Tim O'Brien is one of the most popular and richest Guitarist who was born on March 16, 1954 in Wheeling, Wheeling, United States. Tim O’Brien was born on March 16, 1954 and raised in Wheeling, West Virginia, the youngest in a family of five children. At the age of 12, he first heard a Bob Dylan record, played by his older sister Mollie, afterwards deciding to take up music. Throughout his teens, he taught himself to play guitar, violin, and mandolin.
In 1984, O’Brien and his sister Mollie O’Brien reunited for a Mother’s Day concert, and four years later recorded the duet album Take Me Back. Chip Renner of AllMusic gave the album 4.5/5 stars, and called it “a masterpiece.” In 1986 they began performing again as an Americana duo, and produced two more albums, Remember Me (1992), and Away Out on the Mountain (1994). All three records were released on Sugar Hill Records.
In 1990, Hot Rize disbanded as a regular touring and recording band. However, after the death of guitarist Charles Sawtelle, in 2002 Hot Rize was joined by award winning guitarist Bryan Sutton and the band began to once again play limited engagements.
To broaden their repertoire, the members of Hot Rize would often split their show with a set of classic and offbeat country and western music in the comic guise of Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers. The band would walk off stage, change clothes, and reappear as a different band (O’Brien assumed the mantle of “Red Knuckles”), with its own songs, fictional back story and odd costumes. Hot Rize was the International Bluegrass Music Association’s first Entertainer of the Year in 1990, and in 1993, O’Brien took the IBMA’s Male Vocalist of the Year honors.
In 1973, he dropped out of Colby College to pursue music professionally. He wrote to his mother at the time, saying, “I’m heading west. I know 200 songs now, and I figure if I keep learning more I should be all right.”
