A radically different breed of Nashville star, Dan Tyminski was pumped just to have a good seat at the Country Music Association Awards earlier this month. The jut-jawed, fire-fingered flatpicker with Alison Krauss & Union Station says he had mislaid his copy of the evening’s program and had no clue what was coming when a cameraperson took position nearby for the reading of nominees for Single of the Year.
“When I realized, I was like, 'Ohmigosh, they’re ready to stick my face on TV for the nomination,’ ” he recalls. “I’m sure anyone with a color TV noticed I was blushing.”
It had crossed his mind that the CMA might hand its Album of the Year honor to the gang of acoustic giants, including himself, on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? film soundtrack—from which his hard-driving, hair-raising rendition of “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” was the left-field breakthrough hit. “But Single of the Year?” he asks. “No way. I never even considered having to say anything. Then I thought, 'They’ve mispronounced somebody’s name, because that sounds like mine.’ Then they said, 'I—Am—a—Man—of—Constant—Sorrow.’
“Have you ever gone to take a sip of something you thought was a Coke and it was really iced tea? It was [like] that. And I’m still kind of in that.”
Tyminski’s wonderment can be pardoned. For nearly a decade and a half the quiet, churchgoing father of three has made his home in little Ferrum, Va., rather than Nashville. And bluegrass folks don’t get out much, anyway—not to country music’s award shows.
But Tyminski had seen something like this before. In 1995, he was present as his similarly facile bandmate, the great Krauss, won almost every award in sight on CMA night, in what was widely regarded as the greatest, and most deserved, aberration in the organization’s history. Tyminski’s 2001 victory didn’t seem quite so stunning. Krauss won nothing this time except a share of the Album of the Year credit for O Brother, although she did receive another nomination (for her collaboration with Emmylou Harris and Gillian Welch on “Didn’t Leave Nobody but the Baby”), and more nominations went to other tradition-revering peers, including Larry Cordle, co-writer of “Murder on Music Row,” and the youthful bluegrass outfit Nickel Creek.
Memory makes Tyminski wonder what’s coming, especially in a national tour of O Brother musicians scheduled for January and February. “ ’95 was a crazy year,” he reflects. “The year following, we noticed a change in our crowd. We saw a lot more cowboy hats and belt buckles than we were used to seeing. ['Constant Sorrow’] has been a popular song so far at the shows we’ve been doing. When we kick into that, people start cheering immediately. If we have the same reaction we did after [Union Station’s ’95 hit] 'When You Say Nothing at All,’ it’ll be a blast.”
Tyminski had never sung the Stanley Brothers classic until he was drafted in a Nashville studio to supply vocals for the movie persona of actor George Clooney. The singer says Clooney “can sing” and wanted to do the material himself “for obvious reasons: It would be easier for it to look real.” But filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen and producer T-Bone Burnett expected the Clooney song to be the hit of the soundtrack, and they didn’t want to “cheat” the music, Tyminski says, by having to goose it with technological tricks all too prevalent on Music Row.
He contradicts any assumption that, because the film was whimsical, the musicians on the soundtrack were “poking fun.” The Coens and Burnett “took every measure possible to preserve the integrity of the music and make it sound as authentic as it could—recording it on microphones from the ’30s, using instruments of that era, with no overdubs, any of that stuff,” he says.
But some viewers may have received the wrong impression, Tyminski suggests, because of their own preconceived notions about the music. “Unfortunately, bluegrass has kind of been stereotyped to where you automatically think of straw hats and hay bales and Hee Haw, which isn’t necessarily the case.”
Hardly, and Tyminski himself is Exhibit A. A native of Rutland, Vt., he springs from beginnings far afield of the sepia Southern back roads pictured in Clooney’s film odyssey. He began attending bluegrass festivals in childhood with his parents, who were huge fans. By age 12 he was playing in an older brother’s band, Green Mountain Bluegrass. At that time it was Stan Tyminski, 11 years Dan’s senior, who was the aggregation’s lead vocalist; Dan played banjo and sang only harmony parts when Stan required assistance. The younger sibling suggests that his brother is still probably “the true singer” of the pair.
Maintaining a national presence from Vermont is difficult even by bluegrass standards, so shortly after finishing high school in 1985, the younger Tyminski headed south and took a job with the Virginia-based Lonesome River Band. Helping the group become nationally prominent, he stayed six years—with one interruption.
“When I first took the job, Union Station was going through some changes,” he says. “I wasn’t aware of the band at that time, and I remember getting a call from Alison in my first year. I turned her down flat. When I got the call the second time, I had become friends with the band and had played with them a few times, so we had a little chemistry going, and I took the job. I stayed for four or five months, until I became completely guilt-ridden about leaving the Lonesome River Band.
“So I left Alison and went back. I felt like I hadn’t finished my work with them. I stayed another year and a half, until I was able to put things in a better perspective. By the time I got the last call, I knew where my heart was.”
For the past eight years, Tyminski has been where he expects to remain. Just as he saw Krauss do after her CMA triumphs of 1995, he appears inclined to quietly, affably shrink from a country “career.” He released his first solo album this year, and it’s bluegrass. Rousingly traditional, Carry Me Across the Mountain on Doobie Shea Records features work by his Lonesome River Band ex-mates as well as by Stan Tyminski and Krauss and Union Station.
Over the past year, he has done some Dan Tyminski Band appearances in addition to Union Station’s 60 to 70 annual performances, but he maintains that he wants to keep playing small to mid-sized theaters where he and the Krauss band can “really do justice” to their music.
“It’s hard to receive that much attention and not consider, you know, do you go out and do your own thing?” he confesses. “But when I weigh it all out, I don’t think I’m best suited for that. I think what makes me up is exactly what this band needs for my job. I couldn’t imagine having a better position. The people who play in this band are all my favorite musicians—and some of my favorite people outside of music.
“It would be a crime to give this up.”
