Colin O’Brien and Peter Roller Reconnect

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In the mid ‘90s Colin O’Brien moved halfway across the country to study guitar and Peter Roller was one of his instructors. O’Brien and Roller’s paths will cross again when O’Brien joins Roller’s group Best Place Bluegrass on Thursday for a special performance at Linneman’s Riverwest Inn: linnemans.com/event/october-19-2023.

Calling from his music studio in Nashville, multi-instrumentalist O’Brien recalls venturing to Wisconsin from Seattle in the fall of 1994 to study at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. His initial experiences proved  memorable. “I got pulled over on I-94 for going too slow and the cop let me go! I was driving a 1967 Volvo and had a candle on the dashboard that was acting as a defroster. He actually told me to speed up!” O’Brien’s other interaction was checking out the Brady Street neighborhood looking for an apartment to rent. He saw a woman strolling down the street and asked her about the area. “She’s now my wife,” he says.

During his time in Milwaukee O’Brien studied guitar with John Stropes and Roller, played banjo with Salt Creek, hosted the Midweek Mountain Music residency at Bremen Café and wrote instructional materials for Hal Leonard. 

With his 12-string guitar work recalling Leo Kottke and the spirit of John Hartford hovering over O’Brien’s banjo-fiddle-foot percussion guise of his stage presence, he offered something for everyone.

Nashville

But all that was at least two musical lifetimes ago, O’Brien says. In 2013 Larry Perkins invited him to Nashville to make the album After a Song. 

Concerning Nashville, he says it takes a lot of character to be inspired and not intimidated. “This town is a pressure cooker in terms of intensified experience. It compresses and distills things … your average, shy 20-year-old year old kid at a party sitting in a corner is gonna’ pick up a fiddle and play the most amazing music you ever heard!”

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O’Brien says it took 3-5 years to get established in Nashville. He started out giving music lessons as his main source of income. During the pandemic he “was completely unemployed,” teaching a half dozen students which transitioned into Zoom lessons. He did no sessions, no touring, no playing locally. 

With all the tragedies of the pandemic he says his day-to-day routine was dissonantly opposed to the news of the day, that it took time and work to not feel guilty and accept the gratitude of his personal situation.  

It took a while to not feel guilty about thriving creatively without a schedule and maintaining a strong spirit, “…here we are with the birds and the bees,” he says. “Of course, it was a shit show for everyone in so many ways, with unprecedented suffering.” He continues to express gratitude and at how lucky he and his family were. 

Today, O’Brien and his wife reside in the Belle Meade suburb of Nashville with a creek running though the yard. With a home studio and a career built around music, a new website on the way, a return to play with old friends in Milwaukee and a side trip to Door County, his gratitude and good fortune continue. 

Best Place Bluegrass

Captain Frederick Pabst has been known to photobomb the Best Place Bluegrass Band, the quartet of veteran instrumentalists and singers from the Milwaukee area who formed playing regular summer shows in the historic Pabst Brewery’s Best Place courtyard. 

The group perform traditional songs and instrumentals from the likes of Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs and the Stanley Bros as well newer material from John Prine, Tom Paxton, Neil Young, the Grateful Dead and the Monkees.

Led by Dobro player Peter Roller, they perform his original instrumentals as well as lively tunes featuring Mark Vitkus on mandolin and guitar, Max Winkels on five string banjo and big Don Moore on upright bass.

Roots

A free-range conversation with Roller uncovers musical roots that stretch back to New Jersey, venturing into Greenwich Village where he played The Gaslight and was in attendance the night Bruce Springsteen played for John Hammond to serving as apprentice to blues mandolinist Yank Rachell. Attending college in Grinnell, Iowa, Roller made connections to the roots music coffeehouse scene in late ‘70s Minneapolis where he played an “instant gig” with Paul Cebar.

A circuitous route would land Roller in Milwaukee where he eventually became a fulltime Milwaukeean in Cebar’s band. His resume also includes work with Alex Ballard and Sugarfoot, The Tritonics, the Masonic Wonders and Robin Pluer’s annual Bastille Days concert of French music.

Roller played Dobro with O’Brien in Salt Creek, performed as a duo with harmonica player Steve Cohen and was professor and chair of Alverno College’s music department. His curriculum vitae is an impressive one.

Balance

“Pete, you stays in a hurry all the time,” was Rachell’s observation conveying Roller needed to slow down. “I’d cycle back into my gotta be responsible, gotta have a job thing … he was like a guru and I had a hell of an experience,” recalls of his time with Rachell. Eventually Roller found a balance moving away from nonstop gigs juggling old time blues and country rock/wedding gigs to balancing family life with academia and occasional performances.

Today, along with the Best Place Bluegrass Band and work with the Grafton Blues Association’s legacy of Paramount Records, Roller has also parlayed his talents into licensing his instrumental music. His fingerstyle and slide guitar music has been used in television and movies as far away as Japan, Germany and Switzerland. 

With O’Brien’s return to Milwaukee for Thursday’s show Roller says there is opportunity for cross-pollination of funky foot percussion, 12-string guitar instrumentals and bluegrass that stretches the genre’s boundaries.