Fiddler's Green

1	Pretty Fair Maid in the Garden 3:51
2	Look Down That Lonesome Road 3:28
3	Fiddler's Green 3:34
4	Land's End/Chasin' Talon 4:21
5	Fair Flowers of the Valley 4:19
6	Foreign Lander 4:36
7	Buffalo Skinners 5:15
8	First Snow 2:21
9	Train on the Island 3:15
10	Long Black Veil 4:07
11	A Few More Years 4:51
12	Early Morning Rain 3:36

Barnes & Noble

In his liner notes, Tim O'Brien offers the best summary possible of his engaging Fiddler's Green album, calling it "intimate music, good for a quiet evening or morning at home. A few solos, a duet, and some spare acoustic ensembles." He's accompanied by many of the same musicians featured on Cornbread Nation, released at the same time as this project; notable additions are Nickel Creek's mandolin virtuoso, Chris Thile, on two cuts (including a featured role with a nimble, dancing solo that illuminates a yearning treatment of Gordon Lightfoot's beautiful "Early Morning Rain") and bassist nonpareil Edgar Meyer, whose sonorous acro bass provides the dirgelike bottom for O'Brien's keening vocal and fiddle on the duet "Foreign Lander." O'Brien puts his plainspoken tenor to good use on two solo numbers, his expressive vocal and driving acoustic guitar work enhancing the drama of the venerable Old West tale "Buffalo Skinners," just as his high, longing fiddle lines and deliberate, plaintive cry draw out the gothic chill in the old spiritual "A Few More Years." On an album filled with moments of inestimable beauty and heartrending tragedy, one song, "Fair Flowers Of the Valley," exemplifies the apex of both attributes. A murder ballad, its winsome Irish melody is rendered transcendent on the strength of sensitive, ethereal contributions courtesy Seamus Egan on low whistle, John Mock on harmonium, and John Doyle on bouzouki. Their piercing expressiveness could not be a more heartfelt complement to Tim and Molly O'Brien's emotional harmonizing. Like Cornbread Nation, Fiddler's Green is the work of inspired, gifted craftsmen led by O'Brien's restless intellect; collectively, their instrumental dialogue with each other is stimulating and, more to the point, always in service to each song's flesh-and-blood narrative. It amounts to a double triumph for an artist feeling his oats. David McGee

All Music Guide

In the early fall of 2005, Tim O'Brien simultaneously released two albums, Cornbread Nation and Fiddler's Green, on Sugar Hill. And while both dig deep into the fabric of American roots music, the albums also revealed O'Brien's split musical personality, a split that dates back to his work with Hot Rize/Red Knuckles & the Trailblazers during the 1980s. Fiddler's Green gives birth to the more conservative side of his neo-traditional core while still allowing him to delve into Celtic and Appalachian folk, bluegrass, and old-timey. Much of the material here, as on Cornbread Nation, is traditional, featuring well-worn icons like "Pretty Fair Maid in the Garden" and "Buffalo Skinners." As one might guess, the arrangements are fairly low-key, featuring simple banjo/guitar/mandolin setups with a few odds and ends -- bouzouki, flutes, and percussion -- thrown in to keep things interesting. The performances on Fiddler's Green are well wrought but, perhaps because of the conservative nature of the project, a bit stolid. "Buffalo Skinners" proceeds at a steady pace for over five minutes, and O'Brien, despite his fine vocal, really doesn't bring anything new to this Western saga. This is far different than his radical reworking of "Little Sadie" on 2000's Real Time with Darrell Scott. Oddly, some of the liveliest tracks, "Train on the Island" and Gordon Lightfoot's "Early Morning Rain," don't surface until the last third of the album. Fans will more than likely find Fiddler's Green enjoyable if not revelatory, while skeptics will wonder if O'Brien should've taken the best cuts from both releases and made one great album. Ronnie D. Lankford Jr.