Dan Tyminski Describes The Moment When People Discover He’s The Iconic Singing Voice In ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’

Dan Tyminski owes a lot to the success of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and he’ll be the first to admit it.

When people think of the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, there’s no doubt that their mind also goes to the musical stylings of The Soggy Bottom Boys. The song “I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow” was a smash hit for the movie.

Origins of the track go all the way back to 1913 (when Dick Burnett apparently wrote it), but the song was never bigger than when it was included in the film that was based on Homer’s The Odyssey. Country music’s Dan Tyminski sang lead vocals on the song that went on to win a Grammy for Best Country Collaboration.

How did Tyminski get the gig? Well, when they were searching for a voice to come in and sing for George Clooney, Dan was with a band called Union Station, and their manager just so happened to have some connections with the casting director of the film:

“We get the news that their doing this movie and the Coen brothers are there and our manager at the time was also helping cast some people (for the film). So we had someone that could get us in the door, and we just wanted to be involved somehow.”

His band’s manager stopped and asked the casting director for O Brother, Where Art Thou? if they had cast George Clooney’s voice, and suggested that Dan could be a good candidate. Sure enough, that was the only push that the casting director needed to bring in Tyminski for a test run:

“I went in there and gave them a version nothing like what they ended up going with. I did it higher and faster and bluegrass-ier. The only thing I knew… me.”

After feeling as though the audition didn’t go all that well, Dan was surprised to get a call only a couple of hours later informing him that he was chosen. And that opportunity also led to Tyminski to perform and sing the song with George Clooney, who he says could have laid down the track on the movie if he wanted to:

“For the record, I’m so glad we’re on camera because I have heard him say in interviews that he doesn’t sing and can’t sing. He’s F.O.S. man, he can sing. He’s absolutely capable and he could have sang this song. All he had to do was say, ‘Yeah, I want this.’

Because he said, ‘I’ll act, you sing,’ I got to pay off my house and buy new cars and put my kids through college and essentially raise a family on what that song generated. I couldn’t have imagined anything in my lifetime being bigger than that.”

What a whirlwind that must have been.

Tyminski says one of the best benefits of being in the iconic film is the fact that people still come up to him to this day and thank him for helping them get into country and bluegrass music. That, he says, is more valuable than any of the royalties he’s received for lending his voice to O Brother, Where Art Thou? And funny enough, either people recognize him, or they don’t.

In his career in the years after the movie came out, Dan Tyminski says there have been plenty of times where audience members slowly but surely figure out that he’s the voice behind The Soggy Bottom Boys:

“I’m still in that category where people continue to come out to shows and don’t realize, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re the guy… I knew who you were, but I don’t know who you are.'”

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Must be pretty cool to see all of faces in the crowd light up when he breaks into his rendition of ““I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow.”

If you want to check out Dan’s full interview, and hear more about his O Brother, Where Art Thou? experience, you can press play on this episode of the Playback Podcast:

Dan is also the voice behind the iconic Avicii (RIP) song, “Hey Brother”

The post Dan Tyminski Describes The Moment When People Discover He’s The Iconic Singing Voice In ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ first appeared on Whiskey Riff.