Tim taught himself to play guitar at a young age (he still doesn’t read music) and his first guitar was a Silvertone his parents bought him after he tried building his own guitar after seeing the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show” when he was 8. He counts the late Chicago singer-songwriter Steve Goodman as one of his biggest early influences. After seeing Goodman perform in Minneapolis in 1975, Tim decided, “That’s what I wanted to do the rest of my life.” From then on, his life was about music.

In pursuit of that dream, he traveled roads that gave him a breadth of experience and would serve him well when he decided to become a full-time troubadour. He bussed tables, worked crab boats out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, fabricated sheet metal, inspected produce for the California Department of Food and Agriculture and worked as a stonemason. Woody Guthrie once advised, “All you can write is what you see,” and Tim let the characters he met and the roads he ambled tell the stories in his songs. “Many of my songs are about life’s experiences because the best songs come from what you know best,” he said. He’s told those stories on three well-received albums — the self-titled Tim Fast in 2003, followed by Starlite Drive-In in 2007 and his latest, Crooked Door, released in 2011.

Tim’s talent has been recognized by his peers. He’s studied with some of the greats of contemporary acoustic music, including David Wilcox, fellow Minnesotan Pat Donahue, Kathy Mattea, Johnsmith and Ellis Paul, to name a few. Cliff Eberhardt was so impressed with Tim that he asked him to tour with him as his opening act. Eberhardt saw what audiences have long seen: that Tim has a dazzling repertoire of original songs that leave people humming and thinking — and ready to join him on his journey to see what’s over the next rise.