For over forty years, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and songwriter Tim O’Brien has been a dedicated disciple of the founding father of bluegrass, Bill Monroe. Tim has recorded numerous albums, both solo recordings and as a member of the bands Hot Rize, Red Knuckles and The Trailblazers, NewGrange and The Earls of Leicester. He also released recordings with his sister Mollie O’Brien in his early career. A two-time Grammy Award winner, he has collaborated and worked with Kathy Mattea, Allison Krauss, Hal Ketchum and Darrell Scott, to name but a few. His latest album CUP OF SUGAR, is his first recording of entirely original material and it includes co-writes with a host of talented writers alongside songs penned solely by him.
Four and a half decades into your recording career, CUP OF SUGAR is your first recording composed of all original material. Was that a conscious decision?
It just came about. I've come close with some other records but this happened and I'm really happy about it actually. I think it's a well-rounded, nice group of songs.
Were all the songs specifically written for the album?
There are a couple that I wrote prior to last year, but mostly they're all coming from the last year when I decided to make this record.
You have some interesting co-writes on the album.
Yes, I felt like I had some good song writing partners. I had never written with Ronnie Bowman before, and we did three songs together. One of those songs, Thinking Like a Fish, was aimed at The Davisson Brothers, who are a country and rock and roll band from West Virginia, but they never did record that song, so I did.
I understand that the opening track, Bear, came about after you read about the history of dancing bears.
I was reading about dancing bears and how they get them to dance and how they train them. It’s a little bit of a gypsy thing in Middle Eastern and Eastern Europe. But the song is about just waking up and your environment is gone, your world has changed while you were asleep. It could be anybody. It's like you wake up and things are just completely different and you have to roll with the punches but you know, it pisses you off sometimes.
That is particularly apt in the times we live in.
It is a distressing time in general when I wake up and read the news every morning. But I'm an optimist, musicians generally are optimists. Every show is like ‘this could be the one and I'm still optimistic that we'll pull some positive stuff together’ (laughs). I think things are going to break down a little bit more before we build something back up. It's really weird at the moment, people have lined up on one side or the other on certain issues. There are points of view that are fed to people on social media. It’s funny because with the internet everything is at our fingertips now, yet we’ve isolated ourselves, we’ve got the blinders on.
Where did the album title come from?
I was just writing this song with Jonathan Byrd and we were writing about neighbours and how you may not really like them much, but you want to build trust between you and them. If there's something you need like a cup of sugar you can borrow that from your neighbour. You can borrow from each other and help each other out. It’s almost a cliche, I don't know if they say that in Ireland.
Tell me the background to the song She Can’t, He Won’t and They’ll Never?
My wife and I were visiting with some folks who are locked into a seemingly unworkable situation, a kind of co-dependency. Anyway, we were driving away and shaking our heads. I think Jan was at the wheel and she said,’ she can't’, I said ‘he won't’ and we both said ‘they'll never’. I wrote it down on something and we both wrote that song a little while later.
I believe that the song Little Lamb Little Lamb was inspired by a visit to County Kerry.
Yes, Jan and I were down there playing at a festival in Baltimore West in May of 2017. As it was the springtime, the lambs were jumping around in the field. I think the first time I saw that was probably 1975 up in Wyoming. It's just such a wonderful, beautiful thing. The creativity of the universe or the fertility of the universe and nature keeps things going on regardless of how difficult it may seem as we go through life. We saw so many little lambs jumping around and actually still had some of the videos of them on our cell phone which we made into a video for the song, which was fun.
Were all the songs written and had you got the basic structure for them before you went to the studio?
Some of the songs I thought were lending themselves to what I often do with electric guitars and drums, that kind of thing. I toyed with that a little bit, but in the end, I stayed fairly acoustic and it just felt right that way. It has nice additions from Jamie Dick on the drums and Mike Rojas on keyboards to spice things up and a couple of tracks with Russ Pahl playing steel to broaden it out. My stuff is always a little bit eclectic, it's like one from column A, one from column B, and one from column C, and then kind of mix them up together as you go.
Were the tracks recorded live in the studio?
In general, it's live except for harmony vocals, though Del McCoury sang live on Let The Horses Run. It’s better for me to have the most of the elements that I want there, and be able to work with each other in real-time as opposed to trying to figure out what somebody thought at a certain time. You know, it's like the second guy doesn't get to hear what the first guy plays beforehand and reflect on that. It really helps to everybody together.
With the calibre of players you had, did you give them a freehand in terms of the development of the songs, or do you have complete control over the direction it's going musically?
I gave them some tips, ‘maybe play here, don't play there.’ But mostly we kind of found the sound naturally without talking about it too much. I come to the studio usually with the form of the song pretty well established, but that can change as well, really quickly. With the song The Anchor, I had it in a completely different key and it was way too low. We had a key change and added an extra chorus and it just happened on the fly. And I think it worked pretty well. Getting ready to record is about me really knowing my stuff, being able to sing the song convincingly and play it solidly. That gives everybody enough to go on and then they just ride on top of that. Nashville is a great town for people to record because they've done it over and over every week. When you first come here and go into the studio with players like that, it can be a little intimidating.
Having started your musical career in contemporary bluegrass, how do you think the genre has evolved with the introduction of sub-genres like ‘jamgrass’ and ‘newgrass?’
There are different definitions for bluegrass. It's sort of assembled out of various elements from the music that Bill Monroe invented. And then there was a business side of it, where it became separated from country music. The sort of pop music of its day became more electric and bluegrass was shunted off to the side. There's a certain crowd that sort of stayed with it and it's remarkable that the music has, at its core, stayed the same. Artists like Del McCoury or more contemporary ones like Po’ Ramblin’ Boys and High Fidelity are really doing the traditional style, the way Bill Monroe designed it. Everything else is like branches on a tree and the roots are deep and still strong. I came up through the traditional bluegrass world and you play for an audience who likes acoustic music, and they like the fact that the artists are not that divided off from the audience, you can talk to them after the show, it's more informal. You’re often playing at a festival where fifty per cent of your audience might be players. I think the music is safe and kind of growing in all directions. The jamgrass is really good, it's great to see Billy Strings reigniting the traditional sound like so many of these jam groups. Some of them might go out on a limb and don't really have the traditional footing, but Billy String does. He's bringing traditional music to larger groups of people with a different way of presenting it and that's helpful.
He’s certainly introduced bluegrass to a younger audience. Are you noticing younger age profiles coming to your shows?
I don't notice it that quite that way but I know this. I know it's happening. I play for the same crowd most of the time over and over again. In a couple of weeks, I'll play at the 50th annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado and that's where I started playing in 1975 and meeting people like Sam Bush and John Hartford soon after. That same audience is still there, a lot of people my age, but then there's also their kids and the grandkids who are there, people that have never been there before. They may have latched on to this music because they might have heard Gregory Alan Isakov or somebody like that. It's great because the older artists also gain these new fans now and again.
Would you be inclined to encourage younger people to enter the bluegrass world as a career now, given how the industry has changed over the decades?
I would encourage them. If they're enjoying doing what they're doing, I think they're going to find a way to make their livelihood in the music. I think it's challenging right now, because of the way recorded music is marketed, a lot of the writers and performers are not paid much because of streaming. Streaming revenues are not what they could be. But I know that there are going to be people that want to write songs and want to tell stories and want to get up on stage and connect people together, which is what music does. And we need that now more than ever. The one thing that can't be reproduced and stolen, from either the audience or the artists, is live performance, it's a thing that people still need.
You are about to head out on tour with the new songs. Will you perform with your regular band?
Yeah, I'm playing with Mike Bub on the bass, Shad Cobb on fiddle and Corey Walker on banjo. Jan will be playing the mandolin and singing the harmony parts. So, we have a pretty solid bluegrass-looking line-up and bluegrass-sounding, even though some of the songs are from country and rock and roll fields, every now and again. We’re on the road a bunch and have got some nice shows lined up. Jan and I play as a duo as well, when the indoor shows start to outnumber the outdoor shows when colder weather comes along. It works really well, we're a married couple we can play together and not miss each other. For instance, we can go to Ireland and if we have some days off, we’re side by side and can go to a nice place and watch the lambs jump around (laughs).
Do you get the most satisfaction from composing or performing?
I like both. There's nothing more exciting than coming up with a song that you think is vital, it's an experience like no other really. It's funny because it's not like you're making something out of thin air. You're just like a mirror to the world and your own particular mirror is going to reflect it back a little differently than somebody else's. But every once in a while, you get a better picture. But then when you have the songs and you're in front of an audience, you want to share them and you want to try them out. So that's kind of a fear factor, you may be pretty sure it's good, but you got to trust yourself and sing it for people. So, I'm just about to try a whole new bag of songs on people which is always kind of fearful, but it's also exciting. You kind of walk the plank.
Your 2017 album, WHERE THE RIVER MEETS THE ROAD, drilled into a number of social issues. Is this something you are more inclined to focus on in your more recent writing?
I seem to be more inclined to cover those social issues now. I'm not so worried about where I fit in as a musician anymore, so maybe I'm not worried about making people mad. But also, I feel like I need to take a stand and say what I believe in, it seems almost immoral not to respond to certain things. I feel like I have a perspective on things, maybe it's a little distorted and a bit one-sided but I try to look at all the angles. I try not to lay down a law, instead just remind people to think about the basic things and ask themselves the questions that maybe they need to ask.
Interview by Declan Culliton