All-acoustic Stringology focuses on music designed to get people out on the dance floor, says guitarist Eric Bogart.

“I think that is the best compliment, when people want to get up and dance to your stuff,” he said. “This music was created as dance music. If it wouldn’t have been for dancing, this stuff never would have come to pass. People don’t realize that. They think it is concert recording stuff.”

The trio performs songs from the Hot Jazz repertoire of the 1920s, from “The Great American Songbook” of the 1930s and ’40s, and melodies from the guitar legend Django Reinhardt.

“We’ve got about 500 songs in our book,” Bogart said. “There is kind of a core repertoire of Gypsy jazz music. But a lot of those songs were jazz standards from the U.S. There are many more jazz standards from that era. On top of that, there are also new songs some of these Gypsy groups today are doing.”

Bogart’s guitar work draws heavily on the jazz manouche vocabulary, painting artistic flourishes above the “rock-solid rhythm back-up” of Terianne Stratton on ukulele and Tracy Bigelow Grisman on bass, who has played bass and rhythm guitar with the Rivereens and other groups fronted by her husband, acoustic legend David Grisman.

Stringology performs Tuesday during the Arts to Elders concert series, an outreach service of Northwind Arts Center in cooperation with Port Townsend’s senior care centers.

Bogart said the trio relishes opportunities to play for an audience that is unable to reach traditional venues due to infirmity.

“You have these people who don’t get to experience live music. There is so much live music in this town but they don’t get out.”

This particular demographic may also be old enough to remember the songs when they were brand new, Bogart said.

“There is also the whole business about how music brings people out of their shell. It is really incredible. People who are in nursing homes and really catatonic, they put headphones on and play stuff these people knew and they come back.”

Grisman said she has witnessed first hand the power of music while performing at an adult family home in West Seattle where her father was living.

“David, my husband, and I would play for those folks and this one woman, I never spoke with her or had any connection with her, was pretty much catatonic in a wheelchair, head down and eyes closed the whole time everytime.”

When they started playing, the woman would cry, Grisman said.

“That really showed how powerful music is and makes breakthroughs with people who can’t respond to other stimuli.”

Stratton said the joyous nature of the trio’s music helps.

“It is the kind of music that makes people smile, tap their foot and want to dance. That is one of the most powerful aspects of doing this for me. I feel like that is a good thing in the world, to bring happiness to other people. You can’t put a value on that.”

Acoustic music is best

The trio is in agreement. The best music comes from acoustic instruments.

“There is nothing like the sound of acoustic instruments,” Bogart said. “I’ve (little) respect for electric guitar. For acoustic guitar, that’s it.”

Heavy fuzz and sound manipulation through electronic instruments just isn’t the same, Bogart said.

“I just think those are ugly sounds, essentially. A whole music genre has developed around it. The entire rock history is developed around that sound. But, I think if that was all the guitar ever was, I never would have wanted to get close to that. It wouldn’t have touched me.”