Tim O'Brien -- Chicken & Egg

TIM O’BRIEN
Chicken & Egg
Howdy Skies Records
timobrien.net

With the addition of Chicken & Egg, there are now a dozen Tim O’Brien albums sitting on my shelves – and that’s not including recordings he made as part of the stellar bluegrass band Hot Rize. Tim sings like a bird, plays just about any stringed instrument and any roots-oriented style with authority, is an excellent songwriter (who often writes with a fine sense of humour) and shows consistently good taste in the traditional songs he performs and in the songs from other songwriters that he chooses (his Red on Blonde is one of the best-ever albums of Bob Dylan covers).

Chicken & Egg, I think, is one of Tim’s finest. Working with some great sidemen – Stuart Duncan on fiddle and mandolin, Bryan Sutton on guitar, bassists Mike Bub and Dennis Crouch, drummer John Gardner, Ray Bonneville on harmonica, harmony singers Darrell Scott and Abigail Washburn, to name just some – Tim recorded the album off-the-floor, giving it an organic and spontaneous live feeling.

Some of my favourite tracks include “You Ate the Apple,” sung from the perspective of God giving a dressing-down to Adam and Eve which includes an order to dress-up; “The Sun Jumped Up,” a set of previously-unheard Woody Guthrie lyrics from the archives that are given a bouncy melody and arrangement by Tim that’s highly reminiscent of the traditional “Crawdad Hole”; “All I Want,” a bluesy bluegrass number about getting back home to the one he loves; “Suzanna,” written by Hall Cannon, a fiddle and banjo tune that seems to be from the perspective of a street person who may or may not know what he’s going on about; and “Workin,” a rockabilly tune that weds Guthrie-esque lyrics with a Sun-era Johnny Cash arrangement.

This is one of those albums that I know I’ll be playing a lot over a long period of time.

--Mike Regenstreif

Willie Nelson -- Country Music

WILLIE NELSON
Country Music
Rounder
willienelson.com

Willie Nelson, who turns 77 on Friday, has got to be one of the most prolific of all recording artists. He’s rooted in the Texas country tradition, but, like Ray Charles, he’s a genre-crosser who’s made compelling music in all sorts of styles. I have no idea how many albums he’s made over the years, but I’ve got more than 30 Willie Nelson keepers sitting on my shelves. (To be honest, there have also been some that haven’t made it on to my keeper shelves.)

In recent years, Nelson has released several excellent albums including Two Men with the Blues, a classy set of jazz and blues with Wynton Marsalis and his band, and Willie and the Wheel, a great western swing album with Asleep At the Wheel.

Add Country Music, recorded with a drummerless collection of A-list musicians assembled by producer T-Bone Burnett – and including Folk Roots/Folk Branches guest Riley Baugus on clawhammer banjo and Buddy Miller on electric guitar – to Nelson's list of fine recent albums. This one rooted, as the album title implies, in traditional country music. Most of the songs are bona fide classics.

The album opens “Man with the Blues,” the only Nelson original, an old-school honky tonk tune like the kind of songs Nelson was probably singing back in the 1950s, and closes with a deep-from-the-well arrangement of “Nobody’s Fault But Mine,” an African American gospel tune that's given a haunting arrangement featuring Nelson stalwart Mickey Raphael on bass harmonica, Dennis Crouch’s heartbeat bass playing and some eerie guitar interplay between Nelson on gut string acoustic and Miller on electric.

One of my favourite tracks is an exciting rendition of f the Delmore Brothers’ “Freight Train Boogie” which, like Doc Watson’s version, you can’t help but feel the train boogieing down the tracks.

Other highlights include Merle Travis’ coalmining classic, “Dark as a Dungeon,” the tongue-in-cheek “Pistol Packin’ Mama,” and a sweet version of Hank Williams’ “House of Gold” that seems like a traditional folksong.

--Mike Regenstreif