Esteemed Rice

You're probably wondering what happened to me. The answer is I had (still healing) a wicked infection from an ingrown fingernail and I can't really type or use a mouse too good. Hence the hiatus.

I also got a 256GB SD card for my phone and I'm stocking it out with all the best FLACs, not easy when you have 14TB of music. It's slow going with just one hand, as any chronic masturbator will tell you.

I've got some pretty fucked up stuff lined up for June, though... starting with this guy here and a kind of music I never cover.

Today's 71st birthday boy split this plane a little while back, but whilst here and picking he was at the absolute forefront of the reinvention -- and repopularization -- of Bluegrass music.

Possibly the jazziest picker the genre will ever see, he pushed the music to embrace more open-ended improvisation and virtuosity, almost like Jazz played with instruments normally associated with Bluegrass.

This was called Newgrass, such was its evolution beyond the standard norms for the form.

Of course, to do this kind of exploration you'd have to be an eyepoppingly tasteful guitar player, with a command of music far beyond any single style or genre.

Which is precisely what Tony Rice -- born this day in 1951 -- was, and with ample brilliance to spare too.

To celebrate this mighty and (mighty underrated) axegrinder, we're gonna serve up one of his classic shows here, that's been around for years in kind of a flawed state, but which I've sort of cleaned up to make it the very best it can be.

Tony Rice Unit

McCabe's Guitar Shop 

Santa Monica, California USA

7.17.1982

01 Brooks

02 Gypsy Swing 

03 My Favorite Things 

04 On Green Dolphin Street 

05 Old Gray Coat 

06 Night Coach 

07 Dead One 

08 4 On 6 

09 Common Ground

Total time: 51:25

Tony Rice - guitar 

John Reischman - mandolin 

Todd Phillips - bass 

Fred Carpenter - violin 

soundboard capture of indeterminate origin

sounds like a master reel

tape damage in Track 01 and clipping throughout repaired by EN, December 2020
295 MB FLAC/June 2022 archive link

My finger is almost better, so I will get after brewing up the next thing, which I've got scheduled for Saturday and which could not, were it to come from 344 light years away, be any more different than this Tony Rice show.

OK? See you then and a very happy 71st birthday in the firmament of departed stars to the esteemed Tony Rice, a visionary stringmaster if ever there was one.--J.

6.8.1951 - 12.25.2020