Biography

(Video below) No less a guitar god than Eric Clapton once offered about music that “you can reduce it down to one note, if that one note is played with the right kind of sincerity.”
That artfully economical approach is shared by Orlando musician Tim Kelliher, a singer, guitarist, songwriter, bandleader, record producer and studio engineer with decades of experience in Central Florida and beyond.
A Clapton disciple, Kelliher is known for an essential, defining skill as a lead guitarist: the innate knack for restraint in service of a song. Although equipped with technical prowess, he would rather meld solos into what works – not what “wows.”
That has been enough to put him on bandstands with some of the biggest names in music, from Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Bo Diddley to road-tested rockabilly king Commander Cody.
In the early 1990s, Kelliher was the backbone of a formidable house band at The Junk Yard, a much beloved Central Florida blues club that booked such renowned stars as harmonica man Carey Bell, Nappy Brown (“Night Time Is the Right Time”), Lester Chambers and a guitar prodigy named Derek Trucks.
“Tim Kelliher is, by far, one of the most unsung blues guitar heroes in Florida,” says promoter Adam Shipley, president of New Orleans-based Hep Cat Entertainment, who booked many of those Junk Yard shows. “He delivered every time and is always a true professional who can – and does -- ‘rip it’ whenever he plays.”
Along the way, Kelliher has written, recorded and performed his own songs in bands that include the Snooks, one of Orlando’s most highly regarded acts of the 1970s, Skin N Bone, the Galloway-Kelliher blues band and the Buster Cousins Band. The latter is Kelliher’s collaboration with his guitar-slinging cousin Mark Emerick, of the Commander Cody band.
Kelliher’s work also has earned high praise from Jim Abbott, music critic at the Orlando Sentinel, who ranked him in 2008 as “one of the Top 5 guitarists I've ever heard. No bull.”
Musically, the material ranges from the swaggering Southern rock of “Outlaws and Renegades” to the wistful lyricism of the country flavored “Bayou Lacombe.” In addition to guitar, Kelliher’s songs often feature splashes of ukulele, an instrument he embraces in the spirit of another hero, George Harrison.
When he’s not working on his own albums, Kelliher also produces projects by a growing list of acts at his Hippie House recording studio in Orlando. At a recording console or on a stage, it’s all about that eternal search for one note that says it all.