Groce's first album, a collection of hymns called "Peace and Joy and Power" for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, of which he is a member, was recorded in 1969 while he was still a college student at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois. After graduating in 1970, he moved to New York and became a regular performer at a "Focus", an Upper West Side organic food restaurant and coffeehouse co-owned by future Hollywood producer and manager Larry Brezner. (Brezner's wife at that time, musician Melissa Manchester, was also a regular.) Later that year, Groce signed a recording contract with Daybreak Records, a subsidiary of RCA Records. His first album of original songs, "The Wheat Lies Low", was released in 1970. From 1972 to 1985 he was a National Endowment for the Arts sponsored "musician-in-residence", visiting schools in twenty US states. One of those residencies brought him to West Virginia in 1972, where he continues to make his home.