Tim O'Brien on the New Celtic Revival

Grammy Award winning folk and bluegrass singer, songwriter and performer Tim O' Brien will be returning to the airwaves of WBGU FM this coming Monday March 2, 2009 to chat about the connections between Celtic music and American bluegrass. O'Brien has released several projects that explore the connections and interactions between traditional music forms from Ireland and America.

Originally a native of West Virginia, his grandfather immigrated to America from County Cavan, Ireland. Tim was a founding member of the groundbreaking "newgrass" band Hot Rize, based from Boulder, Colorado. Since then, he has released over a dozen solo projects and has appeared on literally countless other releases. In 1999, he brought together some of America's greatest bluegrass musicians, such as Del McCoury and Earl Scruggs, with some of the very best Irish traditional musicians to record "The Crossing." In 2007, he won the Grammy award for Best Traditional Folk Recording for "Fiddler's Green." His recent CD release "Chameleon" is his most intimate and personal. It features all new compositions by O'Brien with no guest musicians, just his voice and instrumental accompaniment.

O'Brien is highly sought after as a recording producer, arranger and performer on vocals, mandolin, fiddle and a variety of stringed instruments. In 2008 helped to produce and performs on "Always Lift Him Up- A Tribute to Blind Alfred Reed". Reed was a native of West Virginia and the project was a fund raiser for the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame and features performers with ties to the state's rich musical history including Kathy Mattea and Tim's sister, Mollie O'Brien.

Recent weeks saw the release of "Wells for Zoe- Water for Life" a CD compilation to raise funds for development projects in northern Malawi in Africa. O'Brien performs a duet with Karine Polwart of Scotland, on the title track and brought together Maura O'Connell the Duhks, John Doyle (and himself) to record an acoustic rave up of the classic hit from the Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin, "Sisters are Doin' It For Themselves."

Tim will be appearing on The New Celtic Revival radio program with host Earl Britt, between noon and 2:00 PM on WBGU FM 88.1 Outside of Bowling Green, the station can be heard over the Web at wbgufm.com and online with iTunes. Every Monday, The New Celtic Revival explores the interconnections between the current wave of cutting edge traditional music from Ireland, Scotland and other Celtic lands with thriving American music forms such as bluegrass, Appalachian and old time string bands.