Hot Rize; L-R: Pete Wernick, Nick Forster, Tim O'Brien, Bryan Sutton

Singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Brien has long been one of Americana music’s shining lights.

The Grammy winner has achieved great success as a solo artist. His songs have been recorded by such luminaries as Garth Brooks and The Dixie Chicks. O’Brien has been residing in Nashville for the past 14 years.

At the moment, his attention is on Hot Rize. The revered bluegrass band is back together for their first tour in over a decade.

Joining O’Brien are original members Nick Forster and Peter Wernick, as well as guitarist Bryan Sutton (who takes the place of the late Charles Sawtelle). Emerging from Colorado in 1978, Hot Rize spent a dozen years together, skillfully blending traditional and progressive elements.

O’Brien spoke with Pop Culture Classics about Hot Rize and his solo career.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
So Hot Rize is about to embark on the first tour in over 10 years?

TIM O’BRIEN:
We’ve done some scattered reunions at festivals here and there, but doing one-nighters is new.

PCC:
Why was this the right time?

O’BRIEN:
Well, we’re not getting any younger. Might as well have fun while we can. And Pete really lobbied hard for it, actually. He’s the instigator. He’s the guy who started the band, anyway. So it doesn’t surprise me that he would lobby for that and call everybody and say how cool we are and Steve Martin wants to tour and all this stuff. Okay, Pete, you think we’re going to save bluegrass. I don’t think it needs saving. But I think it’s good for us to get out there and play our songs.

Mostly, it’s like a family reunion. It’s kind of a checkup of who we are. When you spend 12 years in the same band, it makes its mark on you. It doesn’t really go away.

PCC:
Is it instantly comfortable again when you start rehearsing?

O’BRIEN:
It’s not too far off. But it’s harder as we go along. We’ve gone in different directions. I don’t play too much traditional bluegrass anymore. And I have to get up in a higher register singing and I have to play faster. And I have to play harder, because we don’t use any pickups. So there’s a little bit of training going on there, aerobics and physical training [Laughs]. You’re just kind of getting in another zone.

PCC:
The energy of the music must rev you up.

O’BRIEN:
Yeah, I think that’s right. And we have a giant repertoire, having made all those records, so it’s a matter of sorting how much we want to have under our fingers

PCC:
Is it difficult to decide which songs to include?

O’BRIEN:
We sort of have a best of kind of thing that we draw on. But even that is a little too big for a 90-minute show. It’s kind of cool. We get requests and we change the set up as we go, if we can. I need to get a teleprompter for my old age, though [Laughs].

PCC:
When you’re playing that vintage material, do you feel the presence of Charles Sawtelle?

O’BRIEN:
Yeah, Charles definitely is there in spirit. We got a lot of the soul of the band from him. He was a real pacemaker. And Bryan Sutton has the hard job of standing in his position there. Everybody misses Charles. But Bryan is up to the task. He knows he’s not Charles Sawtelle, but then again, Charles wasn’t Bryan Sutton either. Bryan’s got a lot to offer. He’s a great singer and an incredible guitarist. We’re lucky to have him along.

PCC:
What enabled the band to have such a great chemistry?

O’BRIEN:
We found the intersection that we all agreed on and went there. And we followed it as far as we could. So we just kind of get back there. Nick has gone on to be more of a communicator. He’s a radio host now and interested in that side of things. He gets to play more contemporary music on “eTown” as the host and one of the musicians, as well, on NPR. And then Pete concentrates on bluegrass. And a lot of teaching. He does a lot of teaching for musicians, does jam camps and all this stuff. He’s kind of on a mission to get everybody playing bluegrass, which is cool. And then Bryan does session work. And I do a lot of solo. I play my own music everywhere. So we kind of leave some of that at the side and go towards what Hot Rize is when we get together.

PCC:
When you first got together was there a question of how traditional to make the music, how much to move the genre forward?

O’BRIEN:
Well, yeah. When we started, we wanted to play traditional bluegrass. We wanted to play for the fans of that music, but we wanted to find our own identity. We stumbled a little bit the first couple months. Charles joined. He switched from the bass to the guitar. And it all started coming together when Nick joined on the bass.

We were just doing the best we could with the tools at hand. I worked hard to develop the songwriting stuff and so did Pete and Nick. We learned a lot from Charles about the technical stuff of record production.

But we knew couldn’t just jump out there as the next traditional band, because we were out of Colorado and we had too many other influences. But I think the genre, what defines bluegrass, we tried to embrace all that. But, if you look at the world of it, there’s a lot of different variants. From the first generation masters, between Flatt & Scruggs and Bill Monroe’s sound and The Stanley Brothers, those three are quite different and yet they’re all closer to one another than they are to other kinds of music.

So there’s a lot of leeway there. And we were following on the heels of people like not only The Country Gentleman, but also Newgrass Revival and David Grisman, his kind of offshoot with the Dawg music. And we were definitely inside the traditions compared to those two acts. So you just have to find your own way of doing it.

And I think what’s good about the community of bluegrass is they’re like fanatic baseball fans. They know everybody from every band they’ve ever played in. They know their batting averages. [Chuckles] They know everything about them. And they’re loyal. And they saw us coming together and said, ‘Let’s check this out.’ And we gathered fans wherever we went. And sort of built our audience.

PCC:
Generally, are bluegrass audiences open to musicians taking the genre in new directions?

O’BRIEN:
Well, they can be a little bit fastidious about the way their bluegrass is played. Like jazz fans. There’s fans of different kinds of jazz, you know? And there’s fans of different kinds of bluegrass.

A lot of people probably would have liked to have seen us plug in and get a little wilder and more experimental. We kind of stayed with a little more of a pure sound. On the other hand, there were a lot of people who wished we didn’t have an electric bass and wished we didn’t do anything but Flatt & Scruggs and Bill Monroe songs. So there’s all kind of strata in that thing. It’s not just a small genre anymore.

It’s really blossomed into quite a big tree with a lot of branches and roots. The Del McCoury Band’s the new roots and people like The Punch Brothers are the new branches.

PCC:
And you just had to find what worked best for you guys.

O’BRIEN:
Yeah. We had four guys and we had a good time traveling. And like all bands, it becomes kind of like you against the world. You kind of get your own language, your own verse within the language, in shop talk and a way of looking at things. And the good news was, we stayed together to develop something. And I’m quite proud of what we did.

PCC:
What you have now, is that kind of the best of both worlds to get together - for the occasional concert, but not have Hot Rize be your main focus?

O’BRIEN:
Yeah, I felt like I needed to break out of that little bit of a straightjacket that’s in the bluegrass world. Also, with the same four people, you come up against your limitations. You emphasize your strengths, but you come up against your limitations. And we did pretty well. But after a certain point, I was ready to move on and try other things. But I think these reunions are a way for us to acknowledge that that was what we did for a spell and we can still do it. So i like that we can do that. And the newest thing isn’t always the best thing. And we did have some good music that we can still play.

PCC:
And the fans are still there.

O’BRIEN:
Yeah, they seem to be coming out. The shows are mostly all selling out in advance.

PCC:
I heard a couple of great new Hot Rize tracks. Might there be a new album?

O’BRIEN:
Well, we’re dancing around that. We need to come up with more material. We’re not together all the time like we used to be, so it’s kind of hard to find it and practice it up and agree on it all. I think, in the past, we always had to try a lot stuff out before we decided it was for us. And we don’t have as much trial-and-error time. But we’re going to try it. That’s one of the reasons to do this tour is that we’ll have more time together to try some new material. So we’ll see.

PCC:
With your solo career, how did that balance work out - having more autonomy, but also more responsibility? You don’t have that camaraderie. Is it a mixed blessing?

O’BRIEN:
It is kind of a mixed thing. There is a kind of strength in numbers of everybody pulling together and pushing and putting their efforts into one goal. When you do it on your own, it’s lonesome to begin with. It definitely was lonesome. But I think it’s worked out just fine. And I’m really glad that I have had that opportunity.

The songwriting actually gave me the license to try other things, because I was making money off of songs, whether I was doing any more work on them or not. They get recorded by a few other people and then you can start to see some money coming in the mail. And that allowed me to explore the music, the roots of it and to expand on the writing. It’s a pretty good space.

PCC:
With your own new album, “Chicken & Egg,” did you want to capture a live in-studio feel?

O’BRIEN:
I wanted to get this particular group of people together and record some. We have played on stage together with some frequency over the last couple of years and, like everyone else I know in my age, we’re all busy doing as much stuff as we can, so scheduling is a problem. They’re all free agents, involved in different things. So I don’t have a set band. But these guys have been playing some more shows with me live and it’s really good.

What’s good about it is they’re very intuitive and there’s a good chemistry. There’s not a lot of talking about what we’re going to do. We just get some songs and learn to play them. And I like that. I like being in front of a band and sort of giving them enough to go on with the song and the vocal and the key and the tempo and then just seeing where it goes. This is a good group to do that with.

PCC:
What’s your songwriting process?

O’BRIEN:
Well, the problem with songwriting is coming up with fresh sounds and some fresh insight. But I write songs and then I kind of put them in a file and then I listen back to them from time to time and assess what I’ve got. And every two or three years, it’s time to look at making a record. I just pick the best, what rings the best. It’s a combination of what you’re proud of and who you are and what you like.

Sometimes there’s songs that other people like more, that I don’t like. So I don’t record those. I might write something and just document it. I might co-write with somebody else and they might sell it or pitch it down at their publishing company. There’s a lot of that kind of thing going on here in Nashville. But I use whatever the parameters of my own I have, to decide on what to play and sing.

PCC:
Is it validating to have other artists covering your songs?

O’BRIEN:
I’m always amazed and greatly flattered. It usually means that there’s something somebody can relate to, if somebody goes to the trouble of singing it. I’m just as flattered when when people at a bluegrass festival campground sing my songs. I’m really amazed. Sometimes it’s stuff that I never expected them to sing. I hear about it.

When Hot Rize was going strong, we would hear people singing our songs on the campground. And I really like it when people at a jam session sing one of the songs and somebody asks, ‘Who wrote that?’ And they say, ‘I don’t know.’ And it was one of my songs. I like the fact that they’re not singing it for me because I’m sitting there. They’re just singing it because they enjoy singing it. And that’s incredibly validating.

Because people, whether they’re Garth Brooks or The Dixie Chicks or something, they’re trying to make money with it, but they also have to sing something that they believe in, I think. So I’m flattered when those people do the songs.

PCC:
You must hear from young musicians who say the you and Hot Rize inspired them.

O’BRIEN:
Well, yeah, it’s kind of funny. I don’t think about it so much. but it is true that there’s a lot of people that look at that body of work as being in a special place. And that’s great. When I started out, I wanted to try to make a mark. I was trying to make a living to start with. It soon became clear that you do better, if you’re honest. If you write what you know and you play music you like, it comes across better. And now, I’m realizing that it worked out. People did enjoy it. And they’re still enjoying the new stuff. And I have a really good job.

PCC:
Growing up, were you surrounded by music?

O’BRIEN:
The thing that instigated my getting into music was the British Invasion stuff. There was a folk music thing kind of growing, too. My older brother was into the folk music of Peter, Paul and Mary, Odetta and Joan Baez and stuff. So I got interested in that. But also, when The Beatles came out, everybody my age was playing on Sears & Roebuck guitars with little toaster amps. I just joined in. Even before I owned a guitar, I played my friend’s guitars. So that’s what started it out for me.

I was able to hear country music right off the bat, too, because I grew up in West Virginia and there was a good country radio show and a good live radio show. That was a real good thing there in Wheeling, called ‘`WWVA Jamboree,’ so I could go see the local staff players, as well as visiting luminaries like Jerry Lee Lewis or Merle Haggard or Charlie Pride or Buck Owens or somebody.

PCC:
Were you pulled in that country/folk/bluegrass direction by stories of the songs, the sound of the instruments?

O’BRIEN:
The sound of the instruments. The acoustic guitar was it for me, I could sit in the room and play for hours. Before I could drive, I didn’t have many outlets for my own life. I was with my family, which was great. I cherished that. But I was looking to be somebody and music was something I could do. And acoustic music definitely grabbed me. I loved the sound of the guitar. I could put my ear up to it and play. I liked electric, too. But it’s not as much fun playing electric guitar by yourself. I could play acoustic guitar for hours and hours in my room, making up little songs, fascinated by the sound of it and the chords. It was always growing, in my own place there.

PCC:
You play so many instruments. And you’re self-taught. Was it difficult to master some of them?

O’BRIEN:
I dabbled in the other stuff, but I started with the guitar. And then the fiddle became a major project when I was like 19. I spent about four years, just practicing the fiddle four or five hours a day. The other ones are kind of offshoots of that - the mandolin, the bouzouki, they’re kind of in between the guitar and the fiddle. So they’re kind of related and they kind of filled in afterwards. But yeah, the guitar for four or five years and then I got really crazy about trying to make a sound on a fiddle. And it developed from there.

PCC:
And playing different instruments, does that help with the songwriting, allowing you to find more colors?

O’BRIEN:
Yeah, I think it does. The other instruments, it’s like changing your perspective. I oftentimes think of music as like, if you knew the view of a mountain from one direction, say the west. It looks completely different from the east, the south and north. All points of the compass have different looks to offer. And music is that way. It just helps you know music better, to play the same music on different instruments. And it also makes you think of different things that you might not have realized.

And then, for writing, it’s actually good, because, if you don’t know a particular instrument that well, you kind of get interested in real simple things again. Like, nowadays, the piano’s good for that. The bouzouki used to be good for that. The banjo’s still pretty good for that. I don’t know how the banjo works very well. Something about the five-string banjo’s kind of mysterious. It’s kind of been teaching me some stuff.

O’BRIEN:
It’s good that you’re still finding mysteries in music

O’BRIEN:
Well, yeah, there’s mysteries in there, but you need to fool yourself into the mystery. You have to distract yourself. I think that’s part of the writing process, is you kind of get distracted and go into a semi-kind of dream state. And sometimes it’s just being fascinated by the mathematics of how another instrument works. You’re just finding your way and you stumble on some things that turn you on.

Music is a great friend and I’m lucky. I know a lot of people don’t get to do what they love to do as their main job. And I’m really, really lucky that way.

PCC:
You must also grow from all the different collaborations. What did you gain from working with Mark Knopfler?

O’BRIEN:
Mark’s a real master and he’s very fastidious. His songwriting is remarkable. He’s a great lyric writer. And then he kind of fits it all against these sort of folk melodies. They’re kind of folk melodies, but then he always has a sort of heroic guitar solo at the end.

But I really learned a lot about how not to play, when to not play anything at all, for one thing. When you’re playing in a bigger band, eight pieces, it becomes really important to edit yourself. And you really have to listen to everything.

I went from maybe 30 years of fronting bands to being a sideman in his group. And that was really an adjustment. I do it on recording sessions from time to time. But doing it on this show, night after night, it was a real discipline thing for me. I learned how finely you can tune things.

His production level, technically, with the sound system and the lights and everything, is really way more advanced than anything I’d been a part of. It’s a large crew and you’re playing the same set every night. I was five weeks on a tour. And you really get down to some exacting stuff. And you have to find a way to stay aware. I would get to where I felt like I knew exactly what I should do. I started listening to the rest of the band more closely. And then I’d get lost again. [Laughs]. I realized, ‘Oh, the more I know this stuff, the more I need to pay attention’ It’s kind of interesting.

PCC:
So really the growing process in music never ends?

O’BRIEN:
Well, I hope not.

PCC:
And any projects ahead with your sister Mollie?

O’BRIEN:
Well, we’re looking at family band records with her husband and her daughters and my two sons. So we’re trying to work this out. We have this idea of making a record of all Roger Miller songs, just because we needed some sort of frame to start with. That’s kind of just goofy enough, maybe, that we’ll all fall in there. Anyway, we’re walking towards that. I’ve got some dates on the calendar for us to record in April. So hopefully that will happen soon.

PCC:
Generally, are you among the optimists when it comes to the future of Americana music?

O’BRIEN:
Well, good music always comes along. There’s always somebody with a new slant on it. And I’m always fascinated to see that coming along. It seems like the roots music, like the traditional forms, people revisit them and find new ways to go about it. We were just talking about that, how Hot Rize found a way to play traditional bluegrass even though we weren’t of the right generation or the right demographic. We weren’t from the Southeast. We did our best and we came up with our way of doing it. And a lot of people really like that. So I think that’s what’s good about the current scene. It keeps bubbling up with some new stuff. I think it’s in good hands.

A lot of people complain about the fate of the recording industry. I think that the live music industry is not in any kind of danger. In fact, I think the live performance is more and more valuable, as we get more and more of everything being digital and on the web and everybody looking at little screens. There’s something about sitting in the audience in a concert hall or a bluegrass festival or even just around a jam session and hearing music come right off the instruments, seeing it done in real time. That’s a one-of-a-kind experience that will never go away. A lot of people despair about their careers or about music in general, but I don’t think it’ll ever go away, because that kind of thing is still so valuable, in fact, more and more valuable.

PCC:
Any particular goals you’re still aiming towards?

O’BRIEN:
I keep writing the same songs over and over. There are two or three melodies that keep popping up. And I need to break out of that [Laughs]. I need to expand my mind a little bit. I’m not sure how I can do it, but it probably has to do with playing with young musicians and being challenged.

HOT RIZE Tour Dates
(for more info, go to www.hotrize.com)

Oct 28    Berkeley, CA     The Freight 
Oct 29    Seattle, WA      Benaroya Hall
Oct 30    Portland, OR     Aladdin Theater
Oct 31    Boulder, CO      Boulder Theater
Nov 3     Lexington, MA    National Heritage Museum
Nov 4     New York, NY     BB King Blues Club
Nov 5     Charlotte, NC    McGlohon Theatre
Nov 6     Alexandria, VA   The Birchmere
Nov 7     Wheeling, WV     tba