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DUO: Tim O’Brien and Jan Fabricius

Tim O’Brien and his wife Jan Fabricius have performed together nationally and internationally since 2015. The original songs on their 2025 release Paper Flowers offer tangible proof of a deep collaboration and serve as a narrative of the couple’s life together. Both live and in the studio, they present an acoustic music roots repertoire that’s at once both original and traditional.

Tim O’Brien might operate a bit under music business radar, but he’s been an essential part of the fabric of the folk, bluegrass, and Americana scenes for the past fifty years. Since his emergence as singer, instrumentalist, and songwriter with the iconic 1980’s bluegrass group Hot Rize, the West Virginia native has continued down a diverse and constantly evolving musical pathway. In the process he’s written songs for people like Garth Brooks and the Dixie Chicks, released rootsy classics like Red on Blonde and The Crossing, and earned a few Grammy awards.

A registered nurse from Kansas, Fabricius started dating O’Brien in 2011. After moving to Nashville in 2013, she took a crash course in the music business as tour manager. O’Brien describes their musical evolution: “Jan started adding harmony vocals and mandolin to shows and recordings soon after we became a couple. We would play music around the house, and she would learn new songs as I wrote them. Then soon enough we started writing together.”

When Cathy Fink and Jon Weisberger approached O’Brien in 2023 to contribute to what became 2024’s Bluegrass Sings Paxton, Tim and Jan wrote the song “You Took Me In” with the man himself. Encouraged by the results, the three scheduled weekly Zoom co-writing sessions and the songs kept coming.  Paper Flowers includes twelve of those songs as well as three more originals.

Tim O’Brien

Born in Wheeling, West Virginia in 1954, Grammy winning singer songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Brien grew up singing in church and in school. After seeing Doc Watson on TV, he became a lifelong devotee of old time and bluegrass music. Tim started touring nationally in 1978 with Colorado bluegrass band Hot Rize. His songs “Walk the Way the Wind Blows” and “Untold Stories” were bluegrass hits for Hot Rize, and country hits for Kathy Mattea. Soon more artists like Nickel Creek, Garth Brooks, and The Dixie Chicks covered his songs. Over the years, Tim has recorded and toured with his sister Mollie O’Brien, songwriter Darrell Scott, old-time musician Dirk Powell, and his wife Jan Fabricius. Other collaborators include the Chieftains, Steve Earle, Mark Knopfler, Sturgill Simpson, Tom Paxton, and Billy Strings.

Living in Nashville since 1996, O’Brien’s skills on guitar, mandolin, fiddle, and banjo make him an in- demand session player. The International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) awarded him song of the year in 2006 and named him best male vocalist in 1993 and 2006. He was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2013 and with Hot Rize, into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame in 2022, and the IBMA Hall of Fame in 2025.

Recent releases He Walked On and Cup of Sugar wove stories of everyday life into socially conscious themes. Paper Flowers, his 2025 duet release with Jan Fabricius narrated the couple’s life together. Other notable O’Brien recordings include the bluegrass Dylan covers of Red on Blonde, the Celtic-Appalachian fusion of The Crossing, and the Grammy winning folk of Fiddler’s Green. His duet with Darrell Scott, Real Time, is a cult favorite, and he won a bluegrass Grammy as part of The Earls of Leicester. The Tim O’Brien Songbook, coming in May of 2026, collects forty originals from his fifty plus years on the scene.