8/13/2023 0 Comments More love tim obrien tabI wanted to show the breadth of the music but hang together as a project. It was really hard to pick a short set of songs. “Old Memories” is another standout on the record. I’m seeing life from a similar perspective. I read it over and over as the years go by, and I find new things of interest, because I’m closer and closer to the age she was when she wrote it. The book is a great reference for me to remember things. I read this now and go, ‘My god, you poor thing.’” She said, “I’ll never get over it, but I know better now what I was going through.” She’s a great storyteller. The letter itself is saying all the stuff you would normally say.īut when she comments on the letter, she says something like, “I was just in a really bad way. Then, she also comments on the letter in the same section of the book and how she was in such shock and mourning. There’s a letter that she wrote to her parents and made copies to her siblings about the experience of her daughter dying. They had postponed it, and she was like, “Well, I gotta do something to keep my mind occupied.” So, she decided to write her autobiography. My mother wrote her autobiography later in life, and she was supposed to have hip replacement. In the song, you reference a letter your mother wrote about losing her daughter. There are so many people I know that have come up to me and said, “It really hits me.” These things songwriters and artists do they mostly mirror what other people have experienced. A lot of people might not be able to sing a song like that, but I’ve been through this stuff so much. I had sort of processed a lot of this already anyway. I remember looking at it and going, “There’s a lot in there that I need to process.” The song was a very easy song to write. She put it into a new frame and fixed it up and hung it up on the wall. We had it out for awhile, and the frame was busted. It was only really about four or five years ago that Jan got the picture out. I always associated it with my lost sister. It really is among some of my earliest memories. I mean, I looked at it and I couldn’t remember when it wasn’t around. But with my sister who died when I was not quite two, I got this picture out that had been in a box in the attic for probably 30 years or longer. I had written about that before and also referenced my sister on “It Takes Time to Learn.” There’s another song I wrote called “The Church Steeple” that references that, too. He was very encouraging to me about the music and fed me influences that he was interested in with the records that he brought home from college. My oldest brother, Frank, we call him Tripp, he died in Vietnam when I was 14. Well, my whole adult life, really, I’ve been grappling with the implications of losing a sibling. The song that hits the most on Where the River Meets the Road is “Guardian Angel.” What led you to write about the death of your sister? The last time I played was when J ayme Stone’s Lomax Project played there, which was probably about four years ago.”Īhead of the show, he spoke to us about his latest album, why he chose to leave West Virginia, how writing about the death of his sister began and his live performance style. “I’ve played a couple times now at Carnegie Hall. It’s the only one that I can think of that’s like that. Next month, O’Brien is set to make his big return to Lewisburg with a September 14 show at Carnegie Hall, alongside his partner and accomplished singer, songwriter and musician Jan Fabricius. Most of my life has been out of the state, so it is definitely great to bring it home,” he tells HashtagWV about how the album is almost a full circle for him. “I was always aware that there was a lot of great music from the state, but I learned a lot about it. The record is a dedication to his early roots in West Virginia and woven with snapshots of a simpler time amongst the Appalachian hills, honoring the past, its people and where he has gone since his youth. “Angel” is lifted from O’Brien’s most recent studio record, 2017’s Where the River Meets the Road, a playful mix of life’s sorrow and joy, wrapped neatly with gentle, well-crafted fiddle, guitar, mandolin and light drum work. “There’s not much to know.” While that might be true, the song embodies that delicate, innocent spirit in a truly cathartic and momentous way. “I don’t know much about her,” he then observes. He’s stored that part away in his heart, and while he has made reference to his sister’s death in previous work, “Guardian Angel” rises as a profound and emotional tribute. “Well, I lost a big sister when that picture was new / 1956, just before I turned two,” he sings. Through unpacking his heart, O’Brien comes to greater peace over a tragedy that has long been washed in faded memories. When Tim O’Brien weeps for his lost sister on “Guardian Angel,” you feel each and every syllable.
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