Skip Gorman

The songs of the American cowboy and the old West are more than the sounds of Hollywood's Western films for folk singer Skip Gorman. Dressed in a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, spurs and chaps, Gorman sings of campfires, cattle drives, the loneliness of the prairies, and the personalities of the old West.



Gorman has been developing his musical approach for more than a quarter century. Inspired by the songs of the "Yodeling Brakeman" Jimmie Rodgers, Gorman taught himself to play guitar at the age of eight. By the age of 17, he had become equally skilled at the fiddle and mandolin, trading mandolin licks with Bill Monroe at a bluegrass festival in Virginia. While studying for a master's degree at the University of Utah in the mid-1970s, Gorman began collecting 78 rpm recordings of old-time cowboy singers.



Also heavily influenced by traditional Celtic music, Gorman studied Irish fiddling with Johnny Doherty in Donegal and Scottish fiddling with Aly Bain of the Boys Of The Lough in Scotland.

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