Paper Flowers / release date June 6, 2025. You can get the digital version for streaming or download at https://howdyskies.lnk.to/paperflowers

“I’m mighty excited for Tim O’Brien’s beautiful, introspective new record “Paper Flowers”. Along with partner Jan Fabricius, Tim weaves an even more heartfelt song cycle than usual, full of soulful balladry and thoughtful notions of love, loss, and learning. Run out, get you a copy, and crank up one of the prettiest sounding new records to come out of Nashville this year. “ - Ketch Secor / Old Crow

Tim O’Brien might operate a bit under music business radar, but he’s been an essential part of the fabric of the folk, bluegrass, Americana, and songwriter scenes for the past fifty years. Since his emergence as singer, instrumentalist, and songwriter with the iconic 1980’s bluegrass group Hot Rize, the West Virginia native has continued down a diverse and constantly evolving musical pathway. In the process he’s written songs for people like Garth Brooks and the Dixie Chicks, released rootsy classics like “Red on Blonde” and “The Crossing”, and earned a few Grammy awards. For the past ten years, O’Brien has performed primarily with his wife Jan Fabricius, and their new release “Paper Flowers” is tangible proof of that deep collaboration. As O’Brien explains, their partnership started informally. “Jan started adding harmony vocals to shows and recordings soon after we became a couple in 2013. We would play music around the house, and she would learn new songs as I wrote them. Then soon enough we started writing together.” When Cathy Fink and Jon Weisberger approached O’Brien in 2023 to contribute to what became 2024’s “Bluegrass Sings Paxton”, Tim and Jan wrote “You Took Me In” with the man himself. Encouraged by the results, the three scheduled weekly Zoom co-writing sessions and the songs kept coming. “Paper Flowers” includes twelve of those songs as well as three more originals, 2 of which Jan and Tim wrote together and one that Tim wrote. Recorded at Cowboy Arms and the Tractor Shed in Nashville with help from longtime collaborators like bassists Mike Bub and Edgar Meyer, fiddler Shad Cobb, keyboard ace Mike Rojas and drummer Larry Atamanuik, the result is a story-in-song of the couple’s life together.O’Brien says, “We’d been carving out our duet stage identity for years and now we had a bodyof our own songs. It was time to make this record”.

O’Brien and Fabricius met at the Walnut Valley Festival in Kansas in 1993 and began dating in 2011. A cardiac ICU nurse and single mother, Jan grew up singing in her western Kansas home,church and school, playing mandolin and singing informally around festival campfires on weekends. Moving to Nashville in 2013, she took a crash course in the music business as tour manager and bookkeeper for O’Brien.

The mood on “Paper Flowers” ranges from the breezy swing of “Atchison” and “This Gal of Mine”, through the rockabilly of “Blacktop Rag Mop”, to country duets like “Hungry Heart” and “Yellow Hat”. The couple tell their
origin story on the title track and sing in the voice of a pesky varmint on “Lonesome Armadillo”. “Father of the Bride” and “Always the Sunrise” are ready-made wedding anthems, and Jan’s lead vocal recounts an overheard conversation between girlfriends on the rocking “Down to Burn”. Later she tells the true story of a honkytonk pianist’s final days in “I Look Good in Blue”. The duo invites us to a gospel singalong on “Back to Eden”, and Tim relates the fear of falling in love on “Fat Pile of Puppies”. Meyer’s and O’Brien’s bowed strings back the tragic story of a school shooting on “Covenant”. We witness a dawning day in the couple’s life together on O’Brien’s only solo, “Here with Me”, which concludes the set.

O’Brien’s own Howdy Skies Records celebrates 25 years with this release, and the memorable stories and sweet harmony of “Paper Flowers” is an overdue statement from the musical husband and wife team of Tim O’Brien and Jan Fabricius.

Howdy Skies Records
Jan Fabricius - Office and Tour Manager
jan@timobrien.net

“What’s not to like. Mighty Fine pickin’ and singing…Love the songs.” David Ferguson

“If you’re looking for deep, angry songs about the troubled times we live in, ”Paper Flowers” by Tim O’Brien and Jan Fabricius is not for you. But if you would like to be reminded of life’s simple pleasures, the strength to be found in simple love, the realities and absurdities of life down on the ground, let this album come into your life. Tim and Jan have written a fine collection of songs, all served up with instrumental verve and delivered with the seamless blend of their vocals. This music will lift you up and make you want to reaffirm your humanity. That’s what music is for.” Jim Rooney