Church Street Blues
by Tony Rice

From Rug 02/20/2022 00:03 | #281555 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Before you listen to Church Street Blues, which you absolutely ought to do, it is imperative that you fire up YouTube, search "tony rice church street blues live." Watch the man play. Watch his hands.

If you had to teach the blind what a waterfall looks like, you'd play Tony Rice's crosspicking.

Undisputed in his spot on bluegrass's Mt Rushmore, Tony Rice's legacy is primarily his innumerable contributions to bluegrass lead guitar ("flatpicking"), his personal swing and jazz obsessions permanently transforming the genre. He considered Church Street Blues his greatest challenge: a collection of solo guitar and vocal interpretations of his favorite folk songs. The featured songwriters (Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Gordon Lightfoot, etc.) were also mutual admirers, and Rice's magnetic baritone and technically brilliant rhythm playing transcend any performances of the songs before or since. Tony lost his voice in the early 1990s to vocal dysphonia and his playing was slowly dimmed by physical ailments from the 2000s onward, but Church Street Blues stands as a monument to the brief moment when the man with the perfect hands was at his most versatile.