Anders Osborne was born in 1966 in Uddevalla, Sweden and at a young age knew that he spoke the language of music and poetry well. He fell in love with everything from Vivaldi, Chopin and Black Sabbath to Robert Johnson, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and Cat Steven’s to John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan and Bob Marley. “Blues connected everything together for me,” Osborne recalls. “The early rock, the R&B, the jazz, the singer-songwriters. Blues was like a thread running through everything.” He began playing in open D tuning which gives his fretwork a signature sound and feel. “I first heard Open D on Joni Mitchell’s Blue, and my fingers just fit the tuning.” Osborne travelled around Europe in his late teens and in 1986, when he was nineteen years old, he visited New Orleans. He fell in love with the city, and never left.
Osborne released his first album Doin’ Fine in 1989 and as would be the case on is future releases, he wrote virtually all of the material. His songs have also appeared on recordings of other artists including two he co-wrote with Keb Mo for the latter’s Grammy winning Slow Down, and Tim McGraw’s number one Country hit Watch The Wind Blow By. Others who have recorded Osborne’s songs include Brad Paisley, Aaron Neville, and Trombone Shorty.
