Biography

Journeyman musician Tim Hensley has served extended stints with RickySkaggs, Patty Loveless and Kenny Chesney – soaking up each individual artist’s essence on his way to making LONG MONDAY, a debut album that merges vintage bluegrass with classic American songwriters and acoustic songs of life. With guest appearances from Vince Gill, Sonya Isaacs and Loveless and songs from John Prine, Rodney Crowell, Carl Jackson and Larry Cordle, John Scott Sherrill, Tim Stafford and Ronnie Bowman, and Hensley himself, this is a first record that sums up a lifetime of living inside the music. Since learning to sing in a Pentecostal family, then becoming part of the Altar Way Singers, the Cincinnati-born and raised tenor harmony singer has slowly moved through a odyssey of bluegrass, country covers, Skaggs’ bluegrass/country hybrid and Loveless’ Appalachian soul. His stint at the auxiliary acoustic/electric rhythm guitarist and tenor singer with Kenny Chesney has put him in front of over a million people every year for the last six summers – and it’s Tim’s love of bluegrass that inspired the multiple CMA and ACM Entertainer of the Year to co-produce Hensley’s record with creative cohort and ACM Song of the Year writer Buddy Cannon.

“Tim gets up there every night and rocks with us,” Chesney says, “but its after the shows, walking back to the bus that you can hear his voice in the halls, singing what he truly loves. You hear enough of someone singing something that really matters to them, well, you wanna help them realize their music, too. That’s how it felt with Tim and the bluegrass stuff… It was letting the world get to hear something we’ve been lucky enough to get to hear almost every night for the last five or six years.”

With an aggressive media campaign being lined up, a spring tour with Chesney and endorsements from some of the brightest names in Americana, bluegrass and country, Tim Hensley’s debut is one of the most anticipated around the tastemaker rooms and in the know music lovers’ collections in a long time. It is Hensley’s willingness to be who he is, to not follow trends but to work from the heart that drove LONG MONDAY – and it is that which the fans of the artists’ he’s played with have always gravitated towards. Blending the various genres he has passed through – Southern gospel, bluegrass, singer / songwriter, mountain soul and straight-up the middle country, LONG MONDAY is a survey course in much of what’s great about organic American music. A lot of heart, hope, harmony and playing from a man who’s given his music to so many and is now finally getting to sing his own songs.

Rural Rhythm Records