Skip Gorman

Skip Gorman has enjoyed singing, playing and performing traditional American and Celtic folk music for over half a century. As an accomplished singer, guitarist, fiddler and mandolinist, Gorman has completed over 19 recordings of fiddle, mandolin, bluegrass and cowboy songs, been featured on 30 others, and established his own record label, Old West Recordings.

Growing up in Rhode Island in the early 1960s, Skip was exposed to an array of roots musicians at the Newport Folk Festival, including Doc Watson, Maybelle Carter, Bill Monroe, The Stanley Brothers, and many more.

At the age of 12, Skip took up the mandolin after meeting Bill Monroe in Newport. In 1965, he traveled to Fincastle, Virginia to the first ever Bluegrass Festival. By 1968, Skip was performing at the Berryville Bluegrass Festival in Virginia, playing mandolin in workshops with Monroe, as well as on the main stage with Rhode Island bandmates Stephen Fensterer, John Kornhauser, Kit Lutman and Don Myerberg. 

While a student at Brown University, Skip started playing the old-time fiddle style of Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers and soon put together an old-time string band with college pals Tom Carter, Hal Cannon, Ted Hilliard, Richard Graham and David Harris appropriately named the Rhode Island Mudflaps.

In 1982, Skip joined forces with guitar picker, Rick Starkey and acoustic bassist Bob Dick to record the Late Night Feast album and Skip’s first mandolin album The Old Style Mandolin. Later, he and Starkey formed the Northwind Bluegrass band with RIBA Hall of Fame inductee Bill Hall and RIBA Bluegrass Pioneer J.R. Smith. 

Skip’s recordings have earned awards and have been selected as a top 10 folk pick of the year by Amazon.com.  Filmmaker Ken Burns used Skip’s original music on five of his documentaries and soundtracks. He has appeared on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, toured with the U.S. Embassy in Chile, Argentina and Paraguay, performed at World Fiddle Day in Co. Kerry, Ireland, done two tours of Australia and taught at numerous music camps in America and the British Isles.