[Announcer] This program is brought to you in part by Santa Cruz Guitars Company and Santa Cruz Parabolic Tension Strings and the Santa Cruz Guitar PLEK Department.

And by Peluso Microphone Lab.

Additional support provided by these sponsors.

Hello, and welcome to The Life of a Musician.

Tonight's episode is recorded live from the Gerst House.

Let's step inside and listen.

["Let the Horses Run" instrumental music playing] ♪ All week long The rain came down ♪ ♪ Last night the weather broke ♪ ♪ Now the sun shines down On new grass ♪ ♪ And steam comes up Like smoke ♪ ♪ There's chores That I can finally do ♪ ♪ But I'll leave them All undone ♪ ♪ It's time to Open up the gate And let the horses run ♪ ♪ Let the horses run (Let the horses run) ♪ ♪ Let the horses run (Let the horses run) ♪ ♪ Time to open up the gate And let the horses run ♪ [mandolin instrumental music] ♪ I'll leave the harness hanging Up above the plow ♪ ♪ It's too wet for planting So it can wait for now ♪ ♪ Winter's finally over And Spring's not quite begun ♪ ♪ It's time to open up the gate And let the horses run ♪ ♪ Let the horses run (Let the horses run) ♪ ♪ Let the horses run (Let the horses run) ♪ ♪ Time to open up the gate And let the horses run ♪ [perky guitar music] ♪ Out on the southwest 40 ♪ ♪ There's some fence I need to mend ♪ ♪ But it's also true I'm overdue To catch up with my friends ♪ ♪ I'll change my jeans And drive to town ♪ ♪ To try to find some fun ♪ ♪ It's time to open up the gate And let the horses run ♪ ♪ Let the horses run (Let the horses run) ♪ ♪ Let the horses run (Let the horses run) ♪ ♪ Time to open up the gate And let the horses run ♪ [mandolin and guitar chords] ♪ All week long The rain came down ♪ ♪ Last night the weather broke ♪ ♪ The sun shines down On new grass ♪ ♪ And steam comes up Like smoke ♪ ♪ There's chores That I can finally do ♪ ♪ But I'll leave them All undone ♪ ♪ It's time to open up the gate And let the horses run ♪ ♪ Let the horses run (Let the horses run) ♪ ♪ Let the horses run (Let the horses run) ♪ ♪ Time to open up the gate And let the horses run ♪ ♪ Let the horses run (Let the horses run) ♪ ♪ Let the horses run (Let the horses run) ♪ ♪ Time to open up the gate And let the horses run ♪ -Yeah, man.

Mr. Tim O'Brien.

-A little jam session in your house here.

-Absolutely.

But don't tell my address though.

-[chuckles] Okay.

-Well, hello, folks, and welcome to The Life of a Musician .

I'm your host, Brandon Lee Adams, and thank you very, very much for joining us on this very special episode with one of my absolute musical heroes, influences, whatever you want to call it, Mr. Tim O'Brien, and his amazing, lovely, wonderful wife Ms. Jan Fabricius, or also, Mrs. O'Brien as I-- [chuckles] the carrier of the checkbook.

[Jan Fabricius chuckles] -She's-- we call her the Janinger.

Her middle name is Renee.

So she has a management company, Renee Janinger Management.

-Oh wow, the Janinger.

Wow.

Thank you, guys, so much for coming down here.

[Tim O'Brien] Oh, we're happy to be here.

It's a beautiful place to be here.

-One of the many things that you were telling me this morning is you and Jan got out and were walking around the town and just, you know, kind of checking out everything that's going on, the historic sites.

Is that something you guys just like doing?

-Well, you know, yeah, we like to get around and see the sites and get to know where we're gonna be, you know, maybe ahead of time.

-You've had such a, kind of a... just this amazing eclectic kind of career where, I guess, where do you say it starts?

For me, it was like, as a fan, you know, "Odd Man In," I was telling you earlier, was like the first album that I discovered your music on, but then I went back and oh, here's Hot Rize, and this is kind of pre-- -Yeah, my collaborations with Hot Rize and, you know, other situations where there's a little bit more of a focus.

When it gets left to me, the focus kind of goes all over every which way, you know, it's very eclectic.

There's one from column A, a couple from column B, one from column C and so on, you know.

The best I've been able to do is just to make all those different directions kind of have some kind of unifying thing.

And I guess it's just me playing and singing them, and playing in an acoustic format, you know.

-Well, that's one, yeah, I agree a thousand percent.

It's like if you listen to Red Knuckles, and you listen to Hot Rize, and then you listen to The Oh Boys.

You know, to me, to my ear, you know, you know you're playing something different, and you have this ability to play with a different feel.

But it's still always you.

I mean, how do you do that?

-Well, you can't get away from yourself.

You know, actually, this calls to mind the Thelonious Monk's Rules of Music.

I don't know if you've ever seen that.

He wrote it down for one of his side men one time, and it's become kind of a cult book of rules.

And one of the great rules is, the genius is the one who sounds most like himself.

[Brandon] Huh.

-I thought, you know, I thought that's great.

That's the best advice you could ever get.

Just be yourself.

And I mean, you can't escape yourself.

So, you know, you can try to imitate people.

That's something I learned from Darrell Scott too, and we were playing a lot of music together when we started.

And I just went-- I wondered, you know, should I only play original music, or should I only play traditional music because people seem to do one or the other.

And, with playing with Darrell, I realized there was no way I could try to recreate Hank Williams.

I mean, I could try to, but it wouldn't happen.

And also, I can't be completely original.

I'm always referring to what went before.

So, just get over it and play music, and see what happens, you know.

It's all just kind of full steam ahead without knowing what I'm doing.

[laughs] -I can actually relate to that.

So-- Well, you just, like I said, you have this ability to just fit into anything but still be yourself.

And that's also on the instruments.

Like, I can tell when you're doing a fiddle break, or it's you on the mandolin, or a bouzouki or a guitar.

Do you have like, I hate asking songwriter-- songwriter questions because it's like, you don't really know where it comes from sometimes, but... -Yeah.

I don't really know.

I know that, for instance, like John Hartford said, you know, I'm pulling up a lot of names here.

But John Hartford said, he didn't really differentiate between what instrument he played.

It was still the same music.

He might play "Gentle On My Mind" on the banjo one night, and on the guitar another night, on a fiddle another night, and it still sounded like John Hartford.

And that's really the best you can possibly do.

So, I don't know.

The attitude is sort of... there is some kind of unifying thing that maybe you wanna be able to be recognized, you know.

[Brandon] Right.

-Lester Flatt said another thing.

He said, you know, if you want to build a career, do something nobody else does, you know.

Then they have to get you if they want that.

[chuckles] And so, I can't help myself.

I just do what I do.

-Well, it's-- [Tim O'Brien] Eventually, it works out.

-That's really, really some just great advice to take to heart.

I think it's kind of been a unifying thread between really many, many of the guests we've had on this show is everybody's kind of been, comfortable with being themselves, however long it took.

They found a place where it's like, I'm okay with being me.

And that's, then everything else happened.

-Well, it takes a while, I think, to get comfortable, you know.

I know some people that come out of a box, you know, they come on the scene as musicians or artists, and they're fully formed.

They know exactly who they are.

For me, it was a stumble, stumble, and sort of take this and build on this, and discard the other stuff that didn't work, and sooner or later, you kind of are on this path.

-You've got this new album coming out.

It's already out.

But by the time this airs, it will have been out for a while.

You know, what was kind of the genesis of this album?

-Well, the record before this came out in 2021, and that was a real kind of pandemic and, you know, Black Lives Matter kind of response, you know.

This one is a little bit more optimistic.

[laughs] "Cup Of Sugar."

And it's all songs written in the last, you know, couple of years.

And, you know, I'm just responding to what I see, and just trying to come up with stuff.

You know, I had some nice co-writers, Ronnie Bowman and Jonathon Byrd from down in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Jan Fabricius and I wrote a few songs which we really like.

And, who was some of the other... oh-- -Thomm.

Thomm Jutz.

- Thomm Jutz.

Yeah, he's a great writer.

And there's one more and his name is Shawn Camp.

- Yeah.

-So, I don't know.

The co-writers had something to do with it, for sure.

But then, there's a bunch of songs that I wrote like this last one we did, and wrote a song about Walter Cronkite.

It's just Walter Cronkite.

That's been on my mind to write a song about Walter Cronkite for a long time.

And just because the way we used to get the news was so different.

You know, you had a choice.

You know, you watch one of the three channels the news was on at the same time, so you chose one or the other.

And our family was a Huntley-Brinkley family.

[Brandon] Okay.

-But I liked Walter Cronkite in that he, you know, he liked to say, "That's the way it is", and... but I just like the idea that things were simpler then, but they weren't perfect then, either.

-[Brandon] Right.

-If you read about Walter Cronkite, he went through hell trying to be neutral and balanced.

And that's what they're trying to do, but, you know, nowadays we have a 24-hour news cycle.

Back then, they had 23-and-a-half minutes to tell you the whole day's news.

-[Brandon] Yeah.

-[Tim O'Brien laughs] -That is actually something that's pretty crazy to think about.

Now, you can just get a 23-minute YouTube clip of the highlights.

Crazy.

Is there another song that you'd like to play off the project?

-Yeah.

We wanna do-- let's do the title one, "Cup of Sugar."

You know...

I guess some of the things about this record I've noticed, there's a lot of songs-- well, there's a bunch of animal songs.

We had the horses, and there's a song with lambs and fish and dog.

[laughs] A bear.

[Brandon] Okay.

Yeah.

I like the bear.

I like that.

-This next song, "Cup of Sugar," I wrote with Jonathon Byrd, and it reflects, I guess, growing up in a kind of neighborhood that looked like the sitcoms, really, that I watched on TV.

[chuckles] Leave it to Beaver , Father Knows Best , Ozzie and Harriet , that kind of thing.

We had great neighbors.

And nowadays, it's a little different.

We don't know our neighbors as well.

We know their names, but we don't interface near as much as we used to, you know, back when I was growing up, anyway.

But, this kind of harkens back to that.

And also, the day before I got with Jonathon to write, I was talking to a friend who asked me to intervene in a long-standing feud between another friend and him.

And I told him, I really don't wanna get involved.

I might be on the outs if I try to be the negotiator.

I'll be the villain eventually, and I'll stay out of it.

So, when I got with Jonathon the next day, I said, let's write about neighbors and the fence between you.

It's really a valuable thing.

"A Cup of Sugar."

A one, a two.

A one, two, three, and-- ["Cup of Sugar" instrumental music playing] ♪ My neighbor plays his music ♪ ♪ For our whole neighborhood ♪ ♪ I wouldn't really Mind the volume ♪ ♪ If his taste was any good ♪ ♪ He said he saw me On the TV ♪ ♪ Said he kind of Liked my song ♪ ♪ I'll be honest It surprised me ♪ Maybe he's not always wrong ♪ ♪ I try to pick my battles ♪ ♪ Don't want to start a war ♪ ♪ If I need a cup of sugar ♪ ♪ I'll knock on my neighbor's door ♪ [guitar and mandolin chords] ♪ I see him out A lot more often ♪ ♪ Now the weather's nice again ♪ ♪ If people ever Saw us talking ♪ ♪ They might even think We're friends ♪ ♪ Twenty years He's been my neighbor ♪ ♪ Still don't know What makes him tick ♪ ♪ One rule that I know to follow ♪ ♪ Don't bring up politics ♪ ♪ I try to pick my battles ♪ ♪ I don't want to start a war ♪ ♪ If I need a cup of sugar ♪ ♪ I'll knock on My neighbor's door ♪ [guitar and mandolin chords] ♪ We watched our kids Grow up together ♪ ♪ Called them in When it got dark outside ♪ ♪ I loaned him my tools ♪ ♪ Swam in his pool ♪ ♪ Bought casseroles When somebody died ♪ [guitar and mandolin chords] ♪ Now my neighbor's On vacation ♪ ♪ On some western Tourist trail ♪ ♪ I'll cut his grass When it gets tall ♪ ♪ I told him I'd take in his mail ♪ ♪ In this world There's lots of trouble ♪ ♪ Doesn't matter where you are ♪ ♪ Jesus said To love your neighbor ♪ ♪ But you don't have to Go that far ♪ ♪ I try to pick my battles ♪ ♪ I don't want to start a war ♪ ♪ If I need a cup of sugar ♪ ♪ I'll knock on My neighbor's door ♪ ♪ I'm gonna walk around The fence between us ♪ ♪ Won't go running To the store ♪ ♪ If I need a cup of sugar ♪ ♪ I'll knock on My neighbor's door ♪ -That was really great, guys.

That was really, like I said, one of the things I think I always loved about when I first heard you is like your lyrics.

They're not just-- they're something that sticks with you, something that makes you think.

-Yeah, it's a trick.

You know, there's a lot of discards in writing, you know.

You write some lines and then you kind of can see where they're weak, and you try to find a better one, you know, to tell the story.

It's nice to be able to tell the story without really saying exactly what you're saying.

That's another thing, like with details, just little details of sights and smells and sounds and tangible things, you know.

-[Brandon] Yeah.

-And then, in between, if there's a meaning maybe there somewhere.

-Yeah, it's definitely there.

It's definitely a "make you think" kind of thing.

And you guys sound like really good together.

-Thank you.

We like playing together.

[chuckles] -It's almost, you know, you hear that old saying, like the family blend.

But you're definitely not family, you're just married.

You're just such a tight blend.

Is that just from doing it, or just-- -I guess so.

[chuckles] -I'll tell you, Brandon, we started dating, and I knew that Jan played the mandolin a little bit.

So, we got the mandolins out and we played, and then we played for a while.

And then I said, do you ever sing?

And she started singing harmony and I went, wow, wow.

-[Brandon] It was love at first hearing.

-It's helped our marriage.

[all laugh together] -So, you kind of in this, you know, point in your career, is it kind of like you just kind of-- are you at the place where you can do kind of what you wanna do?

Or kind of what you feel like doing?

-Kind of, yeah.

I mean, that started, that direction sort of started when I sold some songs to Kathy Mattea back in 1989, '90.

-[Brandon] Nice.

Yeah.

-She had some success on country radio with a couple songs, recorded a couple other ones.

And I went, wow, if I just do this and get this happen every once in a while, I can just try to make the kind of music that I-- you know, study on what it is that I wanna to do or find it, you know, kind of wander a little bit.

It wasn't as much pressure.

That stuff all came along.

I'd been in Hot Rize for ten years.

We started in 1978, and we wrote-- that was the beginning of writing songs, really.

I mean, I'd written songs before that time, but when I got with those guys, it looked like we were gonna make records, and it would be a good idea to have original songs.

So, I kind of learned a lot about the music business and about songwriting and recordings through them.

And when I got those, you know, a couple top ten country songs, I went, wow, I have a second career here, if I want to pursue that.

But I didn't want to give up the performing, so... -[Brandon] Mm-hmm.

-Every once in a while, I sell a song and then I just kind of go about my business trying to find my way, you know, find my own voice as a musician, as a performer.

-It kind of sounds like paradise.

-Well, it's a... it is.

I mean, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of stuff you have to do to prop all that up.

But it is pretty good.

You know, you're on the phone.

You're looking at your calendar and you're working in an office.

-You have your own record label.

-Yeah, I eventually started my own record label, so I got all that to do.

And... but, you know, I'd already done a fair amount of that stuff.

Starting the record label was a no-brainer because it just seemed like things were growing, but not really quickly.

So, I could just kinda... instead of giving money to the middleman, I could just sort of jump in there and kind of continue it.

And yeah, it started-- I had a record with Dirk Powell and John Herrmann.

It was kind of a companion to the Civil War novel "Cold Mountain."

-[Brandon] Okay.

Yeah.

-And it was called "Songs from the Mountain."

And that's when the record label started because we thought-- well, we mistakenly thought because they sold three million copies of the book, we would sell maybe a million records, and we should make the money.

[Brandon laughs] -We learned a lot about legalities and movie rights and that kind of thing, and stumbled on that.

But we did start a record label and kept at it.

"Thinking Like A Fish."

A one, two.

A one, two, three and-- ["Thinking Like A Fish" instrumental music playing] ♪ I can feel your footsteps ♪ ♪ Sneaking up on me ♪ ♪ I can see your shadow ♪ ♪ Where no shadow used to be ♪ ♪ Down here on the bottom ♪ ♪ Life is looking up ♪ ♪ But I'm waiting On the real thing ♪ ♪ Right now I'll call your bluff ♪ ♪ I might take a nibble ♪ ♪ Or take a closer look ♪ ♪ But I can see the sunshine ♪ ♪ Reflecting off your hook ♪ ♪ I don't want your frying pan ♪ ♪ I won't be your dish ♪ ♪ Swimming against the current ♪ ♪ Thinking like a fish ♪ [guitar and mandolin chords] ♪ I'd rather be here swimmin' ♪ ♪ Underneath this waterfall ♪ ♪ Than to be another trophy ♪ ♪ Just hangin' on your wall ♪ ♪ I'm older and I'm wiser ♪ ♪ You know I ain't no child ♪ ♪ The only way I got this big ♪ ♪ Is lovin' free and wild ♪ ♪ I might take a nibble ♪ ♪ Take a closer look ♪ ♪ But I can see the sunshine ♪ ♪ Reflecting off your hook ♪ ♪ I don't want your frying pan ♪ ♪ I won't be your dish ♪ ♪ I swim against the current ♪ ♪ Thinkin' like a fish ♪ [guitar and mandolin chords] ♪ I think back on My younger days ♪ ♪ Back when I was in school ♪ ♪ Times I watched My best friend ♪ ♪ Get played just like a fool ♪ ♪ So watch out For that pretty thing ♪ ♪ She catches lots of guys ♪ ♪ She might rip your cheek ♪ ♪ And throw you back ♪ ♪ So look before you rise ♪ ♪ I might take a nibble ♪ ♪ Take a closer look ♪ ♪ But I can see the sunshine ♪ ♪ Reflecting off your hook ♪ ♪ I don't want your frying pan ♪ ♪ I won't be your dish ♪ ♪ I swim against the current ♪ ♪ Thinkin' like a fish ♪ ♪ Like a fish ♪ [guitar and mandolin chords] -Awesome, man.

Well, that's gonna do it for this episode with Tim and Jan.

But keep watching, and we'll catch them on yet another episode next week.

And I wanna thank you folks for joining us here on The Life of a Musician .

And God bless, and be well.

[Announcer] Thank you for being a part of our show.

We look forward to seeing you on the next episode of The Life of a Musician.

["Thinking Like A Fish" instrumental music playing] ♪ I can feel your footsteps Sneakin' up on me ♪ ♪ I can see your shadow Where no shadow used to be ♪ ♪ Down here on the bottom... ♪ [Announcer] This program is brought to you in part by Santa Cruz Guitars Company and Santa Cruz Parabolic Tension Strings.

And the Santa Cruz Guitar PLEK Department.

And by Peluso Microphone Lab.

Additional support provided by these sponsors.