Tony Rice Unit- Taking the Blues Out Of Bluegrass

For all you bluegrass people out there, I thought you’d get a kick out of hearing Tony Rice and the “Unit” perform some jazz/blues…

This was shot in Nashville Tn on February 3, 2011. His band features Rickie Simpkins/ fiddle, Josh Williams/mandolin, Bryn Davies/bass, Wyatt Rice /guitar and Rob Ickes /dobro.

Yea, you’re more likely to hear this blues number being performed in some jazz club rather than by Rice and his bluegrass gang…

but

The word “blue” in bluegrass…. well really it’s there in my opinion for a good reason other than just a coincidence, as lots of the musical note choices performed by the musicians in the genre use the ‘blues’ notes extensively. So really a jazz standard like this is not really that much of a reach for a talented group of “blues”grassers like this.