TBT(RU) – Throw-Back Tony Rice Unit
Review by Hambone Sparklewell
In the cold of winter, we all need warm wooden music to gather around.
So this flammable album is offered. Tony Rice needs some help these days. Wikipedia states: “Tony Rice is an American guitarist and bluegrass musician. He is perhaps the most influential living acoustic guitar player in bluegrass, progressive bluegrass, newgrass and flattop acoustic jazz.” Rice can no longer play.
Arthritis has robbed the pride of Crystal River of his ability to play his beloved guitar, and that came after he lost the ability to sing. He can speak briefly but only with great effort. So here is a man whose greatest gifts have been taken from him. You can find out more about the Tony Rice Foundation at this link.
Devlin, the album by The Tony Rice Unit on Rounder Records, was produced by Tony Rice and released in 1987. Devlin contains choice selections from two albums by The Tony Rice Unit, Still Inside (1981) and Mar West (1980), recorded in Berkeley, California. You can here both albums and more on the Spotify link below.
Acoustic festival fans must already know that guitarist Tony Rice conspired with mandolinist David “Dawg” Grisman in the invention of the hot instrumental acoustic bluejazz known as Dawg music, Newgrass and Spacegrass. The Unit was/is Tony’s jazz band. Tony plays the legendary/relic 1935 Martin D-28 previously owned by Clarence White, a passing of the torch if there ever was one.
(See Grisman’s album Tone Poems, track 6, and the included booklet, for a history of this holy grail guitar. Hear Jerry Garcia monkey around with Tony’s famous guitar on Grisman’s collaboration with Rice and Garcia, The Pizza Tapes. And read this article from Fretboard Journal for complete details.)
Your author has constructed small word machines, in prior reviews, explaining his ironic opinion about the pure prismatic power of instrumental music, untethered to the static storylines of music with vocals. Of course, the irony is that he used the alphabet, the same anchor letters that he complains about, as he explains why — in his mind — impressionist instrumental jazz abstracts soar above storytelling music, from those scowling folktale psalms to those fruit-bowl still lifes. He proposed, instead, to do a short symbolic dance routine making this point, a blend of limbo and jig, watusi and cha-cha, but MFN rejected his offer. [Ed. note: We were hoping for a video.]
Enough tomfoolery.
TRU uses bluegrass instruments to play jazz: chopping mandolins, fluttering mandolins, thonking and booming upright bass, violins that scratch, slash and burn, and the impossibly nimble acupuncture of Tony’s Martin guitar. All 15 tracks here are sparkling acoustic head music to dream on, with the perky precision of bluegrass time, as well as the virtuosic splatter of stringtalk, where the band states the theme in unison, and the soloists proceed to take turns burning over the groove, before returning to the top. There’s a Miles Davis cut, an Earl Klugh cut, but mostly the music is original. No messy lyrics to make you think of anything — just sounds.
Let us turn to a representative slice — the song called “Mar West.”
Four guys, Tony on guitar, Sam Bush on mandolin, Richard Greene on violin, Todd Phillips on bass. Chamber spacegrass; a swinging, propulsive intricate head kicks it off, then, after a unison statement by fiddle and guitar, Tony embarks at about 0:19. Sit yourself in the sweet spot or plug in the headphones and turn it up so the soundstage is fully revealed to your ears. Hear the bark and sting of a tortoiseshell pick on a spruce Martin cathedral strung with bronze, a rich, deep, climbing trademark bass run at 0:24, sliding octaves at 0:30-0:36, fluid bubble-blowing scales, only faster and cleaner than thought, the fiddle “chopping” chords with his bow, then at 1:24 to 1:34, something extraordinary happens. Tony starts with a single tremolo note, fanned and milked, then bent and slid down the agonizing chromatic heartstring like a fireman going down the pole, ten seconds of Bedouin jazz to make you squirm and hold your breath and testify.
Feel that sound?
Listening to Tony Rice Unit is recommended by 3 out of 4 cardiologists.