Dan Tyminski has toured the world with Alison Krauss and ruled the CMA Awards singing the biggest hit from the biggest movie about American roots music in the 21st century. His name’s on 14 Grammy Awards. But until a recent Wednesday night in Nashville, he’d never performed at Music City’s oldest and most storied club, the Exit/In. “We were thrilled,” he told me on reflection. “I got to put a checkmark on a list of historic places that I think you have to play if you're in this type of music.”
In that context, he meant good music tied to Nashville, but at that night’s show, recorded for WMOT’s Wired In series for a rapt audience in July, he got more specific, announcing that “We are gathered in the name of bluegrass music, and that makes me happier than just about anything in the world, except maybe for a cigar!”
No stogies were lit, but the Dan Tyminski Band certainly smoked, offering a set of songs that went a long way to telling his story, from an ode to his boyhood hero Jimmy Martin to the song that inspired him to play banjo to an acoustic version of the song that got his voice on the PA systems of dance clubs around the world in another of his Zelig-like career moments. There’s a lot to unpack about this exceptional singer, guitar player and songwriter, including lately his first solo bluegrass album since 2008 and a new band that’s a generation younger than the 57-year-old.
Tyminski grew up in small-town Vermont and started attending bluegrass and traditional music events with his parents as early as six years old. He took up the banjo and by his teens he was touring in the band Green Mountain Bluegrass with older brother, a key influence. That prepared him to be recruited by Virginia musician Tim Austin for his embryonic Lonesome River Band. Before long, that ensemble had attracted banjo player Sammy Shelor and singer Ronnie Bowman, solidifying a band that won awards and set a new standard for contemporary bluegrass in the early 1990s.
Being in the bluegrass big time put Dan in contact with the young and fast-rising Alison Krauss, and an offer to hop to her band became a wrenching decision. “It was not an easy time,” Tyminski told me in 2000. “I love both bands for different reasons,” but he decided that “with Alison’s band, I (would) get to play as much traditional grass as I’m comfortable with and do things that branch out.”
Indeed, there was no cooler place to be in roots music for the next decade, as Alison Krauss and Union Station became a Grammy juggernaut with monster musicians, including Jerry Douglas on dobro, Ron Block on banjo, and Barry Bales on bass. Dan’s high-profile spot as co-lead singer and guitarist helped him be in the right place when T Bone Burnett assembled the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? Dan’s overdubbed singing voice for the character of Ulysses Everett McGill, played by George Clooney, anchored an explosion of interest in old-time and bluegrass that hadn’t been seen in years.
Tyminski never had a particular yearning to strike out as a leader or solo artist, but in 2000 Tim Austin resurfaced to coax the singer into his first solo album, Carry Me Across The Mountain, for a new record label, during an AKUS hiatus. The title track is a standout on a classic of its decade that features Dan’s colleagues from Union Station and Lonesome River for a kind of this-is-your-life recording that included the set-closing “Sunny Side of the Mountain” by his first great influence Jimmy Martin. Two other discs followed at lengthy intervals, Wheels in 2008 and the more eclectic and stylized Southern Gothic in 2017, which stretched Dan as a songwriter.
Amid those came another flash of unexpected fame when the Swedish DJ and record producer Avicii reached out with a request for Tyminski to record the vocals for the song “Hey Brother.” Dan told the story on stage at the Exit/In about his daughter flipping out at the idea and ensuring that he took on the job. The track became a global hit on the pop and dance charts in late 2013 and was extensively remixed. It’s now been given the bluegrass treatment that its minor key and modal melody deserves, because Tyminski’s got a new album and a new band to tour the songs.
“We had enough time off for me to dive a little deeper than I've gone before, putting together this band,” Dan says of the last few years. The youth brigade includes Nashville’s Harry Clark on mandolin. Clark, an IBMA Momentum Award winner, has ties to fiddler Maddie Denton and dobro player Gavin Largent, because all three are members of East Nash Grass, the exceptional “house band” for more than five years at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge in Madison. All are nimble, attentive and expert instrumentalists. They sing well. Along with banjo player Jason Davis on banjo and Grace Davis on bass, the new Dan Tyminski Band began touring shortly before the pandemic.
“There's an age difference, no doubt. I mean, I'm a grandpa and basically the whole band are my children's age or younger. So it's an interesting dynamic,” Tyminski told me. “I don't know how else to express this except it makes me feel younger to be around this type of energy. They're the most mature musicians and seasoned professionals in how they attack their craft that I could possibly put myself around. And I'm the luckiest guy around to get to have them. This has kind of been my favorite version of my band yet.”
As with Molly Tuttle’s two recent breakthrough albums, the studio band and the touring band are the same on this summer’s God Fearing Heathen. Opener “Never Coming Home” kicks with Davis’s resounding banjo and gives Dan’s voice plenty of elongated vowels to achieve a high lonesome glow. The acoustic update of “Hey Brother” follows, and not only does it work beautifully as a bluegrass melody, the song opens up into a bit of a jam, led by Harry Clark’s woody mandolin. That’s the only song Tyminski didn’t co-write on this 10-song collection. And while it features light, punny material like the bourbon spiked “Keep Your Eye On Kentucky,” songs like “Silence In The Brandy,” a rumination on PTSD, bring modern day gravitas to the bluegrass repertoire.
But ultimately the story of Dan and his youthful band is about musicianship and group dynamics. Gaven Largent is very special, with a hard-edged rural voice and a personal touch on the dobro that astounds Tyminski. It’s not all he plays either. “I've been picking on him that he's a dobro player wrapped in a banjo player wrapped in a guitar player - a bluegrass turducken,” Dan said. Jason Davis is already a veteran in the business, having worked the banjo for Kenny and Amanda Smith, Junior Sisk and more. He’s a low-key guy whose precise and powerful right hand has earned buzz as a future IBMA award nominee. The dazzle factor is stronger with Maddie Denton, a Murfreesboro native and the 2016 Grand Master Fiddle Champion who had to retool her musicianship in a shift from the formalized contest style of fiddling to the improvisatory freedom of bluegrass. Tyminski says she listens intently and plays with “fangs.”
The most important thing I wanted to learn in my conversation with Dan was whether this commitment to his own style of bluegrass and his own band was another way station or something with long term prospects. And it sounds like the latter. “This has been my favorite version of my band yet,” he says. “I haven't had this much fun in years. And to be able to do it with five others that are on fire - it's an opportunity I cannot pass up. And I'll ride her until she bucks!”
