Two Journeys

1	Turning Around 3:35
2	Mick Ryan's Lament 3:20
3	For the Fallen 3:21
4	Paddy Fahey's/Garret Barry's the Cliffs of Moher 5:22
5	The Apple Press/The Apple Cart 3:34
6	Demon Lover 5:20
7	The Holy Well 3:17
8	Me and Dirk's Trip to Ireland 2:36
9	The Lancer's Jig/Gusty's Frolicks 2:37
10	What Does the Deep Sea Say? 4:17
11	Two Journeys (Deux Voyages) 4:19
12	The Tide Flows into Miltown 6:00
13	Pear Tree/Muddy Roads/Ladies' Pantelettes 3:37
14	Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) 4:05

Barnes & Noble

Stringed instrument virtuoso Tim O'Brien continues his exploration of Celtic music traditions in America with Two Journeys, a follow-up to The Crossing, the acclaimed outset of his journey. Blending powerful original songs with carefully chosen traditional fare, O'Brien surveys the passions, the hopes, the dreams, and the folkways of a people as if he had been traveling through time to bear witness to all the triumph and tragedy the years have wrought. With a stellar supporting cast of American and Irish musicians pitching in -- Paul Brady, Darrell Scott, Maura O'Connell, and Karan Casey -- O'Brien stirs the soul and moves the heart with these powerful, often heartbreaking stories. "Mick Ryan's Lament" is essentially the last will and testament of a 7th Cavalry soldier riding to his doom at the Little Bighorn as the poignant Irish marching theme "Garryowen" (Custer's favorite) plays in the background. Accompanying himself on bouzouki and fiddle, and harmonizing evocatively with Karan Casey (a dead ringer vocally for the young Marianne Faithfull), O'Brien conjures an unsettling ambience as he deepens the mystery of the "Demon Lover," a song dating back to 1657. "Me and Dirk's Trip to Ireland" serves as a respite to the serious texts preceding it, being a good-time workout of fiddle, accordion, and banjo bolstering a spirited O'Brien vocal. Step-dancers need be ready for the sprightly instrumental "The Lancer's Jig/Gusty's Frolicks," with O'Brien's angular soloing on mandolin ably answered by Niall Vallely on concertina and John Williams on piano. The surprise ending to this trip is a haunting version of Lennon and McCartney's "Norwegian Wood," with whistle, fiddle, and pipes replacing George Harrison's sitar. It brings O'Brien to the shores of Liverpool, that most Irish of English cities, and sets the stage for the next chapter. So far the trip's been exhilarating. David McGee

All Music Guide

Itinerant American folk musician Tim O'Brien has been on a tear since 1996's Red on Blonde, bluegrass interpretations of Bob Dylan songs (and don't laugh, it stands as one of the very finest Dylan tributes ever recorded). Since that time he has issued collaborations with Dirk Powell and John Hermann (Songs From the Mountain -- inspired by the novel Cold Mountain) and Darrell Scott (Real Time), as well as issuing the original inspiration for this recording, The Crossing in 1999, which offered a rootsy musician's ear-view of how Irish music informed the folk traditions of the American South and found a home in a mutated yet no less soulful form. Two Journeys is The Crossing's mirror image. This album shows O'Brien -- and a company of the British Isles and American South's finest musicians -- looking toward the coastlines of Ireland to express those traditions as they prepared to leave the homeland for the "new world." Digging deep into his own bag of folk songs, traditional ballads, and a few slick bluegrass moves, O'Brien has managed to tell a story, mostly with his own songs, of the cultural miscegenation that took place in the vast Irish exodus during and after the potato famine. From the opening track, "Turning Around," we hear the song of a captain in the middle of the Atlantic, looking back on the homeland with a sense of loss, regret, and heartbreak, and toward the new with a shred of hope, fear, and trepidation. This leads into the glorious swagger of "Mick Ryan's Lament" by Robert Lee Dunlap. The tune extrapolates "Garryowen," George Custer's marching song that was likely his final one at Little Big Horn. And then we're off, deep into the middle ground of a sea rife for the picking with fiddle tunes, jigs, reels, bluegrass, folk-blues and Celtic soul. With help from the aforementioned Yankees, and Paddy Keenan on uilleann pipes, traditional percussionist Kevin Burke, keyboard work from Triona No Drohmnaill, and the vocal support of Karan Casey and Maura O'Connell, O'Brien doesn't merely create facsimiles of Irish songs, but showcases the log, knotty rope between traditions, being not part one or the other but fully both. The most moving track on the disc, and also its most spooky, is "Demon Lover," a duet between O'Brien and Casey. It's a ballad so old it nearly dates antiquity, the rendering here, which doesn't even resemble modern versions, is chock full of pathos, lust, and regret. This may very well be his finest outing. Thom Jurek