04/08/2020 Spring without John Prine

We had gigs cancel in March and April and thought maybe May would still work out. Jan and I came home early from a run in the Northeast and dug ourselves in. It was too early to think about the summer. Jan’s brother in law Wayne Avery,a fine musician, died after a long illness. We were sad that we couldn’t be with his family now, but glad that we’d had a visit on his 70th birthday in December. Still, with food in the pantry and a some savings stashed away, I figured we’d be ok. John Prine got the Covid bug and went on a ventilator, but we didn’t want to look at that too closely or think too hard about it. Word came down that our friend Andy Statman and his wife had survived it. We planted a garden, and some sprouts came up early this week. We listened to a lot of Bill Withers and John Prine. It might all work out.

OK, so on Tuesday June bookings fell through. Until then, there was some chance, some small possibility; some hope against the prevailing trend that things might kind of flip back into place. And then yesterday John Prine died.

I had John’s first record in my freshman in college dorm room. A year later I started trying to make my living as a singer, and his songs were on my set list. I talked to him one time at festival backstage about Steve Goodman. Then in the early 90’s, I was visiting Nashville and was staying with a friend who lived down the street from him. John’s mother’s was living with him then and it was her birthday, so we were invited over for cake and ice cream. After I moved to Nashville, I’d see him at Kroger early in the morning after running my kids to school. I’d see him at places that served country soul food. Above his signature on the wall of the Copper Kettle he wrote, “Meatloaf Tuesday.” I got to record on duets he sang with Mac Wiseman and with Kathy Mattea. He snuck into the back door of the Station Inn one night and sat to the side, said he’d never seen Hot Rize before, but I think he really came to see Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers. John was always the same regular guy who just happened to be a great poet of his time.

Getting to know Bill Withers a little through the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame was a similar thing. Here was a giant of the pop music world, reaching down to shake Little Jimmy Dickens hand. He kept coming back to WV after his induction, meeting old and new friends at Hall of Fame events. . Late one night at a reception following an induction ceremony, he was drinking moonshine and resisting his wife’s call for them to leave. Another time, post ceremony, he yelled to Jan and I to ride with him back to the hotel in a limo with him and his wife Marcia. Hillbillies in a stretch limousine.

I like to think John and Bill and Wayne are up in heaven on an orientation tour with Mose Allison as their guide. But as reality stares us in the face, it’s best to sing their words and keep their souls alive here among the living.

I’ve been on the folk and bluegrass trail for 45 years, and the Telluride Bluegrass festival has been, for nearly all those years, something to count on. It’s a yearly high point, a full-on summer launch, the weekend when you’d bring new songs and debut a new concept in your presentation. Everything anticipated and then followed it. In my world, it set the tone for the whole year. But Telluride 2020 has been cancelled and the signal is something to behold. The Father’s Day Bluegrass festival in Grass Valley CA, the same weekend as Telluride Bluegrass, also cancelled officially today. My band and I were going to play both events. I’m just processing this now because finally I have to.

Every weekend through the summer there are such events, and there are whole societies that form at them over the years. People camp in the same spaces and celebrate their own traditions. One guy brings oysters maybe, another has a special cocktail for a certain night. From Camp Run amuck at Telluride in June, to the Out of Control Camp at Winfield in September, the summer held various gatherings of unofficial clans, all now likely to cancel. I mean, when the summer Olympics cancelled, I sorta knew the bigger events on my horizon were going to cancel as well. But I couldn’t really take that completely into my mind. Now it’s so real, and surreal.

We’re really all in the same straights. The world and how it works for modern day humans anyway is on hold, and we’ll try to maintain as long as we can until things change. Things will change and so will we, though we don’t really know how or into what exactly. The one thing we can and should feel is we’re in it together. Let’s all grab that and take this time to study it, reflect on it, and since it’s going to be a while, just be in it. I like what the Queen said in her speech about “quiet, good humored resolve” and “fellow feeling”.

How about making a record during this time off? Well, let’s see if we can keep virus free and let’s wait until we can document if our collaborators are also virus free before we start. So I guess it’s best to hunker down and write some songs. Jan and I plan to sing through the computer on Mother’s Day.

We may get to a point where we wear badges that say we have been tested and I suppose they will say if we’re infected or not. People will figure out how much toilet paper they really need. (My dad, who lived through the 1918 flu, the Great Depression, and WWII, used to talk about a sign he’d see by toilet paper rolls that said, “If three sheets will do, why not two?”) A lot of us will learn new recipes. We’re going to trim away whatever unnecessary expenses we can. Some of us will be afraid of the unknown and of others, and we know that fear can lead to hate and to rash behavior. I sit in a pretty secure place compared to a lot of people. I feel and worry for those who have no savings, who have little or no income. I feel such sadness for those who are sick, and for their families and friends.

Spring is a wonderful trend. On my corner, which happens to be on a known east to west short cut, there’s hardly any traffic anymore. There’s a bunny nest in the mint garden. We’ve been watching the mom come and go since Jan noticed the little baby rabbits, eyes still closed, below a tight cluster of pine mulch and bunny fur. We’re watching the birds from the back porch and getting to know the various male and female couples, and three male cardinals dancing around to impress a female. I don’t know many of the people on my street but I’m starting to recognize more faces and the pets that walk along with them. Lastly, I have to say I’m one of the lucky ones because I have my sweetheart here with me and I know we can help each other through this. See ya sometime soon I hope.

-Tim

As I write this, I’m listening to mixes from a new recording that’s coming out at the end of March. Chris Stapleton is singing harmony notes I didn’t know existed on Billy Edd Wheeler’s High Flying Bird. I look outside and see Great Taylor Bay through the Eucalypts. It’s morning on Bruny Island in Tasmania where Jan I have been the last three nights. Earlier this morning, just before sunup, we saw wallabies feeding on the lawn outside. We arrived in Australia on December 27, and we’ve already played a festival this year. Woodford Folk Festival is a giant spectacle with 200K plus people of every stripe dancing and enjoying the music under a very intense summer sun here down under. This coming weekend we play the Cygnet festival near here and then continue our run with shows in Melbourne, Wollongong, Narooma, and Sydney before getting home on January 20th. We built enough free time into the schedule to visit friends and see the sights long the way. Our three days here have been amazing, eating good food and enjoying the beautiful landscape and wildlife on this most southern state in Australia.

The new record, Where the River Meets the Road, focuses on West Virginia music. Besides High Flying Bird, there are songs by Bill Withers, the Bailes Brothers, the Lilly Brothers, the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, Doc Williams, Hazel Dickens, Edden Hammons, Larry Groce, and John Lilly. I also contributed two originals, both about my own family. After a long year of touring, we got home in late October and I started the process, recorded in November, mixed in December, and now am finishing the liner copy as 2017 begins. I had a blast making the record and tried my best to showcase the wide range of music from my home state. I had good helpers and I’ll leave it at that - you’ll hear more soon!

2016 started with a tour of the UK and Ireland, followed by a tour of the US with Lunasa, then a Midwest run with Old Man Luedecke. I played a very cool concert with Paul Brady in Dublin, on the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising. At the end of April we stopped in Athens Ohio to work on a recording with my old friend and mentor J.D. Hutchison, which came out in October. I played the Telluride Bluegrass festival for the 40th time. There were a few Hot Rize shows in there, including a show at Red Rocks with String Cheese Incident. Soon after a trip to Tønder Fest in Denmark, we played a waterlogged Winfield festival in Kansas. It was good to be back there after many years. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco and Farmers Branch near Dallas rounded out the year of performances.

But that’s just the business side. My son Joel got married in January, and Jan got two new granddaughters in August and September. In between we saw Niagara Falls from a boat, and I cut my head on a rock on a beach in Malibu. Jan and I got to visit Hawaii on the Lunsasa run, and we took an amazing helicopter ride to the glaciers above Atlin, British Columbia in July. We got our families together for an early Thanksgiving in Nashville, which means our new kitchen is now officially broken in. Then we recharged and made another record. I wrote to Senator Bob Corker, and still need to write to Senator Lamar Alexander, and US Congressman Jim Cooper. So it goes. Happy new year everyone.

("Where The River Meets The Road")

"Where the River Meets the Road" is remarkably the sixteenth solo release from GRAMMY award winning artist, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Brien. Each of the 12 tracks on the album is connected to his home state of West Virginia. Two originals, “Guardian Angel” and the title track “Where the River Meets the Road,” tell deeply personal stories of O’Brien’s family - the death of his older sister when he was a toddler, and the tale of his great grandfather moving to his hometown of Wheeling in the 1850s. The remaining ten songs were collected and compiled after more than a decade collaborating with the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. Inducted into the Hall of Fame himself in 2013, his work with the organization helped connect him with the sheer width and breadth of music born of West Virginia’s native sons and daughters.

As a teenager O’Brien began a self-described “walkabout,” because like most West Virginians, he felt he must leave the economically forbidding environment of his homeland. For a while he made his living playing folk gigs in Chicago and across the country, eventually landing in Colorado. There he helped found the seminal, progressive Bluegrass band Hot Rize. Their work through the 80’s and 90’s garnered great critical acclaim and eventually brought him to Nashville. His diverse musical career blossomed with the birth of solo albums, multiple chart-topping songs covered by the likes of Nickel Creek, Dixie Chicks, and Garth Brooks, and collaborations with artists such as Darrell Scott, Steve Earle, Steve Martin, and more recently Jerry Douglas’ the Earls of Leicester.

O’Brien admits that the scope of these successes would not have been possible if he had remained in his home state. This journey to find work and carve his own path not only mirrors the experience of his own great grandfather, but also the West Virginian experience as a whole. Each song, artist, and songwriter referenced on the album tells a version of this journey. Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Bill Withers’ “Grandma’s Hands” is a rare African American nostalgia piece that reminisces about growing up in the coalfields and the importance of his grandmother’s influence. “When the Mist Clears Away” written by Larry Groce, host of West Virginia Public Radio’s iconic, decades-old live show, Mountain Stage, conjures the beauty of the state’s hazy mountains and the undying, hopeful resilience of its pioneering residents. Hit country songwriter Billy Edd Wheeler’s piece “High Flying Bird” - once covered by Jefferson Airplane - describes the mortal grip of the mines and deep roots that prevent the freedom even little birds have, but we do not. As a whole, Where the River Meets the Road simultaneously tells the story of music born of the classic struggle of West Virginia and the story of what brought O’Brien to make this very record.

The pure human relatability of the album is expertly conveyed by its stellar lineup of musicians. Fellow West Virginia Music Hall of Famer, Kathy Mattea sings harmonies on two tracks and country music’s current hero of authenticity and grit, Chris Stapleton, contributes his trademark fiery vocals as well. Never failing to assemble an exceptional backing band, O’Brien calls on friends new and old for musical support, notably Noam Pikelny on banjo, Bryan Sutton on acoustic guitar, Stuart Duncan on fiddle and mandolin, and Chris Scruggs on steel and electric guitar. His sister Mollie O’Brien and his partner Jan Fabricius join on background vocals, adding familial continuity from the stories to the recordings as well. O’Brien himself opted for fiddle, guitar, and bouzouki, forsaking his primary instrument mandolin to take more of a background, foundational role in the instrumentation, allowing the story, songs, and lyrics to shine.

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Tim O’Brien and Jan Fabricius launch Short Order Sessions

Grammy winning Americana artist Tim O’Brien and his partner Jan Fabricius will launch his new download label Short Order Sessions on January 6th 2015. Available on all digital music outlets including iTunes and Amazon, the label’s debut release is Brush My Teeth With Coca-Cola, a humorous look at the Freedom Industries chemical spill one year ago that contaminated the water supply of 300K West Virginia residents.

Proceeds from Brush My Teeth With Coca-Cola will benefit West Virginia environmental organization AWARE. (www.awarewv.org)

Starting in February, Short Order Sessions will release new singles on the first and third Tuesdays of each month (shortordersessions.com). O’Brien is well known to Folk, Bluegrass, and Americana fans for his hybrid of acoustic roots music and original songs. His current release with Hot Rize, When I’m Free is currently climbing the bluegrass charts. Born in Wheeling WV, the current Nashville resident says the initial release is timely.

“Last year’s chemical spill in the Charleston area woke many of us to the fragile nature of the environment. My song is one of many written in the wake of the tragedy. There’s no easy fix, but one year later, it’s more important than ever to remain vigilant and to hold industry accountable. We take tap water for granted, so imagine three hundred thousand people suddenly scrambling for enough water to cook and bathe with, a whole community stressed and afraid. The guy in my song wonders what to do, hoping to catch rain in a bucket. Meanwhile he brushes his teeth with what’s handy.”

O’Brien says he hopes to develop a new record label model with Short Order Sessions. “I’ve seen LPs, then cassettes, now CD’s, come and go. The traditional album set of 10 or more songs is less viable, so is the record store that sells them. Single song releases and downloads have taken over, so Short Order Sessions is my quiet, folky way of staying current. I’m excited to record and release one-off songs with various friends, to keep new ideas flowing. “

Brush My Teeth With Coca-Cola features Kathy Mattea on background vocals. Both West Virginia natives have already made musical stands on coal and the environment, Mattea with her CD “Coal” and O’Brien with last year’s Grammy nominated song “Keep Your Dirty Lights On” in collaboration with Darrell Scott.

Contact: info@timobrien.net
Radio service: Brad Hunt , bhsabres@aol.com