We lost a giant of the guitar on Christmas yesterday. Of course it all comes flooding through the mind, how many times we played together since we first met in 1975. I will have to describe it all at a later date. Tony was my hero on the guitar that really mattered to me – on the dreadnought Martin D-28 – the sound of it, and the sound of him. It was everything. I was analyzing his guitar licks off the early albums when I was 13 and 14, but when I played with him shortly after, I made sure I didn’t quote him because that would be in bad taste. I wanted to be playing alongside of him, not at him, but he knew how much he meant to me.
I was privileged to have him play on my Markology guitar album and even more so, when he asked me to be the first violinist for the Tony Rice Unit, only to have to bow out because of my commitment already made to David Grisman Quintet - to replace Tony… stories that pull and tug at you when it comes to the precious souls of the music.
I suppose the bluegrass we played together in the first couple of years of MerleFest was the height of my bluegrass experience, and I think for many it was the pinnacle for the generation. I think this back and forth that Tony and I had throughout our lives helped make me a better guitar player, that I know. He pushed me out in the San Fran Bay area, and we kept doing it all through the years, but musically we always had each other’s back when we played.
Tony, always told me that you have to stand for one instrument. One instrument only, to be a really great musician. And of course I was born to be a multi-instrumentalist. So every time I played either the fiddle or the guitar, I put everything I had into it, to make sure Tony’s message to me was being listened to, that it was resonating. It was a tall order, a mentor that is as great as he is – the greatest, and who becomes a playing partner too…but at times critical of what I was attempting to do in my early days, the choices I had to make back then, is heady stuff.
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