Award-winning songwriter, actor and recording artist Tim Grimm will bring his Hoosier Heartland style of music to Seymour with a live show at the Jackson County Visitor Center.
Grimm, a native of Columbus, performed during the first Crossroads Acoustic Fest in Seymour in 2018.
The upcoming show is set for 8 p.m. Jan. 31. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at the visitor center, 100 N. Broadway St., or online at crossroadsacousticfest.com.
Grimm is a bit of a Renaissance man in the performing arts world, blending his love of songwriting, travel and acting (theater, film and television). His songs are full of the rural rumblings that have shaped his life, recognizing the national romance with the idea of the family farm and the vanishing landscape of rural America.
He released the album “Heartland” in 2000 and on the strength of that recording was named 2000’s Best Discovery in Roots/Americana Music by The Chicago Sun-Times. His albums “Coyotes Dream” and “Names” led to him being named 2004 Male Artist of the Year by the Freeform American Roots DJs.
In 2019, Grimm released “Heartland Again,” featuring new arrangements of songs from the original “Heartland” along with two new songs.
In 2016, in collaboration with his wife, Jan, and sons, Connor and Jackson — the Grimm Family Band — he recorded the single “Woody’s Landlord,” which was the No. 1 song on folk radio for the year. Tim’s previous CD, “The Turning Point,” produced the No. 1 single on folk radio in 2014, “King of the Folksingers,” a tribute to Grimm’s friend and musical icon, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.
After college at Earlham, Grimm pursed a master’s degree in theater at the University of Michigan and from there worked in regional theater, settling in Chicago, where he studied briefly at the Old Town School of Folk Music and began writing songs and performing.
During that time, Grimm put together a band and released two CDs, but at that point, he said, "Hollywood called," and he put down his guitar and pen for close to 10 years.
Working in Los Angeles in the 1990s, he co-starred for two seasons in the NBC drama “Reasonable Doubts,” worked on the movie “Clear and Present Danger” with Harrison Ford and appeared in several other film and television projects.
Grimm said his return home to southern Indiana was a conscious choice “to live a life of significance rather than one of ‘success.’” He now lives with his wife on 80 acres close to where he grew up.
His career also has included a number of highly regarded special projects involving both music and theater.
In 2005, Grimm was asked to compose music and act in a production of “The Grapes of Wrath” at Indiana Repertory Theatre and Syracuse Stage in New York. His song from the play “The Peoples Highway” made it onto his next album, “The Back Fields,” which was named Americana Album of the Year by the Just Plain Folks Music Awards, the world’s largest independent music awards.
In 2007, Grimm put together a concept CD with several of the Midwest’s finest songwriters — Krista Detor, Carrie Newcomer, Tom Roznowski and Michael White. The recording “Wilderness Plots” was drawn from the short stories of noted author Scott Russell Sanders and explored the settling of the American wilderness in the Ohio River Valley region between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.
Two PBS programs have explored “Wilderness Plots,” the first a documentary on the story and song and the second a full “Wilderness Plots in Concert.” Produced by WTIU in Bloomington, both productions were nominated for Emmy Awards.
Grimm continued to write songs based on Sanders’ writings and released the album “Wilderness Songs and Badman Ballads” in 2011.
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What: Tim Grimm concert
When: 8 p.m. Jan. 31
Where: Jackson County Visitor Center, 100 N. Broadway St., Seymour
Cost: $15; tickets are available at the visitor center or online at crossroadsacousticfest.com
Information: Shawn Busby at 812-522-2397
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