Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 7, 1992 TAG: 9202070251
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A FREEWHEELING MAN
Mark O'Connor gave it all up.At 27, he was the top fiddler in Nashville, earning $150,000 a year, playing with the best country music had to offer: Randy Travis. George Strait. Clint Black. The Judds. Kenny Rogers. Reba McEntire. Hank Williams Jr. Dolly Parton. The list goes on.
He appeared on 450 albums in six years.
"I was on their A-team," said O'Connor in a recent telephone interview.
But he left it behind to be a one-man band, to tour less-than-glamorous nightclubs and labor more than a year over a mostly instrumental album that probably never would earn him the kind of money he was accustomed to.
Who would have guessed it was the best career move he could have made?
The album, "The New Nashville Cats," turned out to be a smash - by instrumental album standards at least - and has helped move his one-man show from the clubs into the arenas. He opens tonight for Travis Tritt and Marty Stuart at the Roanoke Civic Center.
And now when he goes into a recording studio, he goes not as another well-paid studio musician following orders, but as a special guest who can fiddle any darned way he wants.
It's a liberating feeling, he said.
"The New Nashville Cats" is selling more now than when it was released nearly a year ago. Further, it received two Grammy nominations and garnered O'Connor two Country Music Association awards last October, a first for an instrumentalist.
A fusion of bluegrass, rockabilly, swing, jazz, classical - you name it - O'Connor put together a freewheeling album that showcased the talent of more than 50 of his country peers.
He calls it both a celebration of ending his career as strictly a session man and a tribute to Nashville's new behind-the-scenes musical muscle. With few exceptions - notably Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs and Steve Wariner - most of the pickers on the record are known only to those who read album credits.
It took O'Connor, now 30, more than a year to record. That's unheard of in country music, where he says most projects, outside of some final vocals, are finished after a few weeks.
And he recorded it his way.
"I didn't want to water it down with a lot of co-producers," he said. "I'm not really interested in having a producer create a hit for me. . . . I just wanted to say, `Here's a jazz tune, let's blow.'
"That's the theme that held the album together: reckless abandon."
But how to take that onto the road presented a dilemma. Who can afford the best 50 musicians in the business? So, O'Connor decided to go on his own, with just his fiddle, guitar and mandolin.
And his hat. O'Connor favors a funky, snap-brim fedora.
"It's funny, I've always been into hats, even when I was a little boy. I loved cowboy hats. I wore the big bull-rider hats like Garth Brooks wears now when I was a teen-ager, back before they were so popular. Then I switched to the fedora, and the bull riders come back," he said.
Tritt and Stuart, however, are promoting this as the No Hats Tour, neither being among the current crop of Nashville "hat acts" in sound, style or swagger.
"I thought, well, `My little hat is a fedora, so, . . .' but they said no."
O'Connor said he may have to sneak it in.
Either way, he is happy to be sharing their stage, having gotten to know Tritt playing on his first album and Stuart making the rounds on the bluegrass and fiddle championship circuit years ago.
A Seattle native, O'Connor made a name for himself as a teen-ager by winning nearly ever major fiddle contest in the country and recording five albums for Rounder Records before joining the Dixie Dregs in 1981.
He moved to Nashville two years later where his stock rose quickly as the influx of a new generation of country artists was embracing some of the old sounds of country music again, most conspicuously the fiddle.
As a studio musician, he started earning better salaries than some of the artists he was playing for. He got married, built a house and a home-recording studio, and had a child.
It was a hard racket to quit, he said.
But artistically he was feeling a little frustrated. Even with the money and respect, he was still taking orders from other musicians and playing many songs he thought were awful.
"In a lot of cases, it was a salvage operation," he said.
And when he finally quit, he quit all the way, no compromises. The reason: He couldn't choose certain producers and artists over others because it would upset too many people.
"It had gotten to the point where if I had chosen one person over another, I would have made some people really mad at me.
"They would have felt real slighted," he said.
Still, sometimes it is hard to say no - even now. The day of his interview, O'Connor said he could have made $1,200 working a recording session for Paul Overstreet. Good money, especially after a recent divorce left him with child support payments. "That's when it gets tough."
It would be even harder to go back, however.
Instead, O'Connor wants to move ahead to his next project, a collection of instrumental fiddle duets, each featuring one of his favorite fiddlers, violinists or musical mentors.
He says he'd give it all up again in a minute.
"Obviously, it means everything to me to do what I believe in doing."
MARK O'CONNOR: Opens for Travis Tritt and Marty Stuart's No Hat Tour tonight at 8 at the Roanoke Civic Center. Tickets, $17.50 at civic center box office (981-1201) and TicketMaster outlets. (800) 543-3041.
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