For over half of his 65 years Skip Gorman has enjoyed singing, playing and performing an impressive and varied palette of traditional American and Celtic folk music. As an accomplished singer, guitarist, fiddler and mandolinist, Gorman has completed over 18 recordings of fiddle, mandolin, bluegrass and cowboy songs, been featured on many others, and established his own record label, Old West Recordings.

His recordings have earned a prestigious NAIRD (INDIE) award, and been selected as a top ten folk pick of the year by Amazon.com. Filmmaker Ken Burns has used Skip’s original music on four of his celebrated documentaries. He has appeared on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, toured with the US Embassy in Chile, Argentina and Paraguay, performed at World Fiddle Day in Co. Kerry, Ireland, and taught at numerous music camps in America and the British Isles.

On his eighth birthday Skip received a copy of “Train Whistle Blues,” the first LP re-release of Jimmie Rodgers, the yodeling Mississippi brakeman, to which he listened constantly, soon mastering Jimmie’s yodeling and guitar style.

At the age of twelve Skip took up the mandolin, and after meeting Bill Monroe in Newport, he traveled to Fincastle, Virginia to the first ever Bluegrass Festival in 1965. By 1968 Skip was performing at the Berryville (VA) Bluegrass Festival, playing mandolin in workshops with Monroe as well as on the main stage with his college band mates. Art Menius in Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine has referred to Skip as “the finest exponent today of the style of mandolin that was performed by the Monroe Brothers.”