Multi Grammy award-winning US country music star Tim O’Brien chatted to David Hennessy ahead of his upcoming shows at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith.
Bluegrass great Tim O’Brien is set to perform at the Irish Cultural Centre Hammersmith this month with Jan Fabricius, Seamie O’Dowd and Dermot Byrne.
Tim O’Brien has captivated audiences worldwide for over five decades with his unique fusion of American folk, bluegrass, blues, and Celtic influences.
Known for his collaborations with icons like Mark Knopfler and Steve Earle, O’Brien’s impressive repertoire includes timeless albums like Red on Blonde, Fiddler’s Green (Grammy winner), and The Crossing.
Joining O’Brien on stage is his wife and longtime musical collaborator Jan Fabricius, a talented mandolinist and singer whose harmonies and co-written songs feature prominently on O’Brien’s recent albums, He Walked On and Cup of Sugar.
Seamie O’Dowd is a multi-instrumentalist from Sligo celebrated for his work with acclaimed group Dervish.
Dermot Byrne is known from his tenure with Altan and collaborations across the traditional music spectrum.
Tim has released no fewer than two dozen albums over the course of his career.
Tim’s early efforts alongside his older sister, Mollie O’Brien, and essential role as a member of the 1980s hit band Hot Rize, established his penchant for abiding by bluegrass tradition, while also helping it to find its contemporary audience.
Hot Rize was IBMA’s first Entertainer of the Year recipient in 1880. In 1993 and 2006, O’Brien was honoured by the IBMA as Male Vocalist of the Year. In 2005, he won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album for his Fiddler’s Green, and in 2014, he received a Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album for his efforts alongside the The Earls of Leicester.
Are you looking forward to coming over to the ICC?
“I’m looking forward to that for sure.
“I’ve been there one time before.
“I was rehearsing with Mark Knopfler for a tour, and Mike McGoldrick and I went over there on our evening off to see Gino Lupari and Dónal Murphy, and I don’t remember how it ended!
“Dangerous characters there.
“I am definitely.
“All the years I have been coming to play, I have never played there and it’s about time.
“We’ve got two nights and Seamie O’Dowd and Dermot Byrne and myself and my wife Jan are gonna put on a couple of shows there.
“It’s a kick off to a tour. It starts there, we go up to the Midlands and then to Celtic Connections and then over to Ireland for a couple weeks.”
How do you enjoy making it to Ireland? Does it feel like home?
“It definitely feels like home.
“I love that when you arrive from the States they say, ‘How long are you home for?’
“And they know full well that I’m from America but I like that.
“I like that assumption and I take it to heart.
“I’m a typical mongrel American made up of various parts of different nationalities but I I have the last name and red hair, and I love the music.
“I’ll take it.
“I love it.”
As you say, you are an O’Brien, can you tell us about your Irish heritage?
“Yeah, on my father’s side, my great grandfather was from Cavan. He was from Muff where they have the fair still. And his bride was from Donegal.
“He was a Gillespie.
“I’ve got Gillespie and O’Brien in me anyway.
“Growing up we were Irish mostly on St Patrick’s Day but I got more into it as I got older and kind of realised that 150 years earlier wasn’t that long ago.”
You say you feel at home when you get to Ireland, has it always been that way?
“Well, my first experience was back in ’76.
“I was visiting my brother in England and then on the advice of some other friends in America, I went to the All-Ireland Fleadh in Buncrana. It was a whirlwind really.
“I met so many people and some of them are still friends today.
“I heard so much music, maybe I was a little overwhelmed.
“But then I went down, I spent some time in Dublin and really got a got my feet in it.
“And then in ‘93 I started coming annually and really that’s when I started getting my feet planted better and knowing the lay of the land, getting more comfortable with folks.
“That was prompted by attending Maura O’Connell’s wedding.
“I was welcomed with open arms there.
“That was a really wonderful thing, and just been coming back ever since.
“The Irish people are the real tourist attraction.
“When people ask me what they should do when they go to Ireland I say, ‘Well, if you can find a local pub, go there once and then go back again. You’ll be a friend. You’ll see friends there because you met them the night before’.
“The people are really the antiquities and the scenery.
“All the features of Ireland are wonderful but really the people, the conversation is really the top in my book.”
Speaking of Maura O’Connell, she is someone you have had a long connection and friendship with..
“Yeah, she was hanging around with the bluegrass crowd after she moved to the States, she was going with Bela Fleck for some years and we collaborated on some recordings and on some touring with Jerry Douglas.
“We’ve been friends for a long time and I got a sense of things through her and other folks.
“Arty McGlynn (1944- 2019) is another one.
“Arty came over to record with Maura.
“Actually this morning I was listening to a piece that we’re gonna perform over in Omagh. We’re doing a little tribute to Arty when we play there on 25 January.
“I toured with Arty for several years, just the two of us.
“We would play in Ireland and sometimes over in England and Scotland.
“But I would get in the car with Arty and he was a nervous passenger, so he liked to drive. He had a cassette player in his car and he had only one cassette that he liked to listen to. “And after we listened to that several times, he just told me everything he knew.
“I loved that about him.
“He was known as a guy who had very few words but when I met him Maura and her roommate said, ‘Well, Arty finds his voice around 2am’.
“And that was true.
“After a night of celebration, he would open up.
“But in the car, it was a wonderful thing.
“He told me stories about being in the show bands, about growing up on the farm, about playing with Van Morrison and Liam O’ Flynn and Tommy Makem. Just a lot of stuff. He was a great guide for me and we had so much fun.
“I miss him to this day.”
Someone else who loved Ireland and that you were inspired by and got to know was John Prine..
“Yeah, Prine was one of the great treasures of the American arts.
“To know him in a personal way was a great, great honour.
“I moved to Nashville in ‘96 and I would take my kids to school and then often I would go to the grocery afterwards.
“There I am at about 8.30am in the morning, going through the grocery aisle, and there’s John Prine by the eggs.
“And that’s John Prine to me. He was there shopping for eggs, just like me.
“He was also a great man, one of the great folk poets of our time and I’ll take those minutes and those little instances where I can.”
You have won Grammy Awards and in 2013 you were inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, what are you most proud of?
“I’m really proud when people sing a song that I’ve written and that’s happened a time or two.
“I’m proud that I could call people like John Prine or Arty McGlynn friends. Another one is Kevin Burke.
“I’m happy that I’m able to make music and bring people together.
“Music is a way to build a community and the songs are stories.
“People need stories and they also bring people together.
“It’s just a natural human need and trait, and I’m proudest that I’m able to do that, that I have a way into that, that I have a function.”
You say it means a lot when people sing your songs. You have been honoured with people like The Dixie Chicks and Garth Brooks doing versions of your songs..
“Yeah, it’s always a revelation that they always make it their own.
“And that is a good sign that it’s a decent song, that it expresses something that other people can latch on to and that they can make their own.
“And of course the mailbox money helps,” Tim laughs. “That’s why I can afford to be a musician.
“I had heard about Sierra Ferrell and then I got to sing on her record, her first release, and then she she asked me to sit in on a concert she did in Nashville last March. It was at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.
“I thought maybe I was just going to play along on a song or two but she wanted to sing two songs that I had written.
“It was a real ultimate compliment to get up there.
“I was just kind of doing what I do but she put the magnifying glass on it and it was a great endorsement.
“It’s just reassuring that you didn’t waste your time,” Tim laughs.
You have also covered other artist’s work. John Hartford liked your cover of Gentle on my Mind so much that he wanted you to sing it at his funeral..
“Those are the kinds of things that make you take your music more seriously.
“Maybe I needed a signal like that.
“He said, ‘You have got to sing that song everywhere you go’.
“And then, as he was kind of going into hospice care, the word came down that I was to sing the song at the funeral.
“It’s just a heavy request.
“It just gives me the signal that music is a very important thing, and I’ve got a place that’s of value to a lot of people, and I really don’t want to squander it.
“I really think of myself as just a lucky guy in a lucky time and place, and I’m just a worker bee really, I’m nothing profound but I’m a pipe through which the music can come.
“I just try to keep that well in good shape and keep the pathway clear.”
And what about being described as the father or a leader of bluegrass?
“Yeah, it means a great deal.
“American folk music and bluegrass music is part of a long tradition that reaches back to the beginning of time, the beginning of mankind.
“When people started drawing a picture on the wall of a cave, they were expressing something and they were telling stories around the fire at night.
“This is what musicians do.
“When you’re a musician, old Irish folks say, ‘You get to sit closer to the fire’.
“You get to be the focus of it and you get to be on the inside.
“Being able to play some music and understand it a little bit has enabled me to get closer to great people, great musicians and to absorb the music a little bit more.
“Whenever you learn a song, you’re learning something that has been responded to by generations.
“It just reaches back in time and you can feel that coming through you and out to the people who are listening, and to have someone else play what you did is really the greatest honour.”
Do you have particular pinch me moments?
“There was one time when Doc Watson asked me to play a set with him at a festival out in Colorado, and I just couldn’t believe it.
“He’s my hero.
“I got on stage and it really was a pinch me moment, ‘I’m not dreaming. This is really happening’.
“So much of what I learned as a musician comes from his music and his template is my template, taking traditional songs and making them your own.
“It’s confusing when you’re a musician, when you’re starting out as a young player trying to figure out what your direction is.
“Doc really just showed that and I was able to follow that and keep going with that.
“So getting up with him on stage, that was gold.”
You dropped out of college in 1973 to pursue music, did you always know in some way it was going to be music for you?
“Well, it just became what I wanted to do.
“I was one of those kids that once I took to it, I didn’t really ever put it down and it just took over.
“It covered me over and ran into me.
“It set its roots down in me and pulled me into it. And the only problem from there was just to figure out how to continue to do it.
“Writing songs has been really, really rewarding but really it started as just an idea that, ‘Oh, if I do this, then people will want me to sing the song. That way I’ll get to continue to play music’.
“I learned to play the fiddle for the same reason.
“There were too many guitar players.
“I thought, ‘Well, if I learned another instrument maybe I can continue to play music’.
“And it just kind of keeps going that way.
“Learning the other parts of the business and stuff is all based upon just so I can get an instrument in my hand and sing a song.”
You will be joined on the ICC stage by two musicians who represent two of Ireland’s most prominent trad bands in Altan and Dervish, what does Irish music mean to you?
“It’s a continuing fascination.
“When I first heard it, I had been playing some music for a while.
“I had been playing some of the American reels and then I heard somebody playing them in an Irish way and I went, ‘Wow, that’s the same stuff but it’s kind of exotic’.
“It still has that tinge that’s exotic to me.
“It’s very familiar but exotic.
“I could just get lost in it and I look forward to getting lost again.”
Tim O’Brien plays The Irish Cultural Centre with Jan Fabricius, Seamie O’Dowd and Dermot Byrne on Wednesday 15 January and Thursday 16 January 2025.
Tim also plays The Live Room in Saltaire on 17 January, The Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal on 18 January, Celtic Connections in Glasgow on 19 January, The Black Box in Belfast on 23 January, Letterkenny Cultural Centre on 24 January, Dun Uladh in Omagh on 25 January, The White Horse in Ballincollig on 26 January, Campbells Tavern in Headford on 28 January, Hawk’s Well Theatre in Sligo on 30 January, Seamus Ennis Centre in Dublin on 31 January and Ardara Bluegrass Festival in Donegal on 1 February.
For booking and information, click here.
For more information about Tim O’Brien, click here.