Tim O'Brien covers James Brown on new album
On his new album, “Pompadour,” singer-songwriter Tim O’Brien turns James Brown’s funktastic “Get Up Offa That Thing” into a banjo tune. “It was just a spur of the moment idea … sometimes it’s good to stick stuff where it doesn’t belong and see if it works,” he laughs.
He adds, “I don’t really feel the borders people put on music are usually that valid, so I kind of want to flaunt the transgressions from genre to genre now and again.”
For the past two years, O’Brien has focused on bluegrass. He’s a founding member of the band Hot Rize, which released its first new studio album in two decades last year, and he’s also part of the Grammy-winning Earls of Leicester, a supergroup that salutes the music of Flatt and Scruggs.
After all those shows playing mandolin and occasionally fiddle, O’Brien was ready to switch gears for “Pompadour,” which incorporates elements of folk, bluegrass, old-time R&B and rock ‘n’ roll. “It was fun to get the electric guitar and the banjo out again … I need variety,” he said, calling the morning after a show in New York. On Sunday, his tour, which includes opening act Old Man Luedecke, will come to the Station Inn.
Next month he’ll release a Christmas single as part of his Short Order Sessions: digital-only songs, released twice-monthly, which often feature some of O’Brien’s musical houseguests. “I was inspired by Mo Asch (founder of Folkways Records) … and the idea that you can put a digital track out with very little notice,” O’Brien says. “It’s been a challenge and it’s been really fun.”
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If you go: Tim O’Brien and Old Man Luedecke at the Station Inn (402 12th Ave. S), Sunday at 8:30 p.m., $20