Tony Rice changed what a flat-pick guitar could do in bluegrass. His tone, timing, and lead playing reset the bar for every picker who came after him. These 25 songs trace his core repertoire — the Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt material he carried forward, the fiddle tunes he reshaped on guitar like Blackberry Blossom and Billy in the Low Ground, the singer-songwriter pieces by Gordon Lightfoot and Ralph McTell he pulled into the bluegrass world, and the Jimmie Skinner songs that became part of his voice.

Work through the list in any order. Start with the fiddle tunes if you want to study his lead playing, or the vocal numbers if you want to learn his rhythm and phrasing. Each song’s page on Picker’s Guide has chord charts, lyrics, recordings, and song history, so you can dig into the source versions alongside Tony’s.