Mark O'Connor

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #129 (April/May 2007).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Mark O'Connor

Dawgs, Dregs, Hot Strings, and the Symphony

by Kerry Dexter

Mark O'Connor is writing a symphony. It's not the only thing he's working on this season, but it is the one he's most excited about; it's the first time he's undertaken such a work. "I felt like I had developed almost my own orchestral language, so maybe now's the time," he said. That language is one he has acquired through the course of composing six concertos, a number of caprices, and a variety of other classical works for strings. It is a language that also draws from and is infused with O'Connor's experience playing Dawg music with David Grisman and Southern rock with the Dixie Dregs; learning from jazz fiddler Stephane Grappelli and Texas-style fiddler Benny Thomasson; studying flamenco guitar; soaking up all sorts of styles and tunes on the fiddle contest circuit in the United States and Canada; playing hundreds of studio sessions with the likes of Ricky Skaggs, Trisha Yearwood, Kathy Mattea, John Hartford, and dozens of others; fronting his own Hot Swing Trio; and teaching and learning across musical genres at the fiddle camps he founded in Tennessee and California. All the while, O'Connor has been following the sound of American music and finding his own ways of adding to the expression of that sound.

It began with classical guitar lessons while he was growing up in Seattle, but when O'Connor went to compete in a classical guitar contest, he decided to play a flamenco piece, a genre he'd been learning on the side. O'Connor doesn't remember if he placed first or second in the contest, but in the top two, anyway. The other musicians were all college students; O'Connor was 10 years old. Not long after, he picked up the fiddle and then the mandolin. Soon after that, he knew he needed to create his own music. "When I was 12, I started arranging a lot of my own tunes. Matter of fact, my first album for Rounder Records was all tunes I arranged. I didn't really think about it that much at the time. I was a little kid. I just knew in my head I had to get some tunes together and make sure they sounded good enough. Started tweaking them -- a lot of times I learned them from other players, and even with tunes I learned from my teacher, they certainly weren't how I learned them. By the time they ended up on the album, I was playing them quite differently," he said.

That experience in arranging first got him interested in writing his own music, O'Connor thinks, but it wasn't an easy road, either personally or musically. His family life was difficult, and his mother, who was very supportive of his music, was quite ill during most of his growing years. He also didn't find support at school for his musical accomplishments, recording albums and winning contests. Although he found respect for his talents from teachers like Benny Thomasson and fellow musicians, such as John Hartford and Sam Bush, the music world also didn't know quite what to do with him. He recalls many good experiences at fiddle contests, but also recalls being shut out of them and not having opportunities to play for reasons that didn't make sense to him, even though he had traveled long distances. None of this, however, deterred him from following his own music and seeking support systems where he could find them. By the time he graduated from high school, he had recorded four albums for Rounder. These were mainly traditional American folk music, but "I got way into jazz when I was 13 and 14, although I don't think I was composing that much," he said. "Then I went through a period when I was about 15 when I suffered some depression and almost quit. I really had the blahs."

[cover #129]