All of their CDs feature guests, among them Tom Waits, Mike Patton and Willie Nelson, as well as friends like clarinetist Ben Goldberg and harpist Zeena Parkins.
Goldberg has been a frequent guest of Tin Hat Trio and contributed to both Memory Is an Elephant and The Rodeo Eroded.
When founding member Rob Burger (the trio's accordionist and pianist) left the trio in late 2004, Mark Orton and Carla Kihlstedt replaced him with both Goldberg and Parkins, presenting a new, though closely related, ensemble—the Tin Hat Quartet—for two short concert tours in the U.S. in January and April 2005.
While on tour, they invited another musician to come under their hat, San Francisco's Ara Anderson—known as one of Tom Waits' favorite sidemen in recent years.
Like the departed Burger, Anderson plays myriad keyed instruments as well as trumpet and glockenspiel, thus adding new colors and strokes to the already large canvas of Tin Hat's sound.