Tim O'Brien

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #133 (December 2007/January 2008).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Tim O'Brien

Just Following His Nose

by Kerry Dexter

Tim O'Brien is known as a musician who fits on the edges, on the fringes, and sometime right at the center of music that ranges across bluegrass, old time, Irish-American, country, and folk. The instrument that he first picked up to begin this path was -- bongos? "When I was five or six," he recalled, "my first cousin was going off to music college, to Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and he showed me a Latin rhythm on the bongos. Then I started getting interested in music." O'Brien grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia, where as a kid he had a crystal radio. "You use the radiator, the heating radiator, for your antenna. You build one in Boy Scouts, you know," he explained. With that crystal radio he pulled in Chubby Checker, Roger Miller, and the Beatles, every twist of the dial opening up new sorts of music, which he started soaking in after that bongo introduction.

"Then when I was 10 and 11, everybody was starting to play guitars, and that just seemed like it might be really fun. I was one of those kids that did that -- took up the guitar -- and I was one of the ones who didn't stop," he said. "Also, we were church people, Catholic church people, and so my sister and I sang in the choir at church, and it was just natural to add the guitar."

The pair soon began entertaining at other sorts of gatherings, too. O'Brien's sister, Mollie, also has a career as a professional musician. The two have recorded several CDs together and recently joined forces for a song on a project Tim is producing, a tribute album to another West Virginian, 1930s-era songwriter Blind Alfred Reed.

Soon Tim was drawn to the progressive roots music scene in Colorado, but after a while there, "I moved to Minnesota, to be with my girlfriend, now my wife. Then just after we'd gotten there, I got a call from Pete Wernick, who said he was starting up a band, and so we went back to Colorado." At the time, O'Brien didn't think it would be a long-term project. "A year or so at the most," he said. "Pete and I and some other guys would get together for a few festivals and play, and promote our solo work." The times and tides of the music business saw things turn out differently: In the band they named Hot Rize, O'Brien's collaboration with Wernick, Nick Forster, and Charles Sawtelle "ended up being 12 years, and it was a good thing. I certainly learned a lot, and we had a good time." O'Brien credits the evolving bluegrass circuit and the popularity of independent radio shows, especially on public radio, for helping Hot Rize get the word out. The band's mix of easygoing vocals, high-energy picking, good fun, and a vibe that reached across bluegrass boundaries to include folk and country-rock listeners without leaving the high lonesome sound behind made it one of the most popular acoustic bands of the 1980s. The members' sense of humor helped, too: The band developed an alter ego as off-the-wall Western swing band Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers, and often appeared as both bands in the course of one show.

[cover #133]