When Mollie met Rich, it was way beyond girl meets boy. Call it a convergence of two musical minds and hearts.

“I remember seeing him first at a party at (guitarist) Mary Flower’s house on Labor Day 1980. "He impressed me with his guitar chops at the jam session,” Mollie said.

“We finally talked on April Fool's Day, 1981, at the Denver Folklore Center,” said Rich. Mollie thought to herself that day "I think I could marry that guy." Music was the common language and it wasn’t very long before they wed, and would raise two daughters and launch two careers.

If you could flip through Kodachromes and Polaroids of the duo’s childhood experiences, you’d see many of the same images pop up.

Growing up in Wheeling, West Virginia, and attending Catholic schools, Mollie and her four siblings were immersed in music of all sorts. They attended performances by the Wheeling Symphony, Count Basie, Dave Brubeck and Ray Charles. When the Beatles played Pittsburgh in 1964, Mrs. O’Brien put the two youngest kids, Mollie and Tim, in the car and drove them all the way to the concert in Pittsburgh — on a school night.

All the while, Mollie was fine-tuning her remarkable instrument, her voice. She'd sing along with the performers on the Lawrence Welk show that a favorite baby sitter loved to watch and at age 11 learned to play — and sing — “Anchors Aweigh,” a tribute to one of her older brothers, then a Naval Academy midshipman.

In high school, Mollie took her first step into the public eye with her brother Tim. “We’d go and sing Peter, Paul and Mary songs at church and in coffeehouses,” she said. She listened intently to singers from Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt to Dinah Washington and Frank Sinatra.

Like many theater majors, she dreamed of Broadway. After her sophomore year of college, she settled in the Big Apple for four years of learning, but landed few auditions and gigs. Colorado beckoned where Tim was already making his mark playing swing jazz andbluegrass.

Meanwhile, Rich was coming of age in Philadelphia, his mother a pianist and his father an accomplished classical choral singer. There was always music in the house. “The first record I remember hearing was Green Grow the Lilacs,” Rich said.

A pivotal moment changed his life at the age of 12. “I saw all three early Beatles appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show on our black and white TV. That was it for me,” Rich said.

“I got a cheap plastic guitar for Christmas that year and started learning songs by Peter, Paul and Mary. I made my first capo out of a pencil and some rubber bands.” At 14, he got more serious and bought a real Martin guitar.

While his parents wouldn’t let him go to the famed Philadelphia Folk Festival because “it might be like those rock festivals,” he did slip into clubs to see then young-and-relatively unknown James Taylor and Emmylou Harris and acoustic guitar deity Doc Watson.

He went West first to major in performing arts at the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico, and returned for good in 1975 to play music in Denver. His musical heroes include Randy Newman “He taught me how simple arranging can make music so much better” and folk guitarists Dave Van Ronk and Chris Smither.

After getting married, Mollie and Rich played together – he was bassist in her R&B outfit, The Late Show. When the girls were born, Rich decided to stay home with the 9 to 5 job and to focus less on music for awhile.

“I will be forever grateful that he was willing to do that,” Mollie said. She started performing again in a duo with brother Tim that took off in 1986 and resulted in three albums of finely crafted Americana music, Take Me Back, Remember Me, and Away Out on the Mountain — all on Sugar Hill.

On her solo CDs — Every Night in the Week and I Never Move Too Soon (on Resounding Records) and Tell It True, Big Red Sun, and Things I Gave Away (on Sugar Hill) — she moves without hesitation from style to style, dipping into the songs of Lennon and McCartney, Percy Mayfield, Memphis Minnie, Chuck Berry, and the Subdudes.

Mollie shared a Grammy with a stellar bunch of bluegrass collaborators on True Life Blues: The Songs of Bill Monroe (Sugar Hill). She has sung numerous times on A Prairie Home Companion, especially with host Garrison Keillor and Robin and Linda Williams as the Hopeful Gospel Quartet. She has earned rave notices for powerhouse performances at major festivals and venues throughout the U.S. and in the United Kingdom, Europe, and South America.

“I’m fortunate that there has always been music in my life.” Rich said. Along the way he played in songwriter Celeste Krenz’s band with members of the on hiatus Subdudes, as well as Judy Roderick, and with Pete Wernick’s Live Five. Known primarily as a rock-steady bassist, Rich showcased his formidable guitar chops and gift for writing instrumental hooks on his solo recording Steady State in 2000. He also began backing folk legend Tom Paxton in concert whenever he played in Colorado.

Several years ago the O’Brien-Moore nest officially emptied as youngest daughter Lucy went off to college. “We decided to finally do some shows together,” said Mollie. “Almost every song I had was perfectly suited to just voice and guitar,” a sound captured on their debut live duo album 900 Baseline (Remington Road Records).

After 30 years of music-making, mostly apart, Mollie O’Brien and Rich Moore are enjoying a fresh harmonic convergence onstage. Mollie pulls the audience in with that come-on-in voice that ranges between a call-down-thunder testifying wail to an intimate bluesy whisper, to sweet jazzy trumpet-miming scat that would do Louis Armstrong proud.

The normally mild-mannered Rich channels his inner emcee and emerges onstage telling tales and making quips. As a guitarist, he’s not in it for the notes. He’ll deliver a gourmet guitar solo – full and intense, but his musical grace lies in the delicate dance between singer and accompanist.

“When we’re onstage there’s definitely a conversation that goes on between him and me,” said Mollie. “He really listens to what I’m doing.”

And the same thing goes for Rich. “Look, she can still bring tears to my eyes when she sings. I’ll just get blown away by what she’s doing. I don’t think I’m being partial,” he said.

“But I’m not just going to strum while Mollie sings. It’s not an ego thing. It’s about making better music. I support her and she supports me musically. It’s a partnership.”

The collaborative energy extended to the studio this year where Mollie and Rich recorded Saints & Sinners (Remington Road Records), a collection of gems from some of the most gifted (not to mention, eclectic) songwriters of our time including Tom Waits, Jesse Winchester, Harry Nilsson, Richard Thompson and George Harrison. The roster is filled with classic American blues, gospel, folk and show tunes crowned with Rich’s lilting instrumental, “Cuba" and the rare Mollie-penned songs, “New Shoes" and “Mighty CloseTo Heaven".
It was hearing their daughters sing on that last song that both Mollie and Rich say was the highlight in the studio. "They are both wonderful singers, were very excited to do it, but also were very nervous. Lucy’d had some experience performing but Brigid had never sung on a mike before. They nailed it and hearing their wonderful sibling harmonies was very emotional,” mom Mollie said.

For dad Rich, “It was thrilling. I thought – we did it. We’re all playing music together.They did a great job.”

Saints & Sinners is both the exceptional, hymn-like tune written by David Francey and a spot-on description of the cast of characters Mollie and Rich inhabit on this singular recording.

They told producers Ben Winship and Eric Thorin what NOT to do. “Musically, what we were trying to do was to avoid sounding like anything we'd recorded before,” Rich said.The producers took that directive to heart in creating a richly textured setting for Mollie’svoice and Rich’s guitar woven with the sounds of tuba, bouzouki, accordion, fiddle, trumpet, trombone and glockenspiel. They also had the vision to record oboes along side steel guitar on one track, the courage to keep a funky piano note in a John Magnie piano solo that had the entire studio in stitches, and the harmonic chops that made for a great version of a 1940s Rodgers and Hart song that in today's world might be considered a bit politically incorrect.

To pull it off they enlisted an all-star cast including The Subdudes’ John Magnie, Tim O'Brien, Eric Moon, Brad Goode, Nelson Hinds, Max Soto, Glenn Taylor and E-Tones drummer Christian Teele. With its hints of ragtime, jazzy blues, Dixieland, tango and saloon cabaret, it reinvents and expands the definition of Americana music.
“It’s really nice that we’re able to do this later in our marriage and careers. It works out better,” Rich said with a sly smile. “We have a new five second rule. When one of us has an idea about a song, the other has to wait at least five seconds before mouthing off about it. We know each other and after 27 years we have this duo thing down. We use all of that in our music.”