Tim O’Brien brings his Boulder songs home for his first solo RockyGrass set

The first time Tim O’Brien performed at the Colorado Rocky Mountain Bluegrass Festival, in 1978, he walked onstage with his Hot Rize bandmates at the Adams County Fairgrounds.

On Sunday, July 26, the Nashville-based musician will perform his first solo set at RockyGrass, now in its 54th year. But O’Brien won’t be coming alone. The Grammy-winning songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist is bringing along some dear old friends: a beloved catalog of tunes he wrote during the years he lived in Boulder.

“An early Boulder one was ‘Nellie Kane.’ I was trying to write something for Hot Rize and had this chord progression from an old traditional song. I made a little melody up. I thought, maybe it’s a cowboy thing. ‘Shane’ was one of my favorite movies. I was also thinking about my friend Nugget, who made my first mandolin. He had adopted his wife’s child. That was the inspiration.”

“Nellie Kane” has since become a bluegrass standard.

“The ultimate compliment for a bluegrass songwriter is when people sing it around the campfire and nobody knows who wrote it,” O’Brien says.

Many of those favorites are collected in the newly published “Tim O’Brien Songbook” (Barcroft Books). They include Boulder-penned classics such as “Walk the Way the Wind Blows” and “Untold Stories,” along with gems from O’Brien’s solo years, including “Hold to a Dream,” “Climbin’ Up a Mountain,” “More Love,” “Look Down That Lonesome Road” and “Brother Wind.” O’Brien’s tunes have been recorded and covered by Billy Strings, Phish, Dierks Bentley, Kathy Mattea, The Chicks and many others.

“There are 40 songs in the songbook and at least the first 10 were written in Boulder for Hot Rize and my solo albums,” O’Brien says.

After a week of teaching mandolin students at the RockyGrass Academy, O’Brien will perform at the sold-out RockyGrass Festival, which runs from July 24-26. The lineup also includes theDel McCoury Band, I’m With Her, Steep Canyon Rangers, Rhiannon Giddens, Sam Bush, Della Mae and Chris Thile with Punch Brothers.

KGNU will broadcast and stream the entire festival. Details and schedule are below.

The road from Wheeling to Boulder

Raised in West Virginia, O’Brien arrived in Boulder in 1974 on the advice of local banjoist Richie Mintz, whom he met during an epic hitchhiking trip across America.

“I met a bunch of musicians, and they wanted me to come back and play in their band. I returned and eventually joined the Ophelia Swing Band with Dan Sadowsky. We played swing tunes on the street, at the Boulder Public Library and a club on North Broadway called the Colorado Coal Company,” O’Brien says.

Hot Rize formed in 1978, and the band hosted a weekly bluegrass show on the then-new public radio station KGNU. Hot Rize rapidly went from playing Boulder clubs, including Molly’s Back Room, the Hungry Farmer and Peggy’s Hi Lo Inn, to headlining bluegrass festivals and concerts across the country.

Halfway through each Hot Rize set, the band members would leave the stage for a few minutes, replaced by the twangy, electrified and hilarious Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers.

“I wanted to play something other than straight-ahead bluegrass — some country stuff, Hank Williams and Bob Wills,” O’Brien says.

“With the Trailblazers, it was Halloween every night. We changed clothes and put on sunglasses. We would take them off, and Hot Rize came back on. Everybody played along with us, but a few people in the audience didn’t actually catch it.”

O’Brien left Hot Rize in 1990 to pursue a long solo career, although the band would successfully reunite for shows and a new album with guitar wizard Bryan Sutton filling in for the late Charles Sawtelle. O’Brien moved to Nashville in 1996.

“Being a songwriter in Nashville tightens up your game pretty fast. It has been great to co-write songs with other musicians. You learn so much,” he says.

One such collaborator is legendary folk artist Tom Paxton, now 87, who wrote such timeless classics as “The Last Thing on My Mind,” “Ramblin’ Boy” and “I Can’t Help but Wonder Where I’m Bound.”

“We’ve been meeting regularly with Tom on Zoom for the past few years. He’s a master, but it’s very low-key. It’s like going fishing with a friend. It doesn’t matter so much that you catch anything, so stuff just happens,” O’Brien says.

“We’ve written more than 50 songs together with Tom that I’d like to get on an album in the next year.”

Summing up a career in 40 songs

Collecting his songs in a songbook was a great concept, but executing it was a challenge, O’Brien says.

“I tried to represent 50 years of making music. There are 40 songs in this book, but there were another 80 or 90 songs that were in the running. The hard part was that I never sang these songs the same way twice. The question was whether to be faithful to the recording or to what was in my head, so I kind of split the difference.”

The first song in the collection is “Midnight on the Highway,” recorded for Hot Rize’s debut album.

“We were coming down the highway from Tucson to Boulder in the summer of ’78. Nick [Forster] was driving the ’69 Cadillac we had. Me, Pete [Wernick] and Nick decided to put our heads together. We thought, ‘Maybe we can write a song tonight.’ The sun came up and that’s right in the song.”

“Now the shadows quickly fadin’ as a town comes into view
A few more miles my journey’s over and again I’ll be with you.”

Playing Tim O’Brien’s favorites

Boulder Reporting Lab asked O’Brien to recommend his favorite albums from among the more than 30 solo and band albums he has recorded. These are a good place to start if you don’t know O’Brien’s music:

“Traveler” (2003)
“Fiddler’s Green” (2005)
“The Crossing” (1999)
“Traditional Ties” – with Hot Rize (1986)

Watch Hot Rize perform Tim O’Brien’s “Walk the Way the Wind Blows.”

KGNU RockyGrass schedule

Listen on 88.5 FM, 1390 AM or 93.7 FM in Nederland and along the Peak to Peak Highway. Stream at KGNU.org.

Friday, July 24: On air from 11 a.m. to noon and 5 to 10:30 p.m.; streaming from 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Saturday, July 25: On air from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 to 10:30 p.m.; streaming from 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Sunday, July 26: On air from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; streaming from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

RockyGrass main-stage schedule

Friday, July 24

11 a.m.: Slay & Stinson
12:15 p.m.: Tanasi
2 p.m.: Michael Daves & Jacob Jolliff
3:45 p.m.: Kruger Brothers
5:30 p.m.: Willie Watson
7:15 p.m.: The Del McCoury Band
9 p.m.: I’m With Her, featuring Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan

Saturday, July 25

9:15 a.m.: RockyGrass Instrument Contest Finals
11:30 a.m.: The Unfaithful Servants
12:45 p.m.: The Onlies
2 p.m.: Watkins Family Hour with The Bee Eaters
3:45 p.m.: Tony Trischka’s EarlJam, featuring Michael Daves
5:30 p.m.: Steep Canyon Rangers
7:15 p.m.: Rhiannon Giddens & The Old-Time Revue
9 p.m.: Sam Bush Bluegrass Band

Sunday, July 26

10:30 a.m.: The Tom Knowlton Bluegrass Band
Noon: Under the Rocks
1:30 p.m.: Howley
3:15 p.m.: The Kody Norris Show
5 p.m.: Della Mae
6:45 p.m.: Tim O’Brien
8:30 p.m.: Punch Brothers

For information about the performers, visit bluegrass.com/rockygrass/lineup/main-stage-lineup.

John Lehndorff has written about music in Colorado since 1979 for publications including the Daily Camera, Rocky Mountain News and Aurora Sentinel. He wrote about Hot Rize for Bluegrass Unlimited magazine, covered the Telluride Bluegrass Festival for 30 years and contributed to “High on a Mountain: An Oral History of Jamgrass in Colorado,” by Nick Hutchinson.

Tim O’Brien brings his Boulder songs home for his first solo RockyGrass set

The road from Wheeling to Boulder

Summing up a career in 40 songs

Playing Tim O’Brien’s favorites

KGNU RockyGrass schedule