Forrest O'Connor

Early life

O’Connor grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. His father, Mark O'Connor, was a country session fiddler during the first few years of his life, giving the younger O’Connor firsthand exposure to many of the leading figures in the country music scene, including Dolly Parton, Travis Tritt, Marty Stuart, and Emmylou Harris. In 2000, he moved with his mother, Suzanne, to Lolo, Montana and then Missoula, Montana, where he started playing the mandolin. As a student at Hellgate High School, he began displaying a knack for writing: he contributed articles to his local newspaper, The Missoulian, and he placed second in a national journalism competition sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America Foundation. He graduated in 2006 from Hellgate High School as his class Valedictorian.

That fall, O’Connor enrolled at Harvard University. As a sophomore, he co-founded his first band, a progressive bluegrass quartet called The Hay Brigade, which performed around Boston as well as on Public Radio International’s "The World" and WGBH’s "A Celtic Sojourn." John Lawless of Bluegrass Today praised The Hay Brigade for possessing a "stunning level of virtuosity and a fine sense of the appropriate mix of improvisation and melody when it comes to folk-derived music." As an undergraduate, O’Connor was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and awarded a Thomas T. Hoopes Prize for his senior thesis on instrument design. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in sociomusicology.

In summer 2010, O’Connor co-founded the webcasting company, Concert Window, Inc. with former Hay Brigade bandmate Dan Gurney. Since its inception, Concert Window has received nearly 10 million views worldwide, and it was featured early on in TechCrunch, The Boston Herald, Complex, Evolver.fm, TechHive, and BostInnovation.

Career

O’Connor began performing frequently in 2011 and joined several Boston-based bands the following year. In summer 2013, he recorded his first EP, Wisewater, in his bedroom and released it through CDBaby. After meeting vocalist and fiddler Kate Lee (musician) several months later, he moved back to Nashville and, within weeks, was sitting in with the country house band at The Station Inn on Monday nights. In March 2014, he won the Tennessee State Mandolin Championship. In the ensuing months, he formed a duo with Lee called Wisewater, which appeared several times on the Grand Ole Opry alongside singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier. Wisewater’s debut EP, The Demonstration, was recorded over a period of five days in O'Connor's bedroom studio. It reached #13 on the iTunes Singer-Songwriter chart in November 2014. Wisewater continued touring through early 2016, when it was absorbed into the O’Connor Band featuring Mark O’Connor.

The O’Connor Band recorded its debut full-length album, Coming Home, in February and March 2016 with co-producer Gregg Field, former drummer for Frank Sinatra. The album was released on Rounder Records in August 2016 and shot to #1 on the Billboard Top Bluegrass Albums chart, giving O'Connor his first breakthrough in the public eye. The album remained in the top 10 for most of the rest of 2016, and it was hailed by No Depression as "a stunning debut".

Coming Home won a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2017. O’Connor is currently touring with the O’Connor Band and writing new material for both the band and an upcoming solo project.