A clawhammer banjo softly plays as a fair maid works in her garden. A stranger rides up to the gate and asks her to marry him. She refuses, saying that her true love has been in the army for seven years, but she'll wait longer. He suggests that her lover might have been killed on the battlefield or drowned at sea. Or have married another pretty girl. The maid keeps working, but lets him know that she'll not turn bitter or jealous. The stranger takes a ring out of his pocket and she recognizes him as her true love. They kiss; kisses one, two, three.

A world away, the shout of "Moses" goes up from the drone of a banjo and the beat of a drum. The answering voices lift the singer to a wail. People are on the move-working, yearning: the rattle of bones and the clang of hammers.

These scenes are from traditional songs ("Pretty Fair Maid In The Garden" and "Moses") on two albums by Tim O'Brien, Fiddler's Green and Cornbread Nation, released by Sugar Hill Records on September 13, 2005-the birthday of Bill Monroe.

Releasing two albums at once is unconventional (and perhaps unprecedented), but in Tim's case it's fitting. His projects have not so much blurred the distinction between traditional and modern, northern and southern, black and white, as they have embraced the American songbook in all its complexity. He doesn't compromise the rich tradition, but adds to it by re-imagining old songs and composing new ones based on that tradition.

Tim could have released the material as one double-album, but each project stands alone as a journey, reflecting different aspects of Tim's own journey-a wild ride from West Virginia to Colorado to Tennessee with stops in-between.

Tim was born into a "Leave it to Beaver" family-as he describes it-in 1954 in Wheeling, West Virginia. He was an Eagle Scout, went to private school, and sang in the church choir. His father, Frank, still practices law at ninety-two years of age and his mother, Amy, was a homemaker and volunteered in the community; she passed away in January 2005. Tim was the youngest of five children, two of whom died during his youth-the middle sister, Brigid died of encephalitis in 1956, and the oldest brother Frank III, nicknamed Trip, was killed in combat in Vietnam in 1968.

Themes of death pervade much of Tim's work, most personally in two original songs on his 1993 album Oh Boy! O'Boy!: "Time to Learn" and "The Old Church Steeple." And on the new album Fiddler's Green, death circles almost every song. In a lesser artist it might have become a morbid preoccupation. With Tim, however, the stories of death take on a deep resonance, a sharing of grief that becomes the very sound of hope.

It might be this deeper understanding of loss that allows Tim to shift effortlessly into a playful song during a performance or on a recording. And in conversation, Tim is eloquently serious, but can lighten the moment with a joke or self-deprecating comment. He's almost made a career out of alter egos, shifting personas on stage, and creating projects that include a wide range of emotions and stories. But it's never forced and comes whole-cloth from his personality.

His father's banjo-mandolin found its way into Tim's hands early on. He picked out melodies and by the age of twelve began to play guitar. But it was seeing Doc Watson on television that sparked Tim's first interest in bluegrass. He bought the album Strictly Instrumental, which featured Doc Watson and Earl Scruggs, and began learning the lead guitar breaks. Tim's first bar gig was as a duo with Roger Bland, an influential banjo player in Wheeling.

Tim found solace in music. It was something he could do well, something that gave him confidence as well as comfort. He sang harmony with his sister Mollie and his parents made sure their children heard a wide variety of music by giving them season tickets to the symphony, and even taking them to see the Beatles perform at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh in1964.

His brother Frank tape-recorded a message to Tim from Vietnam suggesting that Tim listen to jazz, classical guitar, and other kinds of music. After his brother's death, the will specified that money go to each sibling. With his share, Tim bought a Martin D-28 guitar as a way of honoring his brother's love of music.

While Tim is not an overtly political musician, he contributes his time to causes he believes in, and participates in anti-war concerts to support the Nashville Peace and Justice Center. Tim's personal experience of losing a brother in a foreign war means that he brings integrity to political discussion. "People ask me if I think my brother died in vain and I say no because he died honorably; he died doing what he said he would do. But when I see the guys going over there and the casualties, I'm distressed about the direction of things. I respect them for living up to something they promised to do, but I don't respect the administration's motives for us being in the war."

After high school, Tim went to Colby College in Maine to study literature, but left during his sophomore year. He traveled the country in a black '65 Volvo he dubbed "Matahari" and began playing mandolin and fiddle in earnest. He went to any bluegrass or folk festival he could find, large and small, and began to meet other pickers and singers.

Eventually, Tim found his way to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he lived above a pizza restaurant and was able to play for room and board. He sat in on jams at the Stagecoach Bar in Wilson, Wyoming, skied in the backcountry, and practiced the fiddle.

Leaving "Matahari" in Wyoming, he hitchhiked around the West and visited a friend in Boulder, Colorado, who offered him a job in a music store and a place in a band, but Tim wasn't quite ready to settle down. He continued rambling the country and playing the fiddle, eventually getting the Volvo fixed up enough to get him home to West Virginia. He played, and recorded, for a short time with the Hutchinson brothers-his first experience in a traditional bluegrass band. Then Tim headed back to Colorado.

By the fall of 1974, he was working in a music store, Folk Arts Music, in Boulder and by January was playing in an acoustic swing band, the Ophelia String Band. Everyone in the band had an alter-ego stage persona; Tim's was Howdy Skies (an early Red Knuckles) who lives on in the name of Tim's publishing company, Howdy Skies Music.

In May 1975, Tim met his future wife, artist Kit Swaggert, at a "Beer and Steer" party put on by a group of home-brew enthusiasts. After hearing him play, she asked him for guitar lessons. They are still together after thirty years, with two sons, Jack and Joel.

Later in 1975, Tim began playing occasionally with Pete Wernick, who was already known nationally for his work with the band Country Cooking and for his popular banjo instruction book. Pete and Charles Sawtelle were in an informal band (The Drifting Ramblers aka The Rambling Drifters) with which Tim and Nick Forster would sit in at times. Pete asked Tim and Ophelia String Band bassist Duane Webster to help make a demo for a solo record, which led to their collaborating on Pete's 1978 Flying Fish album Dr. Banjo Steps Out. Tim released his first solo album, recorded in the summer of 1977, just afterward-a now hard-to-find LP, Guess Who's In Town, on the Colorado label Biscuit City. Then, though Tim and Kit had moved to Minnesota, Pete called him again to form a band in support of his banjo album.

The band they formed would become one of the most popular and influential bluegrass bands of the 1980s and beyond. After a few gigs with Mike Scap on guitar and Charles Sawtelle on bass, Hot Rize solidified with Charles Sawtelle on guitar, Nick Forster on bass, Pete Wernick on banjo, and Tim on fiddle/mandolin. And for the first time, it brought Tim to the position of lead singer in a bluegrass band.

Pete Wernick remembers, "I knew if I could get Tim in a band that we were set. He was that good. When Charles and I would hear Tim sing we would look at each other and go, 'Duh!' I knew if we just played well behind him it would have to work."

Hot Rize lasted twelve years, during which the band recorded six albums, was awarded the first IBMA Entertainer of the Year award in 1990, and, when it finally disbanded in 1990, held the record for the longest consecutive tenure of the same band members of any bluegrass band ever.

But that was in the future. At the time, they set out in an old Cadillac with a trailer, and wearing suits and ties bought at a thrift shop. The group knew that to make its mark they'd have to come up with original material. Tim brought his first composition to the band, "Nellie Kane." From their first album on, a Hot Rize project featured not only well-played renditions of the bluegrass repertoire, but great original material that sounded both modern and traditional.

Much of the background for Tim's songwriting took place growing up, but in the Hot Rize cadillac, the tape collection of Charles Sawtelle brought more of the American songbook to Tim's attention: Woody Guthrie, the Stanley Brothers, Muddy Waters, Bill Monroe, Louvin Brothers, the hours of travel were filled with sounds of what would eventually be called roots music. It was a college of musical knowledge.

Tim remembers those days: "Pete and Charles had more experience, but we all learned a lot. We were all going to college together, a real small college. Hot Rize was my second family. Everything I do today is still informed by that band."

The emergence of their alter egos, Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers, a western swing band with suitably loud attire and electric instruments, occurred early on. All of them liked the sound of western swing and the bar gigs allowed them to dig into some of that material. Tim had wanted Pete to get a dobro, but Pete bought a lap-steel and, as Waldo Otto, emceed a hilarious show that a few mistook as a separate act from Hot Rize. Tim, as Red Knuckles, was allowed free rein to play the country diva, though frequently upstaged by the guitar player, Wendell Mercantile (Nick Forster).

But the main appeal of Hot Rize was in their delivery of great material. The songs always came ahead of the stage act. As Pete Wernick said, "Hot Rize was always a common ground of our different musical dreams. If the music's good enough it doesn't need a lot of other stuff. Less is more, to let the feeling come through." The band seemed to know intuitively what to do to deliver a song-to subsume the individual into a bigger performance. A Hot Rize show was not about extravagant arrangements or indulgent jamming. They created a solid rhythmic pocket and crafted three-minute songs that moved the audience.

In 1988, though, after ten years on the road-and specifically at a tenth anniversary show in Colorado-Tim began to think maybe it was time to move on. The band had made connections in Nashville and publishers and artists there were showing signs of interest in Tim. It was a time when artists like Kathy Mattea and Lyle Lovett were having critical success and the big labels were interested in developing Tim as a country artist.

Tim's first success in Nashville was as a songwriter, with Kathy Mattea recording two of Tim's songs that would become top-ten country hits, "Walk the Way the Wind Blows" and "Late in the Day," both previously recorded on Hot Rize albums. RCA Records wanted Tim to try the country market, but also cautioned him that it would be good to keep Hot Rize going. The demands of recording a new album for RCA meant that more of Tim's energies were going toward something new, something that Tim felt would require him to pursue another path, but still follow his heart, "I was interested in trying to find some other niche for myself, and I had an aesthetic desire to try other things."

The breakup was perhaps made harder because the band had been together for so long and, in a lot of ways, had grown up together. Pete Wernick: "We were at a sound check in Boston, and Tim got a phone call saying that he got the record deal with RCA. Later that night we all made a toast and I said, 'Mazeltov, you son-of-a-bitch' and we laughed and drank up. We were both saying in essence that, yeah, it was hurting, but that we were all grown-ups and it was something that was going to happen."

As events unfolded, Tim's supporters at RCA Records moved on to other jobs, and country music entered the era of hat acts, leaving Tim with an unreleased album and no contract. The impulse to try something different, however, remained. His first project outside of the band was a second duet album with his sister Mollie, Remember Me (1992), on Sugar Hill Records. After that, Tim formed his own band, Tim O'Brien and the O'Boys and began recording projects that included both original and traditional material, but was more representative of what Tim was then interested in musically-and it was working. In 1993, Tim won Male Singer of the Year award at the IBMA awards.

By 1994 he was feeling confident enough to move to Nashville from Colorado. One benefit of the move was a Garth Brooks cut in 1997 on the album Sevens, "When No One's Around", co-written with Darrell Scott. Tim has also had cuts on The Dixie Chick's Home album, "More Love", and "When You Come Back Down" on Nickel Creek's eponymous album.

Few other artists in recent years have been able to match Tim's level of recorded production, songwriting, and full-time performing. While pursuing his songwriting career in Nashville, Tim has continued to put out projects that are honest, edgy, and fresh. Rock in My Shoe (1995), Red on Blonde (1996), When No One's Around (1997), Songs From the Mountain (1998), The Crossing (1999), Real Time [with Darrell Scott] (2000), Two Journeys (2001), and Traveler (2003). These recent projects range from showcases of his songwriting ability (Traveler) to explorations of his Irish roots (The Crossing) to collaborations (Real Time and Songs From the Mountain).

Some might view the release of two new projects simultaneously as a publicity stunt, but to anyone familiar with Tim's work it should seem natural and right. The compromise would have been to shelve some of the songs or to release one double-album. To Tim's and Sugar Hill Record's credit, they decided to put out two full-strength projects, two road trips through the heart and mystery of American music.

Both projects were recorded at the home-studio of engineer Gary Pacsoza, who also engineers Alison Krauss + Union Station. Gary wrote, "Recording Tim is different from most records I work on because Tim is going to get a great vocal while we are cutting the track, almost every time. He is so good. . . . We cut most of the band, vocal included, live in the same room, so there really was no way for us to fix much stuff. But the feeling you can get from a record recorded the way we did these two, has an energy that you just cannot get out of a session where everyone is isolated and you do repairs until it's all perfect."

Many of the same musicians appear on both albums, musicians whom Tim has worked with live and in the studio over the past few years. Of special note is Dan Dugmore's steel guitar on "Long Black Veil" and Seamus Egan's tinwhistles on "Land's End/Chasin'Talon" and "Fair Flowers of the Valley." Kenny Malone's drums and percussion appear more on Cornbread Nation, but also to great effect on several songs on Fiddler's Green. His playing is always appropriate and understated.

The title track of Fiddler's Green is a song by Pete Goble that, like "Colleen Malone" (another Goble song that Hot Rize had success with), is a perfect vehicle for Tim's tone and phrasing. And the title track of Cornbread Nation is an O'brien original, a litany and celebration of deep South cooking and Mississipi Delta life that Tim wrote for the Southern Foodways Alliance. Tim's description in the liner notes could describe his whole approach to music, ". . . like your cornbread batter, don't stir it up too much, just put it together and let it cook. Get your hands dirty and have a little fun in the Cornbread Nation."

Fiddler's Green is more Celtic and Appalachian, more concerned with themes of death, travel, the afterlife, and home. But Tim also weaves in lighter moments that relieve the darkness. The song "Train on the Island"-even the title is funny-is one of those lighter moments. And in "Look Down That Lonesome Road", he's written a song that deserves to become an up-tempo bluegrass classic. Based on Mississippi storyteller and mule trader Ray Lum, from a book by William Ferris, it might be something Tim found in a Depression-era songbook.

And while Cornbread Nation is intended to be more about the deep South, sweet tea, working, loving, praising, fighting, and hunting-more of this world-in its tone, death is never too far beneath the surface. The traditional gospel song "When This World Comes To An End", sung with Odessa Settles, Todd Suttles, and Darrell Scott, has a growling electric guitar lead by Kenny Vaughan that gives it a gritty and threatening sound, as if death were just outside the door.

But it's Tim's vocals and playing that bring these projects together. He can make his voice do anything he wants, give it any tone the song demands, and still sound natural and effortless. There's a moment on "Foreign Lander" that is as beautiful as anything ever recorded, and I'm fully aware of the hyperbole. He sings while fiddling, "The ship would burst asunder if I prove false to thee," and his voice and fiddle are as two strings of the same instrument. Ancient tones.

When someone once upbraided Bob Dylan for abandoning traditional music-supposedly leaving it to go unheard-he replied that it was "too weird to die." There's little danger of traditional music dying these post-Oh Brother days. New projects come out weekly that are based on the old weird sound. Many of these, however, are by bands or artists who are simply jumping on the latest bandwagon, who don't know the history or songbook of traditional American music, but who take themselves all too seriously as preservers of the tradition.

Tim O'Brien is the antidote to that. He plays music because he loves it. He sings the old songs because he knows there's something there that's worth telling, something that awakens the ancient sounds in each of us, something bigger than "the fevered chase of a tiny star," as Jesse Winchester once described the music business. And he writes songs because he understands that traditional music was once brand new, written by people who couldn't keep themselves from singing new words and playing new melodies.

He's been a professional musician for thirty years and yet is still a fresh and youthful artist. Tim is focused and hard working, but above all, he doesn't take any of it, or himself, too seriously. He lets his songs do the talking and when asked about his career, he simply deadpans, "I have a great job."