Tony Rice is a master musician and visionary whose name belongs up there with the best he idolizes--Doc Watson, Clarence White, and John Coltrane. In terms of tone, he is matched only by Coltrane, and Carlos Santana; as acoustic sculptors in the studio, only David Grisman, Bill Wolf, and Nina Gerber, and Gordon Lightfoot have dispalyed equal sensitivity to acoustic and spatial nuance. As a guitarist, only the occassional musician such as Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, B. B. King, John McLaughlin, Carlos Santana, Clarence White, James Burton, J. J. Cale, Duane Allman, Mark Knopfler, or Stevie Ray has been as innovative or sensitive as Rice.



This group is for all who have been moved by Tony's music. I have seen the course of my life changed following my exposure to his music some seven years ago, much in the way Tony sang with Kate Wolf on "Across the Great Divide." His music made me leave behind the last semblance of groundedness in normalcy in my life--my career as a diagnostic radiologist, which I forsook in hopes of being able to play bluegrass. Whether I succeeded is another story...



Anyway, this group is also for those who appreciate Tony's roots in studio-based atmospheric country rock music, and his influence in progressive bluegrass/newgrass/jazzgrass/ spacegrass/new acoustic music and country folk music. So I hope it would also be a forum for discussing such artists as Gordon Lightfoot, Ian Tyson, Iain Matthews, Craig Fuller and Pure Prairie League, Kate Wolf, Emmylou Harris, Nanci Griffith, Clarence White, Doc Watson, David Grisman, Peter Rowan, Chris Hillman, The Eagles and Bernie Leadon, Rick Roberts and Firefall, Steve Young, Mike Auldridge, Sam Bush, Dan Crary.



I, myself, am a Ph.D. student in ethnomusicology at Univ. of Texas, Austin, and mostly research and write on country rock and its offshoot genres including progrssive bluegrass, progressive country, country folk, alternative country, and some styles of jam band music. So I would love to have y'all's views on various aspects of these musics on the posted bulletins. If you enjoy the current crop of urban bluegrassers such as Leftover Salmon, String Cheese, Nickel Creek, and Alison Krauss, or any style of Alt. Country, you'd fit in perfectly in this group. Y'all come! (and join)