Nick Forster
bluegrass · folk
Nick Forster is a Boulder, Colorado musician and broadcaster. Born in Beirut and raised on a family farm in New York, he joined the bluegrass band Hot Rize in April 1978 and has played electric bass and sung harmony with the group for more than forty years, also serving as its onstage emcee alongside Tim O'Brien, Pete Wernick and, since 2002, guitarist Bryan Sutton. Hot Rize received the first Entertainer of the Year award given by the International Bluegrass Music Association in 1990, and the band is equally known for its alter-ego western swing act Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers. Forster conceived eTown in 1990 while touring Eastern Europe, drawing on his experience of programs such as A Prairie Home Companion, the Grand Ole Opry and the WWVA Jamboree and on the idea that music could gather a mixed audience around a serious conversation. He and his wife Helen Forster produced the first eTown broadcast on Earth Day 1991, and NPR picked the show up within months. Now a nonprofit radio broadcast, podcast and multimedia company, eTown pairs live musical performances with social and environmental discussion before a studio audience; its long-running eChievement Award segment profiled people doing humanitarian and environmental work for close to three decades, and guests have included Jimmy Carter, Jane Goodall and Joan Baez. Forster has been the program's principal host, researcher, interviewer and scriptwriter. The show is recorded at eTown Hall, a converted church in downtown Boulder that houses offices, a performance room, a recording studio and a community space and was built out with heavy environmental retrofits including solar power. He also performs a portable solo version of the format billed as Almost eTown, and in February 2019 he launched Hippy Bluegrass Church, a recurring Sunday morning non-denominational sing-along at eTown Hall.