Solo Career and Bluegrass Album Band
In 1979, Rice left Grisman's group to pursue his own brand of music. He recorded "Acoustics", a jazz-inspired acoustic record, and then Manzanita, a collection of vocals and instrumentals, mostly in the bluegrass, but also folk style. This album doesn't include the five-string banjo. In 1980, Rice, Crowe, Bobby Hicks, Doyle Lawson and Todd Phillips formed a highly successful coalition, attacking bluegrass standards under the name the Bluegrass Album Band. This group recorded six volumes of music from 1980 to 1996.
Rice’s solo career hit its stride with "Cold on the Shoulder", a collection of bluegrass-inspired vocals. With this album, "Native American" and "Me & My Guitar", Rice arrived at a formula that incorporated his disparate influences, combining bluegrass, the songwriting of folk artists like Ian Tyson, Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Bob Dylan and especially Gordon Lightfoot, with nimble, jazz-inflected guitar work. Simultaneously, he pursued his jazz-infused, experimental “spacegrass” with the Tony Rice Unit on the albums "Mar West", "Still Inside", and "Backwaters".
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