Mollie O'Brien & Rich Moore
Grammy winner Mollie O'Brien has long been known as a singer who doesn't recognize a lot of musical boundaries, and audiences love her fluid ability to make herself at home in any genre while never sacrificing the essence of the song she tackles. She is a singer at the very top of her game who's not afraid to take risks both vocally and in the material she chooses.
They have steadfastly made it their mission to unlock the secrets of the diverse array of styles that comprise the canon of American Roots Music. Geniuses at interpretation and never sacrificing the essence of the songs they tackle, they are at home with their musical selves. They are unafraid of risk taking, authoritative in their performance and at the very top of their game. And to top it all off, they’re fun.
Grammy Award winner Mollie O’Brien became known to the rest of the world as a singer’s singer when, in 1988, she and her brother Tim released the first of three critically-acclaimed albums for Sugar Hill Records (Take Me Back, Remember Me and Away Out On The Mountain). Eventually, Mollie recorded five equally well-received solo albums (Tell It True, Big Red Sun and Things I Gave Away for Sugar Hill Records, and I Never Move Too Soon and Everynight In The Week for Resounding Records). Additionally, she was a regular on the nationally-syndicated radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion” from 2001 through 2005. She’s long been known as a singer who doesn’t recognize a lot of musical boundaries, and audiences love her fluid ability to make herself at home in any genre while never sacrificing the essence of the song she tackles. O’Brien has primarily focused her efforts on the fading art of interpretation and the end result is a singer at the very top of her game who is not afraid to take risks both vocally and in the material she chooses.
Husband Rich Moore has busied himself in the Colorado music scene for many years. While staying home with the kids when Mollie & Tim toured, he held a day job and continued to perform locally with a variety of Colorado favorites, including Pete Wernick and Celeste Krenz. Not only is Moore known to produce some of the funniest onstage running commentary, he’s also a powerhouse guitar player who can keep up with O’Brien’s twists and turns from blues to traditional folk to jazz to rock and roll. He creates a band with just his guitar and, as a result, theirs is an equal partnership.
Learn more at http://mollieobrien.com
Rex McGee
Born in Winston-Salem, NC and raised on a family farm near Sauratown Mountain, Rex McGee had early formal training on the piano and fiddle. He learned to play from his father Will, a left-handed fiddler who learned from his father on a fiddle made out of a gourd. Rex performs across several musical genres: rock with Celtic stars Brynmor, traditional and original folk tunes with contra dance group Footloose, and jazz/folk with vocalist Martha Bassett. He is known by 3-finger style banjo players all over the world as a vanguard innovator on an instrument of humble origins.
Thoughts on Rex by Ryan Cavanaugh...
Rex McGee has been an underground enigma in the banjo world. His contributions to the 5-string banjo reach far and wide among the banjo elite. He tunes his banjo in 4ths-interval tuning, and though a respected fiddler and multi-instrumentalist, he is truly a master of the 5-string banjo. I met Rex in 1991, in Mount Airy, NC when we played a talent contest at the Andy Griffith Theater. He played flawless up-tempo renditions of Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee and Charlie Parker’s Donna Lee for an audience who had little knowledge of this music. At 11 years old, I had heard this music in my father’s record collection and was stunned to hear it played on the banjo at such a high intensity. Soon after seeing him for the first time, I made sure that I would witness more of this amazing music on the banjo. We have been friends ever since. Last year he released his recording “Kripplekrunk.” —Ryan Cavanaugh
Learn more at https://www.facebook.com/musicalrex
