Dan Tyminski

He was born in Rutland on 20 June 1967. His interest in stringed instruments started at about six, when his older brother went into the Navy and left him his mandolin, but it was the banjo that became his main instrument, from about twelve until twenty-one. At about fifteen he was playing around New England with his brother Stan in Green Mountain Bluegrass, and over the next five years or so he took up guitar and mandolin as well. Among his main influences he names Del McCoury, Tony Rice, Larry Sparks, Ricky Skaggs and Jimmy Martin.

In 1988, at twenty-one, he moved to Virginia to play mandolin in the Lonesome River Band, which Tim Austin had founded. He is on the band’s Looking for Yourself (1989) and Carrying the Tradition (1991), which won the IBMA’s Album of the Year. In 1992 he joined Alison Krauss & Union Station as guitarist and vocalist, replacing Tim Stafford. A brief return to the Lonesome River Band followed in 1993, but in 1994 he came back to Union Station for good, the same year he recorded Old Country Town with the Lonesome River Band. Through the 1990s he also turned up on records by Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, Randy Travis, Clint Black and Willie Nelson, among others.

His first solo album, Carry Me Across the Mountain, came out on Doobie Shea in June 2000, with Jerry Douglas and Tony Rice among the guests. A few months later O Brother, Where Art Thou? used his lead vocal on “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow,” credited to the Soggy Bottom Boys and sung with Pat Enright and Harley Allen. The recording won the Country Music Association Award for Best Single and the Grammy for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals, and the IBMA named it Song of the Year in 2001, the first of his years as the association’s Male Vocalist.

In 2007, while Krauss was touring with Robert Plant, he formed the Dan Tyminski Band with Justin Moses, Barry Bales, Ron Stewart and Adam Steffey. Their album Wheels (Rounder, 2008) reached number one on the bluegrass albums chart, won the IBMA’s Album of the Year and was nominated for a Grammy, and in 2009 Martin Guitar issued a D-28 Dan Tyminski Custom Edition. In 2013 he sang lead on Avicii’s “Hey Brother,” which went to number one on Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart and into the top five in more than fifteen countries. Southern Gothic (Mercury Nashville, 2017) followed in an electro-pop style with programmed beats, while God Fearing Heathen (2023) is a bluegrass record that includes a bluegrass version of “Hey Brother.”

The Bluegrass Heritage Foundation gave him its Bluegrass Star Award in 2021. Tony Rice had died in December 2020, and in July 2022 North Star Records released Tyminski’s five-song tribute EP, One More Time Before You Go: A Tribute to Tony Rice, with Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Josh Williams and Todd Phillips on the title track. In 2025, as Union Station regrouped to make Arcadia, he told the band that after thirty years he would not be returning and would concentrate on his solo career. Russell Moore of IIIrd Tyme Out took his place in the band, though Tyminski still plays guitar and mandolin on the album.