Years before Radiohead put Sigur Rós on the map, Ric (pronounced "Rich") Hordinski was painting soundscapes on Over the Rhine records. His instrumental interludes and echo-laden guitar gave the band a rich, layered sound, and may have kept the band from falling headlong into the mid-tempo singer-songwriter abyss.

Ric Hordinski was born and raised on a river that ran to the great lakes. “I think I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to see where that river winds up; growing up watching all of that water moving by me while I sat very still fed a longing in me to see as much of the world as I could.”

In his teens, Ric started experimenting with guitars. “I had this little garage sale guitar with one or two strings on it, and I dismantled a telephone receiver and made a pickup out of it so that I could have an ‘electric’ guitar. It actually worked, but sounded predictably horrible . . .”

As a guitar performance major in college, Ric studied both classical and jazz. His teacher, Michael Vahila, instilled in him a love for the nylon string guitar, a taste for eastern music, and a strong technical and theoretical foundation.

In 1988 Ric moved to Cincinnati and joined a touring outfit which promptly sprited him away to Australia and New Zealand. Upon his return, he married his college sweetheart and co-founded Over the Rhine with Linford Detweiler, Brian Kelley, and Karin Bergquist. While with that group, he toured with Bob Dylan, Squeeze, Adrian Belew, and many others. Ric recalls these years with great fondness. “A day never passes when I don’t miss playing in that band. There was a special magic at times with that ensemble that was really something. People who caught that band on tour in the early 1990’s saw something pretty special.” After six records, in 1996, Ric left to spend more time with his own music and to pursue his producing career, both of which have been a tremendous success. Since leaving OTR, Ric has appeared on records with David Wilcox, Tony Levin, Bill Kreutzmann, Victor Wooten, Victoria Williams and Robbie Fulks. He's produced award-winning records for a host of folks including Wilcox and Phil Keaggy. In 1998, he produced David Wilcox’s “Turning Point” record and soon thereafter began his solo career with his “Monk” ensemble.

On his own, hiding behind the Monk moniker, he released five independent records that featured alternately the songwriting craft he honed during his eight years in OTR, the ambient guitar that garnered demand as a studio musician and the ear for songcraft that makes him an excellent producer. Ric recieved a grammy nomination in 2003, two cammy awards and a dove award in 2002. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.