Mark O'Connor

I was just going to say, when I think of nothing but a burning light, I mean, you brought up Booker T and whatnot.

It's Mark O'Connor's violin on that album that always slays me.

It's gorgeous.

Yeah.

Okay.

Because of the history of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Vassar Clements and John McEwen and the fiddle players on the Circle Records, Stuart Duncan and Mark O'Connor and name them.

Yeah.

To play the songs in this band, I certainly play them the way I play them.

Exactly.

Yes, and it also features Mike Stern on guitar, Don Gronick on piano, Charlie Hayden on acoustic bass, Jeff Andrews on fretless electric bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums, of course, and a newcomer to the party on violin, a guy named Mark O'Connor.

Oh, yeah.

When I first heard this track, I didn't like it.

And we'll do a couple of bluegrass workshops.

Shane Cook is just a stunning fiddler from Canada who plays all styles, maybe best known as a Canadian old-time fiddler, but is a national champion, comes up as a protege of Mark O'Connor and plays Texas style and a terrific improviser.

Jake Howard is a great mandolin player.

Bibi Baunis is a Bostonite now.

Mm.

"I wanna be on records and I wanna, you know, play on stages," and notice other players from the bluegrass world that were doing that, like Mark O'Connor and Sam Bush and Stuart Duncan.

And, uh, so Anthony, you know, said, "Yeah, just come hang out at the studio," and I did.

And so most a- afternoon of my senior year of high school, I would drive and just fly on the wall at the studio called Here Here-

Yeah.

Uh, and that, that, but it's informed by a lot of things that I've heard.

So a lot of my Béla sensibilities early on was f- from the, all the, the Tony stuff, you know, the, and the, and the, uh, Bluegrass Sessions record or, um, Mark O'Connor's acoustic guitar playing.

Yeah.

And they turned me also on to strengthen numbers.

So that was the first time I heard like, you know, Stuart, Stuart Duncan and Mark O'Connor playing real slick, nice fiddle, you know, along with all those, you know, classic tunes that those guys did.

So that's the one that really flipped it.

So, you know, that's another part of why this is called 50 years of clown school, because it was a, Literal clown, you know, Jeep that got me down the fiddle road with the clown.

But then I g- I got another lucky break.

Uh, Mark O'Connor was looking for-

Yeah

... a new cellist, and I auditioned for him in April right as I was about to graduate a month later, and I got into his Appalachia Waltz Trio.

[laughs]And so, you know, I ended up connecting and playing a lot with other folk musicians, and there was a Celtic fiddler, Hanneka Castle-

Mm

... who I met through Mark O'Connor, and she hired me to play in her trio, and I remember distinctly, 'cause m- even Mark O'Connor's group was a crossover group.

It was very much in a fiddle style, but it was mostly notated.

There's always been a lot of bluegrass musicians that worked a lot in Nashville.

A lot of my early heroes in the session field were guys like Jerry Douglas and Mark O'Connor and Stuart Duncan, who were playing on country records back in the 1980s and 90s.

And I would pay attention to their names on the records that I was listening to and hear them on the radio.

So ultimately, all this to say, like, What I've enjoyed in a career is all this varied work as a session player, but also the opportunities that have come along to go out and play bluegrass.