Biography by
Craig Harris
Tim O'Brien is one of the spearheads
of contemporary bluegrass. As co- founder and lead vocalist
of Hot Rize and Red Knuckles & the Trailblazers, O'Brien
served as a bridge between the traditional sounds of the
hill country and the modern styles of bluegrass in the
1980s. Since the band's breakup, O'Brien has continued to
expand the music's borders as a soloist, a duo partner with
his sister Mollie, and with his band, the O'Boys. O'Brien's
songs have additionally been recorded by Kathy Mattea, the
Seldom Scene, New Grass Revival, and the Johnson Mountain
Boys.
O'Brien's earliest memories of music are
the Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller records favored by his
parents and the Lawrence Welk recordings played by a Polish
housekeeper. A turning point came when O'Brien began
listening to a weekly country music radio show, The Saturday
Night Jamboree. Discovering that the show was broadcast from
a local theater, O'Brien became a frequent audience member
and saw performances by Jerry Lee Lewis, Buck Owens, Merle
Haggard, and Roger Miller.
Acquiring his first
guitar at the age of 12, O'Brien took to the instrument
almost immediately. Although he played with numerous
high-school rock bands, O'Brien was steered toward country
music and bluegrass by Roger Bland, a banjo-playing patient
of a girlfriend's psychiatrist father. A former member of
Lester Flatt's band, Bland taught O'Brien to play in the
three-finger style of Earl Scruggs. O'Brien had earlier
discovered that his father had played mandolin banjo in
college, and although his father no longer played the
instrument, O'Brien bought new strings and learned a few
rudimentary techniques. While attending Colby College in
Maine, O'Brien began to play mandolin.
Leaving
the college after a year, O'Brien headed to Wyoming and then
to Colorado. Before long, he hooked up temporarily with a
jug band, Ophelia's String Band. Meeting future Hot Rize
bandmates Pete Wernick and Charles Sawtelle, O'Brien formed
a bluegrass band, the Drifting Ramblers. Nick Forster, a
guitar repairman at the Denver Folklore Center, soon joined
the group as well. The band, however, soon drifted apart
with O'Brien and Wernick going on to record solo albums.
Assembling a new group to help promote the solo recordings,
O'Brien, Wernick, Sawtelle, and Forster launched Hot Rize.
The band remained together for 12 years. Although their
initial sound was very traditional, Hot Rize continued to
evolve in a more progressive direction. A popular highlight
of Hot Rize's performances came when the four musicians left
the stage, changed their clothes, and re-emerged as the
Western honky tonk group Red Knuckles & the
Trailblazers. The gag continued to grow with the offshoot
band recording several albums on their own.
In
addition to his work with those aforementioned bands,
O'Brien joined with his sister, Mollie, to record an album
of old-timey country songs: 1988's Take Me Back. The two
have since collaborated on several other albums. While
performing at the Summerlights Festival in Nashville, he
also met country music songstress Kathy Mattea. When Mattea
subsequently had hits with her covers of his songs "Untold
Stories" and "Walk the Way the Wind Blows," O'Brien
announced that he was leaving Hot Rize to seek his fortune
as a songwriter.
Although O'Brien initially
signed as a solo performer with RCA, the contract was
doomed, and the label turned down O'Brien's first album
attempt before dropping him from their roster. O'Brien went
on to sign with bluegrass label Sugar Hill. The O'Boys were
formed to help promote O'Brien's solo album, Odd Man In, in
1991. Although Forster was an original member, he left the
group to host the National Public Radio show E-Town and was
replaced by Scott Nygaard. O'Brien continued releasing solo
material through the '90s and into the following decade,
including an album of Bob Dylan covers (Red on Blonde), the
Grammy-winning Fiddler's Green, and the intimate,
stripped-down Chameleon.Content provided All Music Guide. Copyright 2008
All Media Guide, LLC.
