Opener: Korby Lenker
Venue: Shoreline Community College Campus Theatre - Shoreline, WA
Date: 4/15/06
Some think it’s a sign when a streetlight goes out while you’re walking beneath. The night before this year’s Grammy Awards, Tim O’Brien got such a sign from his recently deceased mother. The next evening he took home his first Grammy.
But playing in front of a full house at Shoreline Community College’s campus theater, one could believe that O’Brien got his award through merit alone. He was scheduled to play the venue a year prior, but had to cancel when his mother passed.
Opening the night for him was Seattle-based singer/songwriter Korby Lenker, who chose to show a bit more of his rock and roll influences on acoustic guitar, rather than the bluegrass styling of his band The Barbed Wire Cutters. After serving up a couple tasty songs, Lenker described his reverence for Tim O’Brien, noting his virtuosity on mandolin, fiddle, and Irish bouzouki - an octave mandolin.
Seemingly to show that his award-winning skills weren’t limited to just those instruments, O’Brien came out on stage, after warm applause for Korby Lenker’s set, with a Martin dreadnought guitar in his hand. An effortless cascade of flat-picked notes lead into a Celtic song “Pretty Fair Maid in the Garden” from his most recent album Fiddler’s Green.
It didn’t take him long to play a selection from Cornbread Nation, which was released at the same time as Fiddler’s Green. He sang the gospel song “Hold On”, showing that a mastery of the guitar fret board can make up for a lack of backup band – something he has the benefit of on his albums.
O’Brien had the audience enraptured, while continuing to play material from his recent albums, with the trademark purity of his singing voice. The dramatic dynamics and intensity were in contrast to the casualness of his demeanor and instrumental technique. It made for a pleasant paradox.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t until the seventh song that O’Brien told a joke:
“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?’
“Yodel lay he.”
“Yodel lay he who?”
“Oh. You yodel too!”
At that point, he continued to engage the crowd with his next-door neighbor friendliness and corny jokes (that still always make you laugh), describing his bouzouki as a mandolin with a thyroid problem.
A little less than halfway through the show, he picked up his fiddle - arguably his best instrument - and played a set of jigs in preparation for going to a folk festival in the Shetland Islands. He sang “Foreign Lander” (off Fiddler’s Green) like the old time fiddlers did: singing while harmonizing to himself with fiddle and bow. If there had been a living soul in the audience who hadn’t taken note of Tim O’Brien’s musicianship and intense connection with traditional music, there wasn’t now.
After tugging on heart strings, O’Brien went after the funny bone with “Running Out of Memory for You”, a Bill Monroe song updated to address difficulties in opening an email-attachment photo of your sweetie. Another song that got the expectedly Democrat-leaning crowd going was “Republican Blues”, which would have gone well with his pre-election update to the old song “White House Blues.”
O’Brien stopped well short of playing all the songs off his two recent releases to play some old favorites and even a Randy Newman song. He asked if there were any requests, and was met by a cacophonous callback from most in attendance; not surprising, given the vast number of songs he has written and recorded in his career.
When he came back on for his encore - playing his 23rd and 24th songs of the night - he thought out loud something we all wonder at concerts: What’s the deal with the encore anyway? The audience wants more, especially of Tim O’Brien. The musician wants to play more, especially Tim O’Brien. So why walk off the stage at all?
Of course the show did have to end, but judging from the buzz on the way out, few were left wanting for a better performance.
(review contributed by Scott Miles)
