Tim O'Brien (b. March 16, 1954 in Wheeling, West Virginia) is an American bluegrass, old time and celtic musician. O'Brien plays guitar, fiddle, mandolin, bouzouki and mandocello and is an accomplished vocalist. He moved to Boulder, Colorado in the 1970s and became part of the music scene there. In 1978 he founded the bluegrass group Hot Rize. Hot Rize had its own offshoot band called Red Knuckles & the Trailblazers.
Jackie Greene is a singer-songwriter playing folk or roots rock music. Greene, was born on November 27, 1980 and was brought up in Cameron Park, California. He was interested in music from an early age. As a child, he taught himself to play the piano and subsequently the guitar. At 16 he started sitting in for local bands. As he got older he started composing his own songs and ended up playing in coffee-houses. He recorded a demo in his garage called
Born on June 7, 1951, in East Germany, Rainer Jaromir Ptacek grew up in Chicago after his family fled the Communist country in 1953. Musically inclined from childhood, in the mid '60s Rainer swapped violin for guitar. (He once quipped, "None of the Beatles, it seemed, were interested in violin.") A decade later he'd become a fixture on the Tucson music scene, ultimately garnering an international reputation as a song stylist and slide virtuoso that had critics speaking of him, Ry Cooder and John Fahey in the same breath...
Mindy Smith (born June 1, 1972 on Long Island, New York) is an American singer-songwriter. Mindy rose to fame in 2003 when she was the first artist signed to contribute to the Dolly Parton tribute album Just Because I'm a Woman: Songs of Dolly Parton, on which she sang a cover of Parton's classic "Jolene". Later Dolly Parton followed by adding backing vocals to a new mix of the song, which was then featured on Smith's debut album that was released in January 2004, One Moment More.
Freedy Johnston (born 1961) is a New York City-based singer-songwriter originally from Kinsley, Kansas. Johnston's first album, "The Trouble Tree" was released in 1990, and features the guitar playing of the roots musician and author, David Hamburger. Johnston sold some of his family's farmland to finance the recording of his second album, Can You Fly (an event he wrote about in a song on that album, "Trying to Tell You I Don't Know").
Califone is a critically-acclaimed experimental folk band from Chicago. The band is named after Califone International, a long-standing manufacturer of audio equipment commonly found in schools, libraries and businesses. Califone is the musical project of former Red Red Meat frontman Tim Rutili. Its regular and rotating contributors include many former members of Red Red Meat and some members of other Chicago bands, such as Tortoise.