, you might think it was crazy but I just didn't listen to anything else. I knew rock was big on the radio. When I was in high school Elvis Presley was all there was - and Jerry Lee Lewis, who I really liked.Bee: You created your own songbook of originals, from "High On A Mountain" and Dark Hollow, to "Rain And Snow." When you're writing, do you generally imagine the words or the music first?McCoury: You know it's hard for me to say what's gonna  come first. You see I get this melody in my head, and I'll write to that melody. Or it can come the other way around - I'll get this thought on the guitar and I'll write it down and then put a melody to that.Bee: One of your songs co-written by Harley Allen describes "a guitar-picking, bluegrass-singing, never grow up boy." Has that love of bluegrass you discovered as a teen kept you young?McCoury: Well, that song was Harley's idea. It's a shame he passed away, you know. One day we were writing together and he reaches into a drawer and says, I got something here for you. And he said "This fits you." I kind of felt funny writing that song at first, but it did really well for me.Any remaining tickets to see these "Professors of Bluegrass" at the College Street Music Hall are $23.50 - $67.50. Doors open at 7 pm and the show is open to all ages.Check out Del McCoury and David 'Dawg' Grisman playing a set live in the cask room at New York's City Winery in 2014. David "Dawg" Grisman is joined by Del McCoury for "Dark Hollow" at the Suwannee Springfest in Live Oak Florida, March 2015

The Music Hall at 238 College Street, is honoring tickets issued for the postponed November 21 show, one of a few rescheduled dates in the region.

Grisman at the first show he ever played with Bill Monroe in the spring of 1963 in Greenwich Village. , Del and "Dawg" played their first gig together in Troy, N.Y., at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.Three years laterMcCoury, who was picking on banjo at the time, met 

Through the years they have shared the stage at venues and festivals across the country. And in 2012, the pair released 

Grisman's musical range is described as wide and deep, embracing many styles, genres and traditions.

An acoustic pioneer and innovator, he forged a unique personal artistic path, skillfully combining elements of the great American music/art forms - jazz and bluegrass with many international flavors and sensibilities to create his own distinctive idiom - "Dawg

Grisman discovered the mandolin as a teenager growing up in New Jersey, where he met and became a disciple of mandolinist/folklorist Ralph Rinzler. Despite warnings from his piano teacher that it wasn't a "real" instrument, Grisman learned to play the mandolin in the style of Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass music.  He took it to Greenwich Village where he studied English at NYU, while immersed in the proliferating folk music scene of the early 1960s.

After performing with a broad variety of musicians of many genres, and recording for major and independent labels most of his life, Grisman founded Acoustic Disc in 1990 and entered the most prolific period of his career, producing 67 critically acclaimed CDs (five of which were Grammy-nominated.) In 2010 he launched

In his official bio, McCoury is characterized as a living link to the days when bluegrass was made only in hillbilly honkytonks, schoolhouse shows and on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. Yet McCoury is a vital presence today, from prime time and late night talk show TV to music festivals where audiences number in the hundreds of thousands.

Born in York County, Penn., in 1939, McCoury was bitten hard by the bluegrass bug when he heard Earl Scruggs' banjo in the early '50s.

"Everybody else was crazy about Elvis, but I loved Earl," he says.

With Scruggs as his inspiration, McCoury became a banjo picker himself, working in the rough but lively Baltimore and Washington DC bar scene into the early 1960s.

But he got his first taste of the limelight when he joined Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys in early 1963 when the Father of Bluegrass moved McCoury from the banjo to guitar, made him his lead singer, and gave him a lifetime's worth of bluegrass tutelage over a little more than a year.

But instead of continuing on as Monroe's front man, McCoury returned to Pennsylvania in the mid-'60s to provide steady support for his new and growing family eventually and almost unbelievably settling into work in the logging industry.

He couldn't keep his musical energies capped for long, however, and decided to put his own band together and call it the Dixie Pals. He also took up songwriting, penning a number of popular bluegrass tunes including "High On A Mountain," "Are You Teasing Me," "Dark Hollow," "Bluest Man In Town," "Rain And Snow," "Good Man Like Me," and "Rain Please Go Away."

About a decade after McCoury welcomed his son Ronnie to the Dixie Pals, he relocated to Nashville, inked a contract with Rounder Records, changed the name of his ensemble to the Del McCoury Band, and spent the next quarter century entertaining audiences around the world with his authentic Bluegrass stylings.

Amassing three consecutive Male Vocalist of the Year awards in short order from the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA), McCoury also saw his quintet capture nine Entertainer of the Year trophies in an 11 year stretch - along with ongoing honors for Ronnie, who took eight straight Mandolin Player of the Year awards.

Then in 2005, more than a half century since he picked up the banjo, McCoury's band earned their first Best Bluegrass Album Grammy Award. In the years since, McCoury has continued to perform for appreciative audiences around the globe.

Ahead of the College Street show, McCoury called in to

The thing about David is, he started coloring outside of the lines a long time ago. So I was on my first gig to New York City and I was still playin' the banjo and Grisman was going to school there. So my brother Jerry started playin' with him and one day he calls me up and says David wants us to come up and play a show up north. So we went up to Troy, NY and played that show. Then years and years later, David calls me up and says he found a recording of that show - and he thinks he can clean it up and put it out as a record. So he did - called it

So a few years ago my manager asked me who I might want to play with, and I said let's call up the Dawg. I know we could play real good together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZc_csZgjsI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elOBdl0y3xo