Maddie Rice
When David Letterman signed off from the Late Show in 2015 to work on his Chassidic beard, he left latenight talk as the timeless, Undisputed King. He left a hole that no successor could fill, and we were all impoverished for it.
It was only weeks later that I felt the draft of another absence, his remarkable band (the CBS Orchestra): Shafer, Lee, Fig, McGinnis and Collins. Absent musical guests who needed the added support, we in TV Land really only got to hear their chops at the bookends of commercial breaks. But between those two slots, it was obvious to any viewer that these accomplished players were really something special.
One stood way out. Singer/guitarist Felicia Collins was the newest of the frontline musicians (the others were from the show’s NBC origins), the youngest, and the only She of the lot. More, she was a Bad. Ass. guitarist and had really, really serious pipes. After Dave retired his razor, we wouldn’t see her like again.
Months later, Stephen Colbert moved in to the Ed Sullivan Theatre. Say what you will about how he’s fared in the Undisputed King’s lieu (not well), he at least got the musical toolset right. Jon Batiste is as brilliant a musical director as he is a brutal sidekick, and his crew, Stay Human, is a dangerous cadre of players.
Again, one stood out. The doleful, readheaded pixie standing five feet tall (including riser she stood on) to Jon’s left, was the youngest and the only She of the lot.
22-year-old Maddie Rice must have been somebody’s kid just filling in for the dude whose parole wasn’t up yet. And with nary a smile if you’d nailed one to her face, she didn’t even look like she wanted to be there. Like, at all.
And she rarely got the ball, either, at least for the TV audience’s benefit. A guitarist in a horn-heavy R&B band with a VIP rhythm section (Joe the Hat-Guy drummer has to be, at the very least, the visual fave of both Jon and SC), she wasn’t going to get a lot of stage lights.
But on 16 January 2018, the night after the music world had learned of the tragic death of Dolores O’Riordan, the show returned to a segment from commercial break to the sounds of driving power chords and a full-throated, on-purpose voice blasting out the Cranberries‘ anthem Zombie, absolutely faithful to its idiomatic trills and vocal Irelandaïse. It was devastating. It was Maddie The Devastator.
Rice had only started playing guitar at 13, just nine! years!! before joining the house band of a nationally-televised network talk show. A clear prodigy, she developed her boundless talents at Berklee College of Music, having already turned the heads of her teachers in hometown Salt Lake City.
She still doesn’t have a huge footprint out there, which is puzzling, not only considering her high-profile TV gig, but also since she’s been quite active with a couple of other acts and brands. Rubblebucket is one band she’s been involved with for nearly a decade, most recently in their 2018 album Sun Machine (their tenth studio release). Drew ofthe Drew is another, where her credits include recordings, live performances and music videos.
I’m loathe, in 2020, to categorize guitarists by gender, but the truth is that the music business has done a perfectly shitty job of giving fair air to female players, or even fostering an inviting culture of anywise-equal opportunity. I can say with confidence that Jennifer Batten, Oriantha and Nori Bucci are far superior guitarists to Slash, The Edge and almost any other player you’ll hear on the radio waves and in hallowed concert halls.
Well, Maddie Rice is in that elite class. She’s a blackbelt axesmith by any objective measure, and if you have any doubts, check out her solo with Drew ofthe Drew (guitar solo at 2:35)…
…or her cover of a signature Brian May solo…
…or, most brilliantly, a cover of this Weeknd guitar synthesizer solo – executed entirely with a whammy bar and two-handed fingerboarding. Her musical sensibilities here are arresting:
Whatever is occupying Ms Rice’s activities at present, it’s a pretty safe prediction that we’ll be hearing an awful lot from her before she shuts it down and works on her own Letterman beard.
