Tim O’Brien and Jan Fabricius chat with KGNU’s Robin Claire at the RockyGrass festival. Tim and Jan discuss their musical journey and the creation of their recent albums. The duo talks about collaborating on new songs, testing them in live performances before recording, and their ongoing work with Tom Paxton. Tim shares insights into his songwriting process, particularly during the pandemic, and his approach to crossing genre boundaries (Interview date: 7/30/2024)
Robin Claire: All right, good afternoon everyone here at RockyGrass, the 52nd up here in Lyons, Colorado. We’re here today with Jan Fabricius and Tim O’Brien. Welcome! We missed you last year.
Tim, a question for you, since we’re here at RockyGrass, and Colorado holds a lot of musical memories for you, and the Folklore Center as well down in Denver. It seems to me like Hot Rize was partially born out of those Tuesday nights at the Concert Hall at the Folklore Center.
Tim O’Brien: Yeah, Before there was an internet, you could go to the Denver Folklore Center and meet people and find out what was going on in the local area. Meet up with other musicians, maybe get a job there. We would get gigs. Pete and I would be teaching lessons and Charles would be behind the counter of the music store and Nick would be in the repair shop. Charles would answer the phone and they’d say, “We need a square dance band for a wedding.” He’d say, “Hold on a minute.” Then he’d go ask us if we could play. So pretty soon we were a band.
Robin Claire: Yeah, it was so fun. Bev Schwar used to work at the bead shop and she would make a new chalk sign every Tuesday. It would be the “Rambling Driftos” or “The Drambling Rifters” or something like that.
Tim O’Brien: I forgot that Bev did the posters. I have a calendar from those years and it’s pretty cool.
Robin Claire: That’s a unique thing to have in this day and age. Tell us a little bit about the creation of your new album.
Tim O’Brien: After a year and a half or so, it’s kind of time to make a new record, and hopefully you’ve got some new songs. That’s the simplest way of describing it. But as the years have gone on, Jan and I are collaborating on stage, but also as songwriters. So we have more than one song on there. We have “She Can’t, He Won’t and They’ll Never”. So that’s cool. It’s like music just starts right at the house.
Jan Fabricius: That record came out a year and a couple months ago, last spring. And we’ve been working on a new one.
Tim O’Brien: Jan and I play as a duo quite a bit, so we test the material out that way before we get to the studio sometimes, and then also before we bring it to the band.
Jan Fabricius: He did “He Walked On” during the pandemic. Then this was the follow up to that, where you were just writing a lot of songs. Animal songs.
Tim O’Brien: Had a lot of animal songs. One of them, “Bear”, I started thinking about the threatened invasion of Ukraine and about the Russian bear. I was just thinking about people that feel like their way of life is threatened, and their back’s against the wall, so they lash out, and it’s unfortunate. That’s a little bit of that in there.
Robin Claire: Yes, and unfortunately it’s rampant, right?
Tim O’Brien: It’s rampant, yeah, it’s happening everywhere. It’s a backlash of culture, advancement and modern norms against old timey norms.
Robin Claire: I know so many artists came out with their pandemic albums. I haven’t really done a cross-listen to see the vibe of where they all fit together, or if you could in 20 years go, oh yeah, that must have been made during the pandemic when everybody was at home using what they’ve got and getting into some beautiful creative spaces.
Tim O’Brien: There’s a couple springtime songs. “Let the Horses Run” is about being pent up inside and it’s time to cut loose. I suppose that goes with post-pandemic desires.
Robin Claire: Jan, what’s it like when you have a song that Tim’s written or you and Tim have written? You call all the guys in the band and say, okay, let’s go into the studio. And of course they’ve heard it before, and you’ve practiced it and everything. But what’s the actual process like when you’re bringing a song to the band? And of course you’re working with master musicians.
Jan Fabricius: Yes. It’s like Tim said, we’re working on those at our gigs, with the band and practicing them before we ever get into the studio. Some of them. These guys make it easy. They’re pretty good.
Robin Claire: Has there ever been a song that comes to mind where it was harder to gel everybody than another, or is everyone so professional that everyone’s ideas just click because you’ve been playing so long together?
Jan Fabricius: When we’re working them out, Bub will have an idea of how things might go. Gila Headwaters is a little bit dissonant, so we made up an arrangement of that and that took a little bit of practicing and zoning in on it, didn’t it, Tim?
Tim O’Brien: Yeah, we had some additional helpers beyond the stage band. We had some drummers.
Jan Fabricius: Yeah, that’s true for the recording.
Tim O’Brien: For instance, we recorded “Cup of Sugar” and “Bear”. Some other songs from the same session made the record, but I didn’t feel like they were right, so we stripped them back.
Jan Fabricius: Yeah, we did them again.
Tim O’Brien: We did them again, and I think it was a good idea. I could actually afford to take my time. It was nice. Let it sit. It’s not the most efficient thing to try stuff out in the studio and fail and not use it because you’re spending money, but it was worth it.
Robin Claire: I’m sure you have a bunch of songs that are there, waiting to get worked and finished.
Jan Fabricius: Yeah, we’ve been writing with Tom Paxton. I think we’ve written 21 songs with him since May of last year.
Tim O’Brien: Yeah, so about a year and some months.
Jan Fabricius: And then Tim and I have a few more, and he’s been writing a lot, co-writing on his own outside of that.
Tim O’Brien: It’s really nice with Tom because he likes to have a weekly Zoom. So we have to come up with something every week, and we have.
Jan Fabricius: Yeah, one or the other, or sometimes just out of nowhere. Tim was riffing around, and Tom said, that sounds like “Fat Pile of Puppies”. 45 minutes later, we had a really cool song called “Fat Pile of Puppies”.
Tim O’Brien: He’s great because he’s such a veteran. I think that’s what gets him out of bed every day is to write songs. He’s still touring but he’s trying to stop at 86 years old. He’s really excited about writing.
Robin Claire: How great that you get to do that.
Tim O’Brien: It’s like you learn that you don’t have to be so precious and you don’t have to worry about it. You just throw stuff out and come up with whatever you can and do the best you can. Call it a day, maybe you can go back and fix it, but maybe it’s really good. An, just trusting yourself and not taking it too seriously is really important. Great lesson from him.
Robin Claire: Yeah. No wonder it’s a great lesson from him if he’s 86, right? That’s something you learn as you get older. The pressure is off.
Tim, you’ve done so many, you’ve done the Bob Dylan Red on Blonde CD and album. Can we expect a Tim O’Brien, Jan Fabricius, Tom Paxton album?
Jan Fabricius: That’s pretty much what we have recorded.
Tim O’Brien: We have a lot of that recorded and it’s not all collaborations with Tom, but it’s quite a few. We could trim the others off and make it a nice thing, but I think we’ll leave the other ones in there. I don’t know. It’s been sitting there for a month or so.
Jan Fabricius: Now we’ve written more songs and I’m wondering if we might need to make two records. Tom’s excited because we’re doing some of them on stage now and we’ll do one or two of them today. Certainly two of them. Tom’s really loving that we’re putting them out there.
Robin Claire: Great. I hope he knows he can listen in.
Tim O’Brien: I texted him. I haven’t heard back, but maybe he’s listening right now.
Robin Claire: Oh good. I hope he stays tuned for the afternoon in that case. Tim, so many people consider you the writer’s writer. You’ve crossed genres. It’s bluegrass. It’s Irish. It’s Americana. What do you think about all of those categories? Are you just over them?
Tim O’Brien: I’ve never paid attention to the borders of things.
Jan Fabricius: These songs have a variety of sounds to them.
Tim O’Brien: It doesn’t really make sense to me, but it’s nice to have a handle to carry things around and say, oh, I’m a bluegrass artist. If you stay within the realm of instrumentation, and you give enough, you step into the center now and again so that you reassure everybody, but also because you like to.
Robin Claire: Of course.
Tim O’Brien: I can still be a bluegrass artist and it’s cool that way. The borders don’t really make sense, except for people that need to advertise it.
Robin Claire: That’s very true. Yeah, we’ve been talking about songwriting and my gosh, accomplished musician to say the least. So tell us about how it is for you with this new album. Are you playing mostly fiddle?
Tim O’Brien: Actually, since Jan and I have been playing a lot, she’s been playing the mandolin, and I wanted to get back to the guitar, which is my original instrument. So I’ve been playing the guitar on stage and I bring the fiddle with me when we do duo shows.
Jan Fabricius: Sometimes you’ll do a twin with Shad, but mostly Shad has the fiddle.
Tim O’Brien: I used to bring three instruments, and I realized that one of them would just mostly sit there. I just try to get over that.The guitar kind of satisfies most of the needs, and that’s great. All these years I’ve been playing music for a living. For 50 years, I always played some on my own and some with bands.
The guitar is the thing where it all starts. The guitar is better to lead the band. It’s the center of it, and it all comes from that. I love the mandolin and the fiddle and the banjo and all that, but when we have the band, they’re there playing those instruments, so why would I play them?
Robin Claire: Yeah, I was thinking about when you guys are playing together.
Jan Fabricius: He’s still doing a lot of sessions, though, with all the other instruments.
Robin Claire: Oh, sure, yeah. As a traveling musician, going across oceans, what’s the most important thing you do to take care of your instruments traveling all over the place?
Tim O’Brien: Don’t plan too much. Social obligations are a little bit of a distraction. It’s important to keep time for buffer zones around the activities you have. So if you’re late, then you’re not stressed as much if you’ve got an extra hour, two hours built in. That kind of thing.
People want to go out to dinner. They’re like, oh, you’re coming to town, can we meet, can we go out after? Why don’t you come over to our house? And then you’ll go and there’ll be like 15 people there. We can’t predict what’s gonna happen.
Jan Fabricius: It’s not that we don’t want to socialize.
Tim O’Brien: But we also have to make sure we get enough sleep.
Robin Claire: Yeah, and for taking care of your instruments?
Jan Fabricius: You don’t leave them in the car, you bring them in, you play them a lot, change the strings, instrument maintenance. We have them with us all the time.
Tim O’Brien: We’re lucky, nothing’s broken so far.
Robin Claire: Oh, that’s beautiful. You’ve got all your instruments. Thank you so much Jan Fabricius and Tim O’Brien. So great to see you guys again.
