Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott have a lot in common. Both musicians are accomplished singer-songwriters and multi-instrumentalists, and they both share a passion for country and bluegrass music. On Memories and Moments, their first album together since 2000’s Real Time, Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott channel their passions with heartfelt songs that balance rich instrumentals with introspective lyrics. The result is a fine piece of true American roots music. This week the duo make an appearance at the Harvest Music Festival in Ozark, Arkansas. Recently music writer Neil Ferguson caught up with Tim O’Brien.
Neil Ferguson: Why did it take you so long to record another album with Darrell Scott?
Tim O’Brien: Well, we had to sort of be ready to face the same direction. When you put a record out you want to be able to go and tour around it and all that stuff. Basically, I think we went our separate ways; Darrell was just beginning to have a solo career and he kept a studio side-band career and a songwriting career for Nashville artists as well. He wasn’t ready to be on the road as much as I was back in 2002, so we just went our separate ways, and now we’re ready to do it again. We’ve dedicated a year to getting this together; we made the record, set a release date, and blocked out a year to tour. So it’s all kind of happening and it’s actually working the way it should, which is so rare. It turns out that the thirteen years of lying fallow helped the reputation grow without us doing very much about it. We did occasional shows here and there for benefits and things, but mostly it just sort of kept growing slowly and it feels really good to launch it again. We’re kind of ready to go and do this.
Discuss the dynamic between you and Darrell when you play. What’s different from other musicians you’ve worked with for long periods of time?
I think we have a unique situation where we’re both multi-instrumentalists, we’re both songwriters, we’re both strong lead singers, and we both have been sidemen. So we’re kind of ready to respond to each other and to support the other one as he goes on his way through his own song. When Darrell makes a move I can respond and vice versa, he’s very much about the moment and I try to be as well. I think the number one thing about playing and singing with him is that it can be different every time, and we thrive on that. We want it to be different and it’s a very free environment. We have the form to the songs pretty much, but they kind of go different ways – expand and contract – they go from a whisper to a roar. It’s not necessarily planned when that happens. Part of the attraction for me is that it keeps remaking itself, and I know that’s the case with Darrell as well.
Both you and Darrell have said that you didn’t work many solos onto the album but plan on doing so this fall. Does your dynamic amplify instrumentally when you’re doing it onstage?
Yeah, we get to jamming. Instead of playing one or two choruses you might play four or five if it feels right. “White Freight Liner Blues” can get pretty jammy. We do “Long Time Gone” from Real Time, and that one goes into some pretty cool freeform – it’s not jazz or anything – but we’re both playing lead at the same time [laughs]. If you start playing melodies and stuff the other guy will usually revert to backing you up, but we don’t really feel the need for backing up. We’re both kind of playing lead. It goes back and forth from the more traditional way of doing it, but there’s a lot of that where there’s a grid and we’re kind of riding along it, and we’re expressing the sound of the song in any way we can find. It always finds interesting corners whenever we get onstage together.
Does that also change depending on where you’re playing? Like if you’re at a festival with more of a party vibe versus a more proper gig, does the energy change?
Yeah, the energy changes. We’re definitely trying to respond to the situation and the crowd that’s there. Just whatever feels right. We played last Sunday at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival for probably 20-30,00 people, and we got them to get up and sing along. They were dancing and it was a party thing, and you lean on the faster tempos a little bit with a big thing like that. The songs can be the same and yet you can find a way to sell them to the place you’re at. The next night we played in a 500-seat room with very controlled sound and it was a whole different vibe. There was still some of the jamming but it was more of a sit-down crowd. They’re all viable. I like to play every kind of venue and I don’t want to play any one kind of thing all of the time. It’s just like why I like playing with Darrell; you just want to change it up to keep the variety going. It keeps it real.
In regards to the dynamic, but more in the songwriting vein, the layout of the album kind of switches between you and Darrell. How did you figure out what would go where and who was doing what?
In my case I kind of called through back years past. Some it was not really the style, and some of it I had written in the last couple years. I tried to pick the ones that felt like something that would sound good [for us]. I listened to what Darrell had to offer as far as his songs as well, and I tried to respond. It’s sort of like, we [had] a big list of songs and if I looked at the list of songs that we had written together I would see a pattern of sort of internal dialogue, sort of questioning your place on the earth, or trying your best for the planet and for your family. Those are the subjects that we kind of gravitate towards. As middle-aged guys now we’re kind of thinking about more spiritual stuff; we’re not so much looking for girls and breaking up with girls, although there’s a little of that on this record [laughs]. This record tends to be more spiritual concerns, you know, addictions – there’s one called “Free Again” and “You Don’t Own Me.” That codependency thing about drug addiction. Darrell understands that stuff. Not every guy I collaborate with can comment like he can and add on those things. We have a common view when we get together, and I think that’s what we looked for thematically as we went. You know, when we started, we started with that Hank Williams song (“Alone and Forsaken”) because we knew that’s where we intersect as musicians to begin with, that’s where we come from. That kind of music is where we both kind of earned our teeth, and I went on to more bluegrass stuff, but Darrell’s more a literate singer-songwriter and plays a lot more R&B-oriented things and modern country. But Hank Williams is a good place to start, but then, once you do that, you go, ‘What feels right from this list of songs?’ So it was “Alone and Forsaken,” and then what feels good to sing right after this? It’s like making a setlist up, and some people make a setlist up way ahead of time, other people just kind of feel it out. Del McCoury never makes a setlist, he just feels it out, and it comes up great every time because he’s just intuitive. We were intuitive with the process, so there are a lot of songs that we never got to because we followed another trend. Another day might have brought another set of songs, but we were just kind of following our noses.
One thing I saw and I’m curious to hear you take on it is you said as writers you witness what’s going and describe it like journalists. The record definitely has an old timey, rustic vibe, and I’m curious how you applied that to modern events that you’re commenting on.
For songwriters and artists in general, in my view, the best thing we can do is find a subject that a lot of people have encountered. Then we just kind of illuminate it through our own particular tale, our own viewpoint, [and] maybe what’s happened to us in our own life. In other words, we’re not describing anything that’s new. It’s always stuff that’s already in front of everybody, and we just give people an opportunity to concentrate on it in another way. I think Bob Dylan was probably doing that with “Blowin’ In The Wind,” and Woody Guthrie was doing that with “Talkin Dust Bowl Blues,” you know, he was just saying, ‘Hey man, we went out to Oklahoma and everything was destitute, we went to California and almost didn’t make it. Now we’re kind of wondering where the land of plenty is.’ Everybody was seeing that on the news, and Woody was able to tell it and bring it into a song, and it just brings everybody together. [People are] already kind of ready to get together [laughs], and then you just put this thing out and all of the interests kind of glob onto it. If you’re lucky and do a good job with it and you have a forum. It can cause dialogue. The style of music doesn’t matter, I don’t think. The guy that talks quietly sometimes gets more attention, so maybe you can say that about the acoustic versions of things or old timey [versions]. This has been going on from day one; whenever somebody started singing a song it was about what was going on around them and they wanted to comment on something that they saw that maybe other people would understand. It’s about common experience. Language is mostly about reassuring one another, but we can also discuss things with music.
Can you discuss some of the country influences in this record?
Darrell’s dad always wanted to play music but he knew he had to support a family, so he kind of put it on the back burner for a while, but it didn’t stop him from writing songs and eventually organizing a family band with his kids. Darrell grew up listening to Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, George Jones, that kind of stuff, and I didn’t. But by the time I was 14 or 15 I was starting to really get into that stuff. I was definitely working in that field when I was playing in Hot Rize too, we’d switch and play honky tonk music in the middle of the show as Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers. I was always looking at that old stuff and was just a fan. Darrell grew up in it. I started studying it when I was becoming a musician. When we got together for our very first soundcheck I started singing a Hank Williams song and Darrell started singing perfect harmony to it. He knew all of the words and the chords, and we just looked at each other and said, ‘Well let’s do more of that!’ We didn’t plan on putting a George Jones song [on the record] because he was going to die, but that just so happened that he died right after we recorded this thing. That stuff is in our DNA and it’s a good place to start from.
Absolutely. Those are some well-chosen covers.
Thank you. It was a real honor to [also] get John Prine to sing for us. We had a list of potential collaborators for this record and John Prine was at the top. He was actually confirmed for a certain day and we knew we wanted to do [“Paradise”] because we had another song that dovetailed with it that we had written together called “Keep Your Dirty Lights On.” [The John Prine song] is kind of sticking out there in the middle and it not only works well with the other material, but also it was a great honor to have John Prine there. We want to show, by recording these covers, [that] we’re kind of paying tribute to those that have come before us. We love so much music and we’re a product of all that’s come before us. In my case not just the people I’ve played with, but all of the influences; the Bill Monroe’s, Duke Ellington’s, anything I’ve heard ever.
What can people expect from the live show?
One thing we’ve done for our concerts is to arrange some programmed material to play before the show, and Darrell suggested if there was anything before Hank Williams. One of the things we listened to when we got together was a lot of field recordings, old professional recordings from the 1920’s and 1930’s, but also the field recordings by Alan Lomax. We like the immediacy and the sort of natural aspects of those things and we try to bring that to the show, trying to bring the real business of interaction and real time to the stage. I really hope people enjoy that and they seem to respond to it. What else can I say? Oh yeah, we’re wearing derby hats when we play because we love John Hartford [laughs]. He kind of embodies the whole thing for us; great songwriter, he had a giant hit, which gave him a license to do what he wanted to do. Neither Darrell nor I have had a big hit like “Gentle On My Mind,” but we have had some success and we chose to use that to launch our own thing and to explore further. It’s about tradition but it’s about remaking it, and that’s what John Hartford stood for, that’s what Bill Monroe stood for, that’s what Ray Charles and Duke Ellington stood for. Good musicians are all doing that.
There is one thing I wanted to ask you. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the bluegrass resurgence that’s happened in the past five years or so with younger people.
It’s not really any great surprise to me that it keeps regenerating. Every time a younger generation comes along a certain percentage of them will look in that direction, whether it’s the Dillards in the 60’s looking at the Flatt and Scruggs and Bill Monroe stuff, or Hot Rize in the 80’s. This music is timeless. It’s a tradition, which means it’s evolving. Every generation comes along and remakes it, and they tend to stand on the shoulders of the ones that went before them. The really good ones will digest a lot of the past and then they’ll put their own spin on it, and that’s what keeps it alive. That’s like a tree; it’s got good strong roots and branches growing all the time, and as long as there’s sun and water you’re going to have a thing that grows. It’s exciting and I love to see it all and where it’s going.
This article was originally written for and published by The Horn, an online news site in Austin, Texas. Original Article.
