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Giants From A Sleepy Town
$9.99
2007
BUY NOW
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“Michael O’Connor’s songs have that ring of truth. You can tell he’s not making anything up. He’s painting a picture of something that’s real. He’s been with those underdog characters; he’s lived in those boarded up towns.” — SLAID CLEAVES
In an era of American Idols, Nashville Stars and other instant music celebrities catapulted to overnight success by MySpace hits, blog buzz and Grey’s Anatomy exposure, Michael O’Connor is a true anomaly. Not, mind you, because he found fame “the old fashioned way”; after 25 years in the music business, the 43-year-old South Texan is still a long, long way from being famous. No, what makes O’Connor stand out is his innate sense of humble integrity, his passion for playing music “for the sake of the song” and, well, simply the fact that in his mind, success has nothing to do with stardom and everything to do with getting to do what you love for a living — and best of all, doing it with friends.
Now, there’s a difference between having a sincere disinterest in fame, and sulking in obscurity while nursing a jaded ego or inferiority complex. But O’Connor is no woulda-coulda-shoulda-been martyr. On the Texas songwriter scene, he’s held his own alongside some of the best of the best from the last quarter century — from Slaid Cleaves to Ray Wylie Hubbard to Adam Carroll to Susan Gibson to Terri Hendrix. Ask them to vouch for O’Connor’s merits as a songwriter or guitarist, and you’ll be answered with a chorus of praise and admiration. Cleaves, who recorded two of O’Connor’s songs on his excellent 2006 covers album, Unsung, says that O’Connor “is the first call I make when I need a true professional to take on the road to bring my songs to their full potential … He can do four sets a day without flagging or losing that lightning-quick Irish wit.” Hubbard, who not only gave O’Connor his first steady sideman gig but produced his debut album, 2000’s Green and Blue, approvingly notes that the Corpus Christi native “has the big four: tone, taste, groove and grit. He’s cool.” And Carroll, a songwriter’s songwriter who’s drawn favorable comparisons to such luminaries as John Prine and Butch Hancock, respects O’Connor so much, he just co-wrote and recorded an entire album with him, 2010’s Hard Times. The record, a scrappy, scruffy and endlessly charming salute to “Gulf Coast Losers,” “Bernadine” (patron saint of addicts and gamblers) and, well, “Billy Gibbons’ Beard,” is credited to both artists, who take turns singing lead vocals.
“Adam kind of lent me his brand, really,” O’Connor says with characteristic humility. “People really respect his songs, so it’s a little off-putting to be on that record with him, but at the same time, it’s cool that he feels confident to have me on there. He just came to my house a few times, and the next thing we knew, we had all these songs done, and decided to go record them.”
Although O’Connor, who honed his chops playing blues, jazz and rock ’n’ roll in the rough and tumble biker and shrimper bars of the Gulf Coast, has played on literally dozens of albums by the aforementioned notables of the Texas Americana scene, Hard Times is only the third to feature his own name on the cover. After Green and Blue, he waited seven years before recording his second, 2007’s Giants From a Sleepy Town. Much like Hard Times, both of his previous records were born more out of the prodding of friends than any personal desire to claim the spotlight.
“Ray [Wylie] was the one who encouraged me to write my songs and start recording,” O’Connor says. “I probably never would have done that otherwise. Before that, I’d been writing, but I’d never had the money or gumption to pursue recording. I guess I just didn’t believe in myself or my songs. But when someone like Ray kind of encourages you, it gives you a little validation. We made my first record in about six days, and Ray nurtured me through the whole thing, just to get me to do it. It was Ray’s band, basically — Paul Pearcy, Glenn Fukunaga, Jeff Plankenhorn and me. And Terri Hendrix came in and sang on it, too. I was definitely green to being the center of attention and recording and all of that, and I’m not crazy about all of the songs I had at the time, but I’m really glad I did it. It got played on the radio, I’m proud of the work I did, and I think the lessons I learned on that record showed up on my next one.”
Indeed. For all the promise shown on Green and Blue, it was Giants From a Sleepy Town, produced by Jack Saunders, that truly marked O’Connor’s arrival as a solo artist to be reckoned with, his soulful voice and strikingly detailed, true-to-life songs now every bit as impressive as the jack-of-all-genres guitar chops that have been his bread and butter for his entire adult life. But once again, it was the validation of one of his own favorite songwriters that set the album in motion.
“After the first record, I still continued to work on my writing and my craft, trying to get better, but I was really busy — and happy — making records with Susan Gibson and playing out with a lot of different people, touring and being a sideman,” he explains. “Plus, pushing your own stuff is hard! If I’m a bandleader, I lose money; if I’m a sideman, I make money and can make a living. So I think I kind of backed off doing my own thing for a while. But I was on tour with Slaid and Adam, and we were in a hotel room in Pittsburg, and Slaid’s like, ‘You got some songs?’ I played him a couple of my songs [“Devil’s Lullaby” and “Getaway Car”], and he ended up recording them for his Unsung album. So then I needed to go make another record because I didn’t have my own versions of those songs for anyone to hear, and me and Adam had just booked a tour of Holland.”
Now, with three fine records (counting the new Hard Times) under his belt and plans for a fourth one later this year, O’Connor could certainly opt to devote all of his time, talent and energy to promoting his own songwriting career. But it’s clear that he has no intention of giving up the opportunity to continue doing what he’s always loved best: playing guitar onstage with his own favorite artists. He admits that playing the instrument has always come natural to him, ever since he got his first guitar at age 12 after years of strumming a tennis racket along to AM radio and his favorite 45s as a kid. But it’s a gift he’s never taken for granted, just as he’s never given anything but 100 percent of himself at every sideman gig he’s ever played.
“There’s been times when I’d be playing with six different people all within a month, and they’d all have 20 or 30 songs apiece that I’d have to learn and have down,” he says. “And I’ve always really wanted to be able to play good for these folks. I don’t want to wing it. I want to not only know all of their songs, but know them better than they know them, so if they get stuck on a lyric or chord change, I can help them out. I’m just a perfectionist in that way. I’m a sloppy dresser, a terrible housekeeper and I don’t work out, but I want to know the (EXPELTIVE DELETED) song, man. Because I’m a fan of all these people I play with, and they’re paying me to be a pro."
“I take it from a real blue collar approach,” he continues with a proud smile. “Like, this is what I do, I’m good at it, I’ve got my tools and I can go to work with these people I really respect. And if I can get a little sideline going with my own songs, get a little money in the mailbox and express myself artistically, I’m happy. And I’m really, really lucky.”
- RICHARD SKANSE
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