Artists,
Steve Goff
West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, (WMHOF) Class of 2013
Blending bluegrass, folk, country, rock & roll, soul, blues and gospel, Wheeling’s Timothy Page O’Brien has helped to modernize country music’s string band and bluegrass tradition for more than forty years. The Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist has served as a bridge and a transitional figure between the sounds of the West Virginia hill country and the modern styles of bluegrass and Americana. In 2010, O’Brien was hired by Mark Knopfler to join his band for a five week tour of the US and Europe. Each night Tim was featured as the co-singer of “Sailing to Philadelphia ”, a glorious song from Knopfler’s 2000 album of the same name. James Taylor had sung the part on the original recording. And each night, after that song, Mark Knopfler would introduce Tim as either “A master of American folk music”, or “a true Renaissance man of country music”. While both of those descriptions are true, they only hint at O’Brien’s rich, diverse, and still evolving career.
Tim O’Brien was born in Wheeling, WV on March 16, 1954. He and his sister Mollie, two years his senior, were musical sponges, absorbing everything they heard. She was the leader and helped Tim develop his taste in music. In 1963, Mollie discovered Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and she was singing Dylan’s song in folk Masses as part of her Catholic Youth Organization activities. An eleven year old Mollie chastised nine year old Tim for not knowing who Dylan was. Her brother was a quick convert and Dylan fan for life.
In February of 1964, Mollie and Tim watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Mollie quickly became a member of the Beatles’ fan club sponsored by local Wheeling station WKWK. Tim listened to his AM radio at night, searching for Beatle music on the airwaves. Learning that the Beatles were scheduled to perform at the Civic Center in Pittsburgh, on September 14, 1964, Mollie and Tim sent off for tickets and got their mother to drive them to the event. Mollie later admitted they never understood a single word sung by the Beatles, but the concert ignitedTim’s decision to become a guitar player.
He got his first guitar for his twelfth birthday and his family was amazed at how fast he learned his instrument. Within a few days he was strumming tunes, and a year later he was playing along with Chet Atkins records. From that early age he worked at his music, played in every kind of band, and performed any time he got invited. He joined Mollie in participating in the folk Masses at Wheeling’s St. Michael’s Church. This gave Tim and Mollie an opportunity to sing together beyond their household, an unexpected training ground for two future roots-based musicians.
Despite Tim’s earliest exposure to pop, rock, and folk music, the pivotal moment that eventually spurred his future course as a performer of country music occurred in 1967 when at age thirteen, he saw Arther “Doc” Watson in a feature about a folk festival shown on a Pittsburgh PBS TV station. For Tim, seeing Doc Watson was a moment of “Wow!” and “A-ha” at the same time. He had been playing fingerstyle guitar, but Doc Watson was “doing a flat-pick thing”. Tim decided to try and figure out flat-picking for himself. He succeeded and found a hero for life in Watson.
Another turning point came when he began listening to a weekly country music radio show, The Saturday Night Jamboree on WWVA. Finding that the show was broadcast from the Capitol Music Hall in downtown Wheeling, Tim became a frequent audience member and saw performances by Jerry Lee Lewis, Buck Owens, Roger Miller, Charlie Pride, Dick Curless, and Merle Haggard. From his biography
TravelerTim recalls, “I’d go to the Jamboree and buy the cheap seats, $2.50 for the balcony seats.” The Merle Haggard show of December, 1970, stood out. Haggard was not only doing his usual honky-tonk and barroom tunes, but for this tour he was featuring his fiddle playing. He was touring to promote his new album ofWestern Swing music,A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World: Bob Wills. O’Brien has said, “That show inspired me to play the fiddle. I thought it was cool, as in ‘That’s the violin, but that is swinging and it’s country’. Merle Haggard was a badass on fiddle that night.” And so another stringed instrument was added to his musical arsenal.
After graduating from Wheeling’s, Linsly Military Institute High School in 1974, Tim spent a year at Colby College in Maine, and then relocated to Colorado where his career really started to take off in 1978 when he helped organize the band Hot Rize, who quickly became one of the most popular acts in bluegrass. Their name was derived from the special “Hot Rize” ingredient in Martha White Flour, a longtime sponsor of Flatt & Scruggs on the Grand Ole Opry. Hot Rize and their zany alter-egos, “Red Knuckles & the Trailblazers”, managed to walk a fine line between folk, country, pop, jazz, and bluegrass, and surprisingly, rarely alienated anyone in the process. The band stayed together until 1990, winning the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Entertainers of the Year that same year Along the way O’Brien wrote hits such as “Untold Stories” for the band and for fellow West Virginian Kathy Mattea, with whom he dueted on the 1990 Country Top Ten single “Battle Hymn of Love”.
He then spent time on Sugar Hill Records releasing both solo albums and albums recorded with his sister Mollie, who is now a well respected blues and folk singer.
Tim won IBMA’s 1993 and 2006 Male Vocalist of the Year Award. In 2013 Tim O’Brien was inducted into the West Virginia Hall of Fame.
In closing, I’ll leave it to his biographers to sum up West Virginia’s Tim O’Brien. “The true measure of Tim O’Brien’s genius is his abiding and energetic pursuit of the next musical adventure. He truly has been a traveler, in his wide-ranging and ceaseless explorations of the vast American musical landscape, whether that means the next instrument to play, song to write, songwriter with whom to collaborate, style in which to perform, musician or musicians with whom to play, or setting in which to do so.”
*Source: Traveler: The Musical Odyssey of Tim O’Brien. By Bobbie Malone and Bill C. Malone*
RECOMMENDED LISTENING – by the author.
ALBUMS
1. Hot Rize: Traditional Ties –1986. This is the first album Hot Rize recorded for Sugar Hill, and it is arguablytheir best effort ever, capturing their skill for both traditional material, originals (O’Brien’s “Walk the Way the Wind Blow”, which became a Top 10 Country hit for Kathy Mattea), and progressive bluegrass (Keith Whitley’s “You Don’t Have to Move the Mountain”). Featured: “Walk the Way the Wind Blows” -Live.Hot Rize – Walk The Way The Wind Blows (youtube.com)
2. Tim O’Brien: Red on Blonde – 1996. This Grammy nominated record may be the best album of Bob Dylan covers, ever, and that is saying a lot. The repertoire covers decades and styles in one giant stroke. The playing is impeccable. “Lay Down Your Weary Tune” and “Maggie’s Farm”. Featured: “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. Subterranean Homesick Blues (youtube.com)
3. Tim O’Brien & Mollie O’Brien:Away Out on the Mountain – 2006. Tim has been singing with his sister Mollie since they were in junior high school. She is two years his senior. Her soulful voice finds a perfect harmony with her brother’s clear-as-a-bell tenor. Their blended family harmony is exquisite. Featured: “Wichita”.Wichita (youtube.com).
4. Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott: We’re Usually a Lot Better Than This – 2012. The second effort by Tim and Darrell Scott is a live duo recording compiled from two shows in Asheville, North Carolina in 2005 and 2006. The music is great and the album title is witty and sly. Featured: “Climbing Up a Mountain”. Climbing Up A Mountain (youtube.com)
5. Tim O’Brien: Cup of Sugar– 2023. O’Brien’s latest record might just be his best. After recording more than 25 albums, this is the first that consists entirely of songs composed by Tim O’Brien. Here’s the title track as sung live with Jan Fabricius. I hear a bit of John Prine’s humor and style in this timely song about getting along with your neighbors.
6. Tim O’Brien: “The Polling Place” 2018. I love this single released in a 2018 as part of a “Get out the vote” campaign. Still pertinent. Check your politics. Lighten up. GO VOTE! Tim O’Brien: The Polling Place (2018) New Bluegrass! (youtube.com)
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Tim O’Brien’s Irish Roots and Music.
7.The Crossing – 1999. Tim’s Irish heritage shows up in many ways in the music he plays and the songs he writes. On The Crossing they are on full display as he writes of his ancestors making the journey to American and ultimately, West Virginia. Here he uses the WV State Motto as a song title and sentiment as to how it felt to finally be free in mountains. **Bonus: This is a live version played in Ireland while on a world tour. Note his references to West Virginia as he introduces the song. Live at Campbells Tavern / County Galway, Ireland. “A Mountaineer Is Always Free”.
8. Tim O’Brien: Fiddler’s Green – 2005. Tim O’Brien won a Grammy for this album featuring Irish roots music. Featured: “Look Down That Lonesome Road”.
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