Tony Rice: Urge for Going

It’s been a long time since we’ve conversed. I must apologize, but I’ve been a bit busy over the past year and have been meaning to say hello – but you know, life sometimes gets in the way. I’ve felt guilty for abandoning you about a year ago, which was a few days after “Reading Between the Grooves” had turned seven and we had our 1700th post.

This weekend, I heard a song on the radio that brought back a lot of memories and reminded me that the blog’s eighth birthday was coming up. Facebook nudged me of this morning. So, I make a return, but I can’t promise that I will be as active as I was those first few years, but I’d like to come back from my sabbatical even if it is on a limited basis.

The amazing thing, even with my extended absence, the best month the blog had was during my absence. In December 2016, we had 27,473 pageviews. No other month comes close. The second highest was in July 2016 with 15,568 pageviews. January 2017 was no slouch at third with a total of 14,425 pageviews. In fact, some of our heaviest traffic months were in 2017. More on the stats later.

As for that song I heard, it’s title is “Urge for Going” – which is how I behaved a year ago. It was written by Joni Mitchell, but her version wasn’t my favorite. Although it’s her song, I preferred Tom Rush’s arrangement from his “Circle Game” album.

Of the hundreds of versions of this song, there is a distinction of direct influences. Many use Joni’s arrangement as a base (such as Crosby & Nash) and others used Tom Rush’s version as a springboard (as did George Hamilton, IV and Lee Hazelwood). There are a few unique versions; and of those, Darrell Scott’s up-tempo new grass arrangement is quite good.

Today’s version may not be one you’ve heard before. It comes from Tony Rice’s 1988 LP “Native American” and it is inspired by Tom Rush’s playbook. Tony Rice is a world renown flat-picker and I received a cassette copy of this LP from my friend John Sellards. I wore out this cassette on my daily commute between Beckley and Charleston, West Virginia in the early '90s. While Tom Rush's version was my favorite, Tony Rice's adaptation dropped Tom Rush to number two.

While I loved the whole album, “Urge for Going” was my absolute favorite. Rice’s low voice is reminiscent of Tom Rush, only Rice has a distinct South-Central Virginia twang. What makes this song isn’t Rice’s pleasing voice or his lightning fast acoustic guitar lead, its John Carroll’s piano. For half of the song, its only Rice’s guitar and Carroll’s piano. Just before the guitar lead, additional color is added by Mark Schatz on double bass. It doesn’t get much better than this.

Typically when its the blog's birthday, I give a quick and dirty about how we are doing.  Unfortunately, Google cannot agree on the stats for the blog, as they count the information differently – one through Google Analytics via Blogger and through the Google Analytics platform. I’ll try to make some sense from both.

To date, there have been 787,614 pageviews on the blog. Sadly, total unique visitor metrics are no longer available; therefore, these cannot be ascertained.

The stats reflect that we have been visited by people from 197 countries and territories. Therefore, there are only a handful of geographic regions we haven’t touched. The Top 10 is below and Russia has moved into second place from fourth. That jump was a major one, as Russia entered the Top 10 last year; no new countries were added to the list below.

The Top Ten Visitor Countries

Rank	Country	Visits
1	United States	391,491
2	Russia	56,690
3	Germany	44,136
4	United Kingdom	43,477
5	Canada	26,737
6	France	26,077
7	Ukraine	8,640
8	Australia	8,162
9	Japan	7,945
10	Italy	4,622

As it has been for several years, September 28, 2010’s post regarding Elliot Murphy’s “Eva Braun” continues to be the most viewed page. Several new songs entered in the top list of posts. Patty Loveless’ version of “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” is now at fifth place. Two other songs that were added last September also made it to the Top Ten: Mason Proffit’s “Jewel” at sixth and Jesse Winchester’s “Quiet about It” at eighth. I believe that these two jumped into the top ten as they were the most recent posts to the blog and may be just a fluke caused by my absence.

More to come this and next year.  Thanks for sticking around even when I haven’t.