Famous Octave Mandolin players

[CelticDude]

Famous Irish bouzouki players (GDAD) we have a-plenty, but how about OM players? I can only think of John McGann and Tim O'Brien, but there must be others?

[Eddie Sheehy]

Sarah Jarosz, Cahalen Morrison...

[JeffD]

Sierra Hull

[ptritz]

Dave Richardson.

[Mandobart]

Darol Anger. Don Julin. Jim Richter!

[mandomentch]

Mick Moloney

Skip Gorman

David Surette

[Niall Anderson]

Kevin Macleod and Dagger Gordon, of this parish... Both play Sobell OMs.

[CelticDude]

Okay, thanks. I should have remembered Sierra Hull and Sarah Jarosz. Some of the others I've heard of, but didn't know they played OM. Eg I think of Darol Anger as a fiddler, and David Surrette as mandolin/guitar. I'll start looking for recordings.

[Steve L]

Roger Landes and Gerald Trimble. I'm taking "octave mandolin" to mean melody playing more than scale length or tuning.

[terzinator]

Not sure how famous he is (but famous to me once I started seeking out great OM players and videos) but Collin Botts is pretty great.

Check out his Drunken Sailor Hornpipe.

[foldedpath]

Ale Möller is a wonderful player of the Latmandola or "Swedish Mandola," which has some similarities to an OM with added bass strings. His backing style seems a bit more counter-melody OM style than zouk-based, so I thought I'd add his name here. A great example of his playing is on the two albums of Shetland tunes he did with fiddler Aly Bain -- "Fully Rigged" and "Beyond the Stacks."

[mrmando]

Danny Carnahan
David Tiller
Marvin Etzioni
Lief Sorbye
Colin Meloy of the Decemberists

[bigskygirl]

Post #14 in this thread...http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/sh...ield-beautiful

Emory plays an OM on several of his CDs.

[CelticDude]

Danny Carnahan
David Tiller
Marvin Etzioni
Lief Sorbye
Colin Meloy of the Decemberists

All of these are playing an OM, tuned GDAE? Okay, cool. More vids to look up. I did find a rather nice Skip Gorman YouTube. He was singing and accompanying himself on an OM.

[bruce.b]

Taarka's latest CD is great. David Tiller plays mostly mandolin on it, I think. He does play octave mandolin and tenor guitar more live and on other CDs. I recently saw Taarka and they were fantastic. They are currently my favorite band.

[jvkelly]

Pat Kilbride's Rock and More Roses?

[DPrager]

Joe craven

[Dagger Gordon]

Pat Kilbride's Rock and More Roses?

That originally came out as a vinyl LP called Rock and Roses. They added some more stuff for the CD.
I always enjoyed that record - although I think he might have been playing a 10 string cittern rather than OM? Not completely sure.

He did a really nice guitar version of Si Bheag Si Mhor on that - a bit hackneyed I know, but it's worth hearing.

[jvkelly]

That originally came out as a vinyl LP called Rock and Roses. They added some more stuff for the CD.
I always enjoyed that record - although I think he might have been playing a 10 string cittern rather than OM? Not completely sure.

He did a really nice guitar version of Si Bheag Si Mhor on that - a bit hackneyed I know, but it's worth hearing.

Your're quite right as to the cittern, Dagger. From Pat Kilbride's website:

Kilbride's cittern is a Stefan Sobell (www.sobellinstruments.com) spruce-and-rosewood five-course, tuned D A D A D (gauges .012, .017, .032, .042, .052) and fitted with a Fishman pickup. His 1979 ten-string bouzouki was made by Peter Abnett (DAbnett@aol.com); it's fitted with a DiMarzio magnetic humbucking pickup in the soundhole, which he runs into a Trace Elliot preamp pedal. Kilbride uses Elixir strings on all his instruments.

[John Flynn]

He is not famous as an OM player per se, but this clip by Swiss multi-instrumentalist Uldry Olivier is an amazing and creative use of the instrument, so it's "famous" for me. I really would love to be able to do stuff like this.

[fox]

Yeah, he is nice to watch too.

[James Rankine]

The words famous and mandolin don't appear very often together in the same sentence even before you start throwing in "octave".

The distinction between an octave and a bouzouki is not just scale length if you consider a typical zouk tuning to be GDAD, a really effective tool for melody playing for those who can pull it off. Don't know who this bloke is but this is a great example.

[CelticDude]

James - Yes, I know "famous" is relative in this case. I asked specifically about octave mandolin, intending to mean GDAE. I know there are a good number of players effectively using GDAD, especially in Irish trad music. As that's my focus, I was hoping to get some suggestions of "famous" musicians using GDAE for Irish trad. Partly looking for inspiration.

[Woyvel]

Michael Kang, String Cheese Incident (jam band) doesn't play a lead guitar, but a lead 5-string electric mandolin. Not the usual rock genre instrumentation, not the usual genre for OM.

[tmsweeney]

John Reischman played Octave Mandolin on the very rare Todd Phillips album "Released"- close enough for me