Folk Bands and Artists
Tim O´brien
Born in Wheeling, West Virginia on March 16, 1954, Tim O’Brien grew up singing in church and in school, and started playing folk and rock music on guitar at age 12.
After seeing Doc Watson on TV, he became a lifelong devotee of old time and bluegrass music.
In 1978, Tim co-founded the bluegrass group Hot Rize with Pete Wernick, Charles Sawtelle, and Nick Forster. Hot Rize and Western Swing alter- egos Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers eventually recorded ten albums and toured the US, Europe, Japan, and Australia. The group was named Entertainer of the Year 1990 by the International Bluegrass Music Association, and their Colleen Malone was named IBMA’s Song of the Year in 1991. He won IBMA’s Male Vocalist of the year in 1993, and again in 2005, when he also won song of the year for Look Down That Lonesome Road.
Solo recordings started with 1982’s Hard Year Blues, and other projects included three duet albums with his sister Mollie O’Brien. He had top ten country hits in 1989 and 1990 with Kathy Mattea’s versions of Hot Rize songs Walk The Way The Wind Blows and Untold Stories. Other notable covers by New Grass Revival, Nickel Creek, Garth Brooks, and the Dixie Chicks followed. Hot Rize went dormant in the spring of 1990, after which O’Brien performed and recorded on his own, eventually releasing fourteen solo recordings. Landmarks solo releases include a Grammy nominated set of bluegrass Dylan covers – Red On Blonde, the Celtic/Appalachian fusion of The Crossing, and 2005’s Grammy winning Fiddler’s Green.
Tim toured and recorded with Steve Earle’s Bluegrass Dukes in the early 2000’s, and with Mark Knopfler in 2009 and 2010. A collaboration with Jerry Douglas, Sean Camp and others -The Earls Of Leicester - won both a Grammy as well as IBMA’s Record of the Year in 2015.
He has recorded and performed with The Chieftains, Joan Baez, Dierks Bentley, Bill Frisell, and the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra. He contributed to the movie soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou? as well as those of Cold Mountain, and The Blob. He is a former president of the International Bluegrass Music Association, and currently serves on the board of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. O’Brien formed his own record label, Howdy Skies Records in 1999.
Tim’s newest CD, Pompadour, came out in October of 2015. It features six new songs and four covers, including a banjo driven version of James Brown’s Get Up Offa That Thing.
