{"id":3076,"date":"2011-08-03T15:35:40","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T22:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3076"},"modified":"2011-08-03T15:35:40","modified_gmt":"2011-08-03T22:35:40","slug":"tim-o%e2%80%99brien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/tim-o%e2%80%99brien\/","title":{"rendered":"TIM O\u2019BRIEN"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

TIM O\u2019BRIEN<\/h1>\n

A bluegrass master in competition only <\/strong>with himself<\/strong><\/h2>\n

When selecting a title for his\u00a0new album, bluegrass icon Tim O\u2019Brien found inspiration when his neighbor\u2019s chickens wandered into his photo shoot. He had a moment of realization later during a lunch of hardboiled eggs: \u201cYou don\u2019t know what came first,\u201d he says, \u201cand it doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d Such is O\u2019Brien\u2019s approach to folk and bluegrass music on Chicken & Egg<\/em>. When Nora Guthrie, the daughter of folk legend Woody Guthrie, passed along some of her father\u2019s lyrics for O\u2019Brien to set to music, he elected to use the elder Guthrie\u2019s method of setting words to the melodies of traditional tunes. \u201cHe wrote new lyrics for older songs, he took old Carter Family songs and rewrote the lyrics,\u201d O\u2019Brien says. \u201cDylan did that too.\u201d Pairing the new lyrics with the music from the Guthrie classic \u201cThis Train Is Bound for Glory\u201d resulted in \u201cSun Jumped Up,\u201d a playful folk tune about trying to remember a dream come morning light.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien\u2019s previous release, 2008\u2019s Chameleon<\/em>, was a low-key effort on which he played every instrument. This time he\u2019s enlisted a top-notch group of musicians including guitarist Bryan Sutton, fiddler Stuart Duncan and drummer John Gardner. \u201cI ended up choosing songs based on who was going to play on the record,\u201d says O\u2019Brien. \u201cI wanted to have a little more motion on this record.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien is particularly proud of\u00a0\u201cNot Afraid O\u2019 Dyin\u2019,\u201d which was written following the death of his father. He had already tried penning several songs on the subject but found them \u201ctoo personal, too sad,\u201d he says. \u201cThey didn\u2019t feel like they were joyous.\u201d Wanting to celebrate his father\u2019s optimism instead, O\u2019Brien compiled some of his dad\u2019s most memorable sayings, setting those dryly humorous observations and moments of parental concern to jaunty fiddle and guitar. \u201cIt\u2019s something completely different than I\u2019ve written\u2014theme-wise and lyric-wise,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

After over 30 years in the music business, O\u2019Brien has largely turned his focus inward. \u201cSongwriting has become more important to my identity and drives me to keep going,\u201d he says. \u201cThe most exciting thing is to write a good song and bring it to people. I used to be driven much more by what other people were doing and trying to measure up to it, and now I mostly measure myself against myself. I realize that\u2019s the only person I have to compete against.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Juli Thanki<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TIM O\u2019BRIEN A bluegrass master in competition only with himself When selecting a title for his\u00a0new album, bluegrass icon Tim O\u2019Brien found inspiration when his neighbor\u2019s chickens wandered into his photo shoot. He had a moment of realization later during a lunch of hardboiled eggs: \u201cYou don\u2019t know what came first,\u201d he says, \u201cand it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[623,10156,2290],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3076"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3078,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3076\/revisions\/3078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}