David Grisman’s Acoustic Disc label has just released a truly historic recording of Tony and Wyatt Rice in their first duo performance in 1996. Entitled Tony & Wyatt Rice Together!, it captures these two brilliant flatpicking brothers from two consecutive nights at the Acoustic Stage concert series in Hickory, NC, August 16-17, 1996.
Of course we have since lost Tony, and Wyatt is focusing mostly on his teaching career in the ETSU Bluegrass, Old Time, & Roots Music program, so this truly is a rare look at two special nights nearly 30 years ago. There are two full sets from each of those two nights for a total of 39 tracks.
There is good bit of repetition of tunes over the two nights, but with a pair of powerhouse improvisers like Tony and Wyatt Rice, the same tunes could never sound the same way twice.
Included are flatpicking standards like Gold Rush, Salt Creek, Blackberry Blossom, Forked Deer, Fishers Hornpipe, and Beaumont Rag, along with Rice classics Manzanita, Swing 42, Waltz for Indira, Devlin’, and even Fish Scale from the first David Grisman Quintet album.
As a true audiophile, Grisman is releasing this project as a high definition recording, as either MP3s, or HD/FLAC on disc. It is only available from Acoustic Disc online, as the Dawg has long eschewed the sort of compression used by download and streaming services, and the percentage they take of the sales price.
We expect to have a review up soon, but we know that dedicated Rice heads will want this one right away to analyze and study.
