[4] In the early 1980s he performed with and produced three albums for folk singer-songwriter, Jim Post and founded the Randy Sabien Jazz Quintet.
His first solo album with the Randy Sabien Jazz Quintet, In a Fog, was released in 1983 on Flying Fish Records, and later re-released on Fiddlehead Music, the label he founded in 1989.
[5] May 1980 marked the first of Sabien's several appearances over the next 25 years on Garrison Keillor's radio series A Prairie Home Companion where he played in the show's The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band.
[6] His concert with the Fiddlehead Band at the Grand Theater in Wausau, Wisconsin was broadcast on Wisconsin Public Television in 2012 as was a thirty-minute background feature, On the Road: Randy Sabien & Mike Dowling with Sabien and Dowling performing "Long Tall Mama" in an "impromptu acoustic jam".
[7] Since the 1980s Sabien has combined performing and composing with conducting workshops for schools, music camps, and youth orchestras.