If Tony Rice can hear me now, thank you for the music. Your genius = a transcendence of opposites: airy, fleet-fingered picking matched w/an introspective voice that's bottomless; a respect for tradition that makes way for heady exploration. #riptonyrice

Here's Tony when he was with J.D. Crowe & The New South in the mid '70s. This line-up changed everything: .

This is the thing that's always intrigued me about Rice: while he was a student of Clarence White, he was very much his opposite. Where Clarence was extremely physical in his flat-picking, Tony was all about lightness--a high atmosphere kind of feeling.

This lightness would be a *huge* influence on the evolution of not just California bluegrass but the entire genre as well (both trad & prog). Dive into those '80s Alison Krauss LPs, & you can hear her building on Tony's model: swift, intricate playing that's oh so delicate.

Here's Tony w/John Hartford & Vassar. I love seeing Hartford and Tony together: very different celestial bodies whose orbits find them passing gracefully by one another: .

And here's one of my favorite of Tony's that finds him in a more experimental mindset: Backwaters from '82: .

And here's one more to close out the evening. The Tony Rice Unit tackling "Blue Railroad Train," a Delmore Bros. tune that Doc Watson famously covered. Tony's voice broke the bluegrass mold. He wasn't high lonesome; rather, he was deep and blue.