Hot Rize
Bands / Ensembles
Hot Rize, formed in 1978, is a bluegrass band from Boulder, Colorado. Banjo player Pete Wernick, mandolinist and fiddler Tim O'Brien and guitarist Charles Sawtelle met through the Denver Folklore Center and started the band with guitarist Mike Scap. Scap left within months, and Nick Forster joined on bass marking the known band’s formation on May 1, 1978. The band took its name from "Hot Rize," the leavening ingredient advertised in long time bluegrass sponsor Martha White Flour's jingle. The band also performed mid-set interludes as the comic Western swing alter ego, Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers. Hot Rize won the first IBMA Entertainer of the Year award in 1990, the same year it stopped touring full time. The original band played occasional reunions until Sawtelle died of leukemia in March 1999. The band re-formed in 2002 with guitarist Bryan Sutton. In 2025 Hot Rize became the first Colorado band inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.