Summer Sessions presents Dan Tyminski at Fort Southwest Point in Kingston

The Summer Sessions crew are stretching their legs this weekend and putting on their second concert of 2022 at the beautiful amphitheater at Fort Southwest Point on the banks of the Clinch River’s sunset basin in Kingston. That’s at 1225 S. Kentucky St. And for this very special venue, a very special free show by a man with one of the most recognizable voices in all Americana music is planned. O Brother, it’s Dan Tyminski. And the Asheville-based Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters get the show started at 6 p.m.

Fort Southwest Point was an important outpost in the careers of William Blount and John Sevier in the 1790s as the Cherokee Nation came to terms with the influx of European Americans after the American Revolution. Its site at the confluence of the Clinch and Tennessee rivers was a focal point in the history of the amazing heart of the Volunteer State that would become Roane, Loudon, Rhea, Meigs, Monroe, and McMinn counties.

But Saturday evening, Fort Southwest Point plays host to one of the brightest stars in the Roots Music universe, Mr. Dan Tyminski, who upstaged George Clooney 22 years ago in the Coen Brothers film, “O Brother, Where Art Thou” by singing “Man of Constant Sorrow” much better than Clooney could. And two years later, the soundtrack of “O Brother,” to which Tyminski made major contributions, became the first and only motion picture soundtrack to win a Grammy Award for Album of the Year.

A Grammy and Country Music Association (CMA) Award for “Constant Sorrow” made the fictional Soggy Bottom Boys as real and well known as the Foggy Mountain Boys. In the film, they pulled off the impossible feat of making a believable bluegrass singer of Brooklyn-born John Turturro.

That’s like seeing “The Dude” Lebowski on the Cas Walker Show.

Fourteen Grammy Awards. International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Vocalist of the Year. Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America (SPBMA) Vocalist of the Year. If Tyminski pinned all of his awards to his jacket like military medals, he wouldn’t be able to stand up.

All of that comes from an instrumental talent and a musical understanding of the guitar that is unmatched, plus a voice as distinctive and as unarguably American as Mark Twain’s sense of humor. His decades with Alison Krauss and Union Station on guitar and mandolin would be enough of a career for most artists, but for Tyminski, they were just a beginning.

To rehearse for their Summer Sessions show, Tyminski and his incredible band played “Bluegrass Night at the Ryman” Thursday night. The band includes Grace Davis on bass, Maddie Denton on fiddle, Gaven Largent on dobro, Jason Davis on banjo, and Harry Clark on mandolin. Hopefully they’ll let us hear what they’ve been working on to honor the legacy of the great Tony Rice, who passed away on Christmas 2020.

There’s no other way to say it. It’s just an honor to have this band coming to play for us. There oughta be 10,000 people filling the amphitheater. A beautiful spot. A summer sunset. And the Dan Tyminski Band. Don’t get no better.

John Job is a longtime Oak Ridger and frequent contributor to The Oak Ridger

This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Summer Sessions presents Dan Tyminski in Kingston