Voices: Tim O'Brien

Tim O'Brien's latest recording, called Chameleon, came out of a decision to take a break from the way he'd been handling his career in recent years. Not that he stopped performing, or producing, or working on other people's projects. He decided, though, to focus for a while on staying close home and letting some time and space build into his life, and seeing what music and what choices came out of that.

"Back in January of 2006, I said to myself, I've got to do something different than flying every which way all year," O'Brien said. In the months after he started thinking about that, he won his first Grammy, for the 2005 release Fiddler's Green, and was also given the nod for male vocalist and song of the year from the International Bluegrass Music Association. O'Brien was delighted at the recognition, but rather than taking the more expected path of booking more tour dates and going back in the studio quickly to build on the recognition, he took it as reassurance that his plans to step back a bit and recharge were right on track.

He did play some live dates, produced a tribute to Blind Alfred Reed for the West Virginia Hall of Fame, sat in a bit on long time friend Kathy Mattea's current project, an album called Coal, and spent time in Scotland working on a new edition of Transatlantic Sessions with artists including Jerry Douglas and Eddi Reader. Most of the time, though, he wrote new songs, and occasionally dusted off old ones which hadn't yet made it to an album.

Late last summer, he was ready to record. He enlisted producer engineer Gary Pacsoza, who has worked with Alison Krauss, The Greencards, and Kelly Willis among others. They didn't bring any other musicians. O'Brien often performs solo, switching from guitar to fiddle to mandolin to bouzouki, but this would be the first time he'd record that way. "Every time a recording comes around, I think about doing a solo record," O'Brien says," but when I get to the time where I really have to decide, I juggle a bunch of concepts around, and when one falls into place the others just fall away, and doing it solo always wound up falling away.  On several records, like Fiddler's Green, I've done a solo track or two, but this time I thought, it's just time to do it all on one record."

That's one of the notable things about Chameleon: you really get to hear O'Brien play, and to hear how well he marries lyric to music. The sixteen tracks range in style and subject over the map of Americana, from folk to bluegrass to country to blues. "There are some silly songs, some political songs, songs about trying to figure out your spiritual path, your destiny as a 53 year old folk singer, bluegrass, Americana, whatever I am," he says.

O'Brien began that career in West Virginia, where his home built crystal radio pulled in sounds from the Beatles to the Grand Ole Opry to the folk revival. He moved west, founding the newgrass group Hot Rize and their funny western swing alter ego, Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers. "I've always been a maverick, I guess. About ten years into Hot Rize, I started looking at it and saying well, it's time to start thinking about something else," he said. Mainstream country deals didn't work out, but song writing did. Kathy Mattea had a hit with Walk the Way the Wind Blows, and chose his Untold Stories as an album title cut. Moving to Nashville, O'Brien branched out on other projects himself, including a band called the O'Boys, an album of Bob Dylan songs, an album recorded with top songwriter Darrell Scott, and a collaboration with ground breaking acoustic artists including Alison Brown and Phil Aaberg called NewGrange. Interest in family history led to two albums with songs based in Irish and American experience, and two albums extending the immigrant experience to, as O'Brien explains, "what happened after everybody got here and started to meet up," Cornbread Nation and Fiddler's Green.

The songs on Chameleon are woven of all these threads, and take the next step. "At 53, different things become more important, and other things fall away," he says. Ideas which run through this collection include a deep grounding in folk music and a willingness to comment on both topical and lasting aspects of how we live today. Cell phones come in for comment, as do Iraq, trucks, Jesus, Judas, and vegetables. There's a bit of autobiography along with philosophy on Where Does Love Come From, and intertwining stories of love and understanding and sacrifice in Father Forgive Me, an in the moment celebration driving in a bluegrass direction in Hoss Race. The vegetables may just provide the most memorable frame for a song, though, showing O'Brien at his indirect and direct best at evoking memory, place, time and connection through recalling the words of a neighborhood produce seller from his childhood, in a song named after that man, Menga's.

You'll find music content from many genres and plenty of other music fans at Gather Essentials: Music. For more of Kerry Dexter's Voices columns, look here. It's published on Thursdays.

Kerry Dexter, Music Correspondent Kerry's credits include VH1, CMT, the folk music magazine Dirty Linen, Strings, The Encyclopedia of Ireland and the Americas, and The MusicHound Guides. She also writes about the arts and creative practice at Music Road and contributes to Fred Bals' Series of Tubes.