Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Chris Hillman was a member of The Byrds, a country rock band that was huge in the 1960s, and he has sustained a career as a singer-songwriter ever since with a new album released in 2017. Inspired by great American folk, country and bluegrass artists such as Pete Seeger, Lead Belly and Bill Monroe, he has carved a great reputation for musical authenticity with collaborations with many top artists including Roger McGuinn, Tom Petty and the Eagles.
Born in Southern California, Hillman learned to play the mandolin as a teenager and he played with local bands the Scottsville Squirrel Barkers, The Golden State Boys and the Green Grass Revival. When he joined The Byrds in the early 1960s, he played bass guitar and soon developed an individual style. With Roger Mcguinn, David Crosby, Gene Clark and Michael Clarke, The Byrds had several hit singles including Bob Dylan's 'Mr. Tambourine Man', 'Turn! Turn! Turn!', 'Eight Miles High' and 'So You Want to Be a Rock Star'. The band began to fragment and with only Hillman and McGuinn left; Gram Parsons signed on for the 1968 album 'Sweetheart of the Rodeo'. With Parsons and Michael Clarke, Hillman went on to form the Flying Burrito Brothers and, with Pete Kleinow and Bernie Leadon, they released two albums, 'The Gilded Palace of Sin' and 'Burrito Deluxe'. Parsons quit in 1970 and after two more albums - 'The Flying Burrito Brothers' and 'Last of the Red Hot Burritos' - Hillman left too. Stints with Stephen Stills's band Manassas and the Souther-Hilllman-Furay Band led to two solo albums under the name Hillman - 'Slippin' Away' (1976) and 'Clear Sailin' (1977).
After a tour in Britain, he played on two albums with Mcguinn and Clark and in the early 1980s he released two highly regarded bluegrass albums with Herb Pedersen from The Dillards and in 1985 they formed the Desert Rose Band with an eponymous debut album in '87. They released several albums over the next seven years and had several top ten hits on Billboard's Hot County Songs Chart. After the band broke up in '94, Hillman went on to perform and record with many collaborators. His songs have been recorded by a great many artists including Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, The Oak Ridge Boys, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Patti Smith and Dwight Yoakum.
His 2017 album, 'Bidin' My Time', produced by Tom Petty with Herb Pedersen as executive producer, covers folk, rock and bluegrass in the country rock mix that he pioneered in the 1960s.
