Published on Jul 28, 2002
Former International Bluegrass Music Association Male Vocalist
of the Year Tim O’Brien has had a long and varied career. A former
member of the great bluegrass group Hot Rize, Tim has recorded solo
since that group’s dissolution in 1990. He is now firmly a member
of the Artists I Can’t Quite Quantify; like John Cowan, Maura
O’Connell, Shawn Mullins, and Dan Fogleberg, he’s now decided he’s
going to record whatever the hell he wants and genre be damned.
(Good for him.)
O’Brien’s latest effort,
Two Journeys, is listed as ‘an ongoing celebration of the
shared heritage between the USA and Ireland’. OK, that makes some
sense. But don’t assume this is the latest Celtic retread, or
Riverdance with banjos. Far from it; O’Brien’s work is
mature, excellent, and shows an intelligent grasp of what exactly
that heritage is.
“Mick Ryan’s Lament”, for example, isn’t about the bar being out
of Guinness — but a tribute and a story about the Irish nationals
who marched with both the Union Army in the American Civil War and
Custer and Sheridan in the military actions against the Native
Americans in the late 1800s. “For The Fallen” is a dirge for all
those who have died in senseless bombings in the twentieth century,
including — but not limited to — the numberless dead in Northern
Ireland. Traditional songs like “Demon Lover” and “What Does The
Deep Sea Say?” share space with “Norwegian Wood”, in honor of the
strong Irish heritage of the Beatles’ home Liverpool. Needless to
say, this is a complex, textured work, not easily assimilated.
But it’s worth it. O’Brien is brilliant, and the musicianship on
this CD is peerless. Production and engineering are without flaw —
fact is, I know sometimes I sound like a damn publicist for Sugar
Hill Records, but I can’t recall ever having heard a bad-sounding
CD from them. O’Brien’s backing band is excellent, and guest
appearances by Karan Casey and Maura O’Connell round out the record
nicely. This is, as close as one can come, flawlessly performed and
recorded. The song choice is idiosyncratic, but it works. (Even the
Cajun tune “Deux Voyages”, included because of the shared Celtic
heritage of the Acadian people, works.)
Two Journeys is a journey worth taking. Don’t miss it.