Week 4
Bluegrass Week
Guest Master Artist
Tim O'Brien

Tim O’Brien co-founded one of America's most innovative and entertaining bluegrass bands, Hot Rize, in 1978. Over the next twelve years, he sang lead and played mandolin and fiddle with the quartet while also fronting their alter-ego comedy band, Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers. Hot Rize won IBMA’s first Entertainer of the Year award in 1990. In 1993, and 2006, O'Brien took the IBMA Male Vocalist of the Year honors. After fellow West Virginian Kathy Mattea scored top-ten country hits with O’Brien’s "Walk the Way the Wind Blows" and “Untold Stories,” he moved to Nashville and formed Tim O’Brien & The O’Boys. His “When No One’s Around” became Garth Brooks’ title cut for one of the biggest-selling CDs in American music. Many bluegrass acts have recorded O’Brien’s songs including the Seldom Scene, the New Grass Revival and the Johnson Mountain Boys. Tim garnered mainstream attention with “Songs From the Mountain,” a CD sold in package sets with the best-selling novel “Cold Mountain.” In the new millennium, O’Brien assembled a two-CD cast of musical legends from both sides of the Atlantic including Irish fiddler Frankie Gavin and banjo icon Earl Scruggs. O’Brien’s original “Look Down That Lonesome Road” won the 2006 IBMA Song of the Year.   www.timobrien.net