In 1960 a nine-year-old in California was handed Clarence White's modified 1935 Martin D-28, its sound hole enlarged with a blade, and fifteen years later he tracked down and bought that exact guitar. This episode tells the story of David Anthony Rice, born in Danville, Virginia, in 1951, raised in a nomadic musical family that landed in Los Angeles, and shaped by White's syncopation and cross-picking as much as Doc Watson's speed.

We follow the 1970 campfire jam in Reidsville, North Carolina, where Sam Bush recruited him into the Bluegrass Alliance, his years singing lead in J.D. Crowe's New South and resisting electric instruments, and the landmark 1975 album that became Rounder's biggest seller. Then comes the leap to David Grisman's all-instrumental quintet, formal jazz study with John Carlini, the Tony Rice Unit and spacegrass, the Blu ...