The Rice Brothers

Music ran through the family. In Los Angeles their father, a guitar and mandolin player, headed a band called the Golden State Boys with three Poindexter uncles, Hal on guitar, Walter on banjo and Leon on bass, and Frank Poindexter, the Dobro player on the brothers’ records, was also their uncle. As boys, Larry, Tony and Ronnie played in a band of their own with the banjo player Andy Evans, working California venues such as the Ash Grove and the Troubadour and appearing at Disneyland. Wyatt, born in Long Beach in 1965, came along much later. By the time the four recorded as a group, each had his own work: Larry and Tony had played together in J.D. Crowe’s band in the early 1970s, Wyatt played guitar in the Tony Rice Unit, and Ronnie played bass in the Larry Rice Band. Tony, Wyatt and Ronnie all played on Larry’s album Artesia, recorded at Bias in November 1989.

The Rice Brothers (Rounder 0256) was recorded and mixed at Bias by Bill Wolf, who also wrote the notes. Tony and Larry sang, with Emerson and Carroll adding voices. The songs ranged from Steve Gillette and Charles John Quarto’s “Grapes on the Vine,” Craig Bickhardt and Thom Schuyler’s “This Old House,” Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice” and Gordon Lightfoot’s “Let It Ride” and “Whisper My Name” to “Teardrops in My Eyes,” Bill Monroe’s “You’re Drifting Away” and the public-domain “Life Is Like a Mountain Railway.” Larry contributed “Keep the Lamp on Sadie,” Wyatt an instrumental titled “Original Untitled,” and the band played the fiddle tune “Soldier’s Joy.” Rounder later included “Grapes on the Vine” on its 2004 compilation Bluegrass Number 1’s (A Collection of Chart-Topping Songs).

The brothers did not appear on stage together until 6 April 1991, at a concert in Fairfax, Virginia, sponsored by the Washington radio station WAMU-FM. Emerson, Simpkins and Poindexter played with them, and that band performed in public only three more times. The concert recording was released in 2023 by David Grisman’s Acoustic Disc as Live for the First Time!, with Larry’s “If You Only Knew” and “Four Wheel Drive,” Wyatt’s “Jared’s Rag,” “Walk On Boy,” “Keep the Lamp on Sadie,” “Grapes on the Vine” and Emerson’s “Reynard in the Canebreaks.”

In December 1992 the four brothers went to Mirror Image Studios in Gainesville, Florida, to back the clawhammer banjo player Mark Johnson, with Jason Thomas and Tammy Murray on fiddles. The album, mostly fiddle tunes such as “Forked Deer,” “Mississippi Sawyer” and “Angelina the Baker,” came out on Bangtown in 1994 as Clawgrass, credited to Mark Johnson with the Rice Brothers & Friends.

The Rice Brothers 2 (Rounder CD 0286, 1994), produced by the brothers with Bill Wolf and again recorded at Bias, kept the same supporting players. It opened with Mel Tillis and Wayne Walker’s “Walk On Boy” and took in Steve Gillette and Tom Campbell’s “Darcy Farrow,” John Hartford’s “Old Time Riverboat Man,” Jay Livingston and Ray Evans’s “Buttons and Bows” and Tom Petty’s “Southern Accents,” with Monroe and Kenny Baker’s “Road to Columbus” and the fiddle tunes “Sawin’ on the Strings” and “Bill Cheatham” among the instrumentals. Two pieces came from the 1990 Webco duo album Larry & Wyatt Rice: Wyatt’s “Jared’s Rag” and Larry’s “That’s When I’ll Stop Loving You.”

After the second album the brothers went on separately. Larry and Tony recorded three Rounder albums with Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen as Rice, Rice, Hillman & Pedersen between 1996 and 2001. Wyatt, who had made his own Rounder album, New Market Gap, in 1990, led Wyatt Rice & Santa Cruz on Picture in a Tear (Rounder, 1996). Ronnie became a mastering engineer for Time Life Records and set up his own mastering lab, and he and Wyatt worked together producing recordings for labels including Rounder, Rebel and CMH. Larry died in 2006 and Tony on 25 December 2020.