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

A feature and comments from Tim about the 40th Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

The Beatles and the Folk Revival both had my attention in the early mid '60's and my friends were playing Sears catalogue guitars, and I learned a lick or two before getting my own little red Stella acoustic for $30. That was when I was 12, so around 1966, I was going through my new songbooks – Joan Baez, the Beatles, and one of the songs of another prominent voice: Roger Miller. I heard some Flatt and Scruggs on TV and then by ‘68 I’d gotten a glimpse and a simultaneous earful of this guy Doc Watson.

His sound and his brilliance were intoxicating. With my new musical direction, Doc soon replaced baseball star Roberto Clemente as my hero. I sought him out at the local department store record section, and found the Strictly Instrumental LP with Flatt and Scruggs, and learned a little of John Hardy and Spanish Two Step. My parents knew of my obsession and woke me early one morning because he was about to appear on network TV’s Today show. A year or so later I got to see him live at the Ohio University Folk Festival in Athens Ohio. I remember the night well. My friend Pete Bachman and I were so excited. We were at the very back of the sports arena where he was playing, and we waited through a rock band called McKendree Spring. They had an electric violin player, and that was cool, but we were waiting for the real thing. When Doc finally started we were too excited to stay in our seats and we made out way down closer to the stage. It was Doc and his son Merle and they were still not using guitar pickups and it sounded so right and we just ate it up.

I guess the think with Doc was he grabbed you first with that guitar playing. It was obvious to me that this was the way to play the thing. I was too naïve to realize how hard it would be, impossible now that I think about it, to do it like Doc, to sound that way. So you’re under that spell, and if you’re like me, you’re into all kinds of music and especially hot guitar stuff, and here he is just nailing it. It’s bluegrass based, but then he also does the fingerpicking thing, teaching folks like me about Merle Travis’ music. And he sings the folky hits like Tom Paxton’s “Last Thing On My Mind”, but also sneaks in old ballads like “Little Sadie” and “Omie Wise.” He gives you clues in his MC work so you remember names like Travis and Gid Tanner and Mississippi John Hurt. So under Doc’s shining aura you get this overview of the greater American music repertoire and beyond a bit. Celtic music, for instance, is right behind his bluegrass renditions of fiddle tunes. So back then in 1966 Doc set me up to go on this musical feeding frenzy and growth spurt. Other stuff came to my attention and I’d focus on that – Bob Wills and Django for instance – but I kept going back to Doc and his music.

That has never changed. I’m still going back to Doc and a select few others who have been my musical tour guides.

In 1974 I went out on my own as a musician after trying college for a year. I went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and got a gig in a pizza joint accommodations in a back room as a perk. I played Doc Watson and Norman Blake and Hank Williams and Bob Wills. When people found out I was from West Virginia, they said, oh yeah, you know about country and bluegrass music and they took me more seriously. I just played it because I liked it along with everything else, but it became a calling card – being from West Virginia and playing country stuff. From Wyoming I hitched to California, arriving in Berkeley the day Patty Hearst was kidnapped. Scuffling around Berkeley, I found a used Doc Watson Family LP for sale and bought it, amazed that you could buy a Doc record used. From there I hitched to Boulder Colorado and made a visit to the Denver Folklore Center. They had all the Doc recordings for sale there, and I thought, “Berkeley is cool, but Colorado is cooler.” I ended up moving to Boulder that fall, and the Folklore Center was the place where people met and formed up into musical units. Hot Rize played gigs together before we had a name, as we all worked there in one way or another, teaching lessons, selling or repairing guitars. I just saw a poster from our very first formal concert, February 4th, 1978. It was Doc Watson at Colorado Women’s College. At the bottom of the poster is copy that reeds “and introducing Hot Rize.”

Over the years, I’d hunt for old songs as well as write some new ones. When I thought I’d found a good old folk song that nobody else was doing, I’d learn it and maybe sing it on stage and even record it, after which I’d find out that both Doc Watson and Jerry Garcia had already done so.

Doc welcomed me at Merlefest each year, and one year I asked him to sit in on my set. I was selfish and had the rest of the band sit out, and we played two guitars and I tried unsuccessfully to be Merle for a few minutes. He even sat in with Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers once, wearing sunglasses and cutting up like I never seen him do.

Last February, I was near his home doing a concert, and got the nerve to call him. After some confusion about who I was and all, I was invited to his home. An hour later, as I arrived in a snow storm and turned the car off, I could hear his guitar and voice. The song was “While Roving On A Winter’s Night.” I looked through the door and saw him sitting there with his wife’s small bodied Gallagher guitar. It was flawless and beautiful and I waited until he finished to knock on the door.

Doc’s gone now and it’s a sad thing, but he’s inside so many of us and his influence is so great that he’s not very far away. We’re lucky for that. Thanks Doc.

Last night:

I get back from the grocery store, feed the cats, and put the perishables away, and take the first sip of a beer. I heat a frying pan and take a burger I’d thawed the day before from the fridge and put salt and pepper on both sides.

The phone rings and it’s my friend Ferg, who might call at any time of day just to say hi, or at other times, to suggest an outing. The later is the case.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting ready to fry a burger. You?”

“Do you want to go to U2?”

“What?”

“Me and Matt Sweeney and Cowboy and Cousin Bob are going to U2. Do you want to come?”

“Yeah.”

“Meet us at PM by 6.”

“Cool. Tell you what, order me a burger. I’ll be right over.”

“They’ll have food backstage.”

“OK, scratch that. I’ll be there in 20 minutes.”

I love this town. You never know what kind of random possibility will present itself. I had no idea the biggest four-piece rock band in the world was in town. But hand it to Ferg to come up with five backstage passes to their sold out show at Vanderbilt Stadium.

You have to know the characters in this little drama. Ferg is Dave Ferguson, a Nashville recording engineer, whose big client in recent years was the team of Rick Ruben and Johnny Cash. He’s a partner with John Prine in the Butcher Shoppe studio. Ferg learned how to push buttons and turn knobs from Cowboy Jack Clement, a veritable recording legend. Jack just turned 80 and is in the process of yet another transformation. At Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios in February of 1957, Jack was the guy that pushed the red button to capture Jerry Lee Lewis’s seminal “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin On”, unleashing a rock and roll monster and cementing a friendship with “the Killer” that lasts to this day. Jack wrote songs, performed, and produced recordings for Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Charley Pride, John Hartford, and many more. He’s made and lost several fortunes, built three recording studios, and generally had his finger on the pulse of Nashville’s music scene since the mid 1960’s. His latest facility, Cowboy Arms and Recording Spa, on Belmont Boulevard near Woodmont, caught fire just seven days ago. The floor to the attic studio crashed into the ground floor, and a piece of iron is all that’s left of his Steinway grand piano. He was able to save his guitars, and the firemen thankfully covered a shelf stacked with hard drives with plastic, so hopefully his precious recordings have survived. It’s a tragedy, but Jack had good insurance and he plans to rebuild.

Ferg and Cowboy worked with Bono, Edge and company on “Rattle and Hum” at Sun Studios in 1987. Ferg released an email into U2’s organization last week after the fire, and sure enough he got a call yesterday, show day, and perhaps coincidently, his 49th birthday.

The rest of the cast for last night’s salvo includes Matt Sweeny, guitarist of choice for Rick Ruben’s productions. That’s him all over Adele’s smash release “21.” Yesterday also happened to be Matt’s 42nd birthday. He and Ferg are currently working with a Swedish pop singer named Anna Ternheim. I recorded some fiddle for them a month ago. The remaining character is Jack’s second cousin Bob, custom furniture builder and part time musician.

I meet Ferg and Matt at a bar on Belmont called PM, and then we drive to a hotel on West End where Jack’s staying. From there Cousin Bob drives the party to the show in Cowboy’s Cadillac. Crowds swarm as we near the stadium; we get stopped where a street is closed off. Bob pulls into PF Chang’s valet parking stop, hovering there a few minutes while Ferg and Matt go on foot to find out where to get the passes. As is often the case at large events, ATT networks are jammed, so without cell phone communications, it’s a miracle we are able to intuitively park close to the stadium, and then independently find Ferg and Matt just outside one of the stadium entrances. The whole time, Jack’s asking, “When does the show start?” and “Why are we going so early?” But he’s a youthful 80 years old, and well up to the walk around the stadium, into the gate, over the bleachers and through crowds to the backstage, and someplace called “the round room” where we’ll supposedly meet with the fellas in the band. Ferg’s charging ahead, but Jack keeps running into fans, and stops to talk. I stay in between Ferg and the lagging Jack and Bob, and we inch worm along. After a couple spirals around the outside, the circles tighten and we’re now walking hallways underneath the stadium, eventually entering a room with about 300 hangers on holding either Kirkland water bottles or Budweiser longnecks. Matt gets waylaid at this time and ends up at catering, but we settle for some crackers and nuts in the round room. After 20 minutes a nice blonde U2 operative in painted on pants greets us, and informs us that in another 20 minutes she’ll take us back to meet the guys. Jack finds a chair and watches the folks mill around. Next we’re escorted to yet another curtained enclosure, where we wait yet another 20 minutes eat more nuts, drink more water. Dierks Bentley and his lovely wife join us for a few minutes, then leave. Then all of a sudden here comes Bono and the Edge, dressed and ready for the stage. They’re both effusive and friendly and surprisingly calm given that they’re going to play for 50,000 people in a few minutes. They express their sympathy for Jack’s loss. When introduced to me and Sweeny, Bono says, “Oh, you’re Italian” which is the exactly the same thing Charley Pride said to me when Ferg introduced me to him a year or so ago. Soon the front half of U2 exits and we continue on the spiral path, along with Bill and Karyn Frist and others to platform A, just in front of the mixing console.

Waves spontaneously generate in the thousands around and above us, and the excitement is tangible. A drum tech steps on stage and the crowd goes wild. Then the band appears on the wrap around video screen above the stage, as they too spiral towards their performance. They take the stage and start to rockin, thank you very much. It’s loud and amazingly full for a four piece, and of course we know they travel with 100 semi trucks full of gear, so it should sound good. After four songs, Cowboy’s had enough. U2’s amazing, but it’s time to go, and we walk quickly to the corner where Bob picks us up in Cowboy’s Sedan de Ville.

After dropping Jack as his hotel, Cousin Bob heads back to the concert, and Ferg, Matt, and I drive to Broadway Brew house for a drink. But Sweeney forgot his ID, so we’re turned away. We try Madison House, a fancy speakeasy place on Division I’ve heard about, but after waiting 15 minutes to get in, we give up and go our separate ways. It’s not quite 10pm, and Ferg’s gotta get his house ready for a birthday pickin party tomorrow, and also has to pick up Anna at the airport in the morning. He drops me at PM, as my car’s parked near there. I sit at the bar with some of the staff there, order food, watch baseball highlights, and relate what just happened.

Just another Saturday night in Nashville, my hometown.