Chris Hillman

Shortly thereafter the band changed its name to The Hillmen; soon Hillman was appearing regularly on television and using a fictitious ID, "Chris Hardin", to allow the underage musician into the country bars where many of his gigs were played. When the Hillmen folded, he briefly joined a spinoff of Randy Sparks' New Christy Minstrels known as the Green Grass Revival.

At this point a frustrated Hillman considered quitting music and enrolling at UCLA when he received an offer from The Hillmen's former manager and producer, Jim Dickson, to join Jim (later Roger) McGuinn, David Crosby, Gene Clark and Michael Clarke in a new band, The Byrds. Hillman was recruited to play bass guitar, although he had never picked up the instrument before. Thanks to his bluegrass background, he quickly developed his own melodic style on the instrument. The Byrds' first single, a jangly cover of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man", was an international hit and marked the birth of folk rock. During the mid-1960s the Byrds ranked as one of the most successful and influential American pop groups; they recorded a string of hits, including "Turn! Turn! Turn! ", "Eight Miles High" and "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star". Read Less

By the early 1980s Hillman had returned to his bluegrass and country roots, recording two acclaimed (mainly acoustic) albums for Sugar Hill Records with singer/guitarist/banjo player Herb Pedersen (a former member of The Dillards). Soon after, Hillman and Pedersen formed the Desert Rose Band; this proved to be Hillman's most commercially-successful post-Byrds project. Their first LP, an eponymously titled 1987 outing, generated two Top Ten country hits in "Love Reunited" (written with Steve Hill), "One Step Forward" and the number-one single "He's Back and I'm Blue." From 1987 until late 1993 the band recorded seven albums and had a string of 16 country-music hits (the majority of which were in the country Top Ten) and a number of Academy of Country Music awards before disbanding in 1994. As Hillman said, "We definitely quit while we were ahead."

Chris Hillman, Herb Pederson, JayDee Maness, John Jorgenson, Bill Bryson, and Steve Duncan performed their first reunion concert on August 27, 2008 at the Belly Up in Solana Beach, CA. Before this date Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen were as a duo joined by John Jorgenson on May 2, 2008 for a small DRB set at the Station Inn in Nashville. This six-man lineup is the best known, and includes all of the original members present on the hit albums from the 1980s. At this show, Hillman said it was the first time they had played together in 19 years. Read Less