The Crossing

1	Ireland's Green Shore 4:19
2	A Mountaineer Is Always Free 3:26
3	The Crossing 2:44
4	Into the West 4:50
5	Wagoner's Lad 4:14
6	Down in the Willow Garden 4:46
7	The Kid on the Mountain 4:49
8	Lost Little Children 3:34
9	Ireland's Green Shore Instrumental 2:12
10	John Riley 4:59
11	Rod McNeil 3:19
12	Lord McDonald/Cumberland Gap 2:25
13	Talkin' Cavan 4:26
14	The Ribbon in Your Hair 4:14
15	Yew Piney Mountain/Dusty Miller 3:55
16	Wandering 4:35

Barnes & Noble

On THE CROSSING, Grammy-nominated songwriter Tim O'Brien weaves new settings of traditional Celtic songs with original ballads, tracing journeys epic and intimate -- the westward migration of Irish and Scots to the Appalachians in the 19th century, and his own travels back to his ancestral lands. Opening on "Ireland's Green Shore," the immigrants' hopeful journey continues with "Mountaineers Are Always Free" and "Into the West." You can almost feel the forests closing in on the hard-working migrants as O'Brien and country star Kathy Mattea trade verses in a stunningly eerie version of the lament "Wagoner's Lad." O'Brien turns to the present in a humorous talkin'-blues account of his own search for ancestry in "Talkin' Cavan," and closes the disc with a haunting take on searching, traveling, and moving on in "The Wandering." In addition to Mattea, guests include blues slide guitarist Kelly Joe Phelps, bluegrass master Del McCoury, classical bassist Edgar Meyer, and fiddler Mairead ni Mhaonaigh of Altan. Kerry Dexter

All Music Guide

It might be a cliché to say that to understand where you are and where you're going, you must know where you've been, but it's a very accurate cliché -- especially when it comes to music. If you're going to have a thorough understanding of the history of country, bluegrass, and Anglo-American folk, it's important to have some knowledge of the music that paved the way for those forms -- namely, the music that immigrants from the British Isles brought with them to the U.S. On The Crossing, singer/instrumentalist Tim O'Brien does a fine job reminding listeners how great a role Celtic music played in the development of Anglo-American styles. As a vocalist, O'Brien shows how Irish and Scottish ballad traditions have influenced American folk and country, and as an instrumentalist, O'Brien (who plays fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and other instruments) shows how the jigs and reels of Ireland and Scotland paved the way for Appalachian bluegrass. A fine storyteller, he describes the experiences of Irish immigrants to the U.S. on gems like "The Crossing" and "Lost Little Children" -- and on the humorous, Bob Dylan-influenced "Talkin' Cavan," O'Brien (himself an Irish-American from West Virginia) recalls traveling to Ireland in 1998 to visit the land of his ancestors. This CD is not to be missed. Alex Henderson