Tim O’Brien with JD Hutchison & Realbilly Jive
Sat, September 24, 2016 at 8:00 PM EDT
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$25 / $30 / $35
Peoples Bank Theatre presents a special concert celebrating the album release for You and the World Outside by JD Hutchison on Howdy Skies Records, produced by Tim O’Brien.
It has been four years since Tim’s last solo recording. Between collaborations with Darrell Scott, the recent Grammy-winning recording with Jerry Douglas’s Earls of Leicester and the rebooting of Hot Rize; he’s barely had time for a shower. Still, somewhere in O’Brien’s vivid imagination, the seeds of Pompadour began to sprout. The fruits of his recent wanderings, music making and worldly observations have blossomed into eleven exquisitely varied, true-to-life and above all musical tracks.
Each of O’Brien’s solo albums has a distinctive identity. Many have specific themes, including Red on Blonde, an insightful collection of Bob Dylan compositions, and his Grammy-winning celebration of Appalachian music and its Celtic roots, Fiddler’s Green. So it is with Pompadour, or at least most of it. “It’s kind of a breakup record,” O’Brien says. “I separated from my wife four years ago and got divorced a year after that. So there’s a breakup, an assessment and ultimately delight at the end.”
What separates Pompadour from his previous thematic albums? O’Brien answers by looking back to his first nationally released album. “When I did Hard Year Blues, a friend said, ‘This is kind of like a Chinese menu; there are so many options here. What’s the theme?’ It was really eclectic. Now, with Pompadour, I’ve sort of melded things together, like the flavors in a stew.”
Pompadour swirls together bits of bluegrass, deep-roots Appalachian music, field hollers, old-school rock ‘n’ roll, traditional jazz and even James Brownian funk.
J.D. Hutchison is a native of the Appalachian region of southeastern Ohio. He was born, the second of four sons to John Williams and Emma Jane Harper Hutchison, in a tiny three-room house located one mile west of the town square in the village of Barnesville. His was a musical family. His father was a well-known guitarist and fiddler in the community; he often appeared with his wife (J.D.’s mother) as a singing duo at public functions in the area. There seemed to be an unfailing congregation of local players nearby every week at someone-or-another’s house where a plentiful table would be at the ready and music would prevail until all were played out. These conditions imbued JD from early childhood with a strong affection and affinity for tradition-based string music.
