Tim O’Brien – Cornbread Nation

Always prolific, Tim O’Brien is releasing two separate albums at the same time on September 13. The roster for Cornbread Nation and Fiddler’s Green boasts many of O’Brien’s frequent pickin’ partners, A-list players all — Jerry Douglas, Kenny Vaughan, Dan Tyminski, Del McCoury among them. Both albums demonstrate the off-the-cuff humor and effortless, laid-back persona O’Brien has perfected over a career that began in the pioneering Colorado band Hot Rize and its alter ego, Red Knuckles & the Trailblazers. There’s still a lot of Rize and Trailblazer in O’Brien.

Of the two discs, Cornbread Nation, which features ten traditional songs and two originals, is more upbeat. Its ambience alternates between a 1950s rock ‘n’ roll combo and a backyard bluegrass jam.

“Hold On” is bluegrass as rockabilly, with a couple of chicken-scratching guitar leads from Vaughan that could have been sampled from a Sun session. “Let’s Go Hunting”, an old southern holler, rides its own wave of spirited exuberance. Perhaps inspired by “ol’ Red howling at the moon” imagery or the boys’ easy Louisiana shuffle, O’Brien cuts loose with some wild howling of his own.

The title track is a tribute/recipe for that southern diet staple that could make your mouth water for a diner somewhere below the Mason-Dixon. And anyone with web access can appreciate the protagonist of “Running Out Of Memory”, bursting with online lust as he helplessly watches his computer go blue while trying to download his girlfriend’s digital image.

The tone is a bit more somber on Fiddler’s Green, and (as the title suggests) the fiddles come out of the cases more often than not. “This is intimate music, good for a quiet morning or evening at home”, O’Brien writes in the liner notes. A sterling example of that intimacy is “Fair Flowers Of The Valley”, on which O’Brien enlists talented sister Mollie for some harmonies that only siblings are able to produce.

O’Brien plays guitar, fiddle and bouzouki on the title track, while “Buffalo Skinners” gives him a chance to stretch out on acoustic guitar. His violin is prominently featured on “Foreign Lander” against Edgar Meyer’s mournful bass.

O’Brien’s own “Look Down That Lonesome Road” adds a moment of levity and some very funny cliche wordplay, turning old phrases about kickin’ dogs, bay horses, mules and hellhounds in on themselves.

Cornbread Nation and Fiddler’s Green are billboards for the durability and adaptability of traditional music, and how shades of interpretation can still be squeezed from the seemingly simplest of folk tunes. If anything, O’Brien just makes it look too damned easy.