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In 2010, after well over 20 years of plying his trade in dive bars, listening rooms, theaters and festival stages across America and Europe, journeyman Texas songwriter and guitar player Michael O’Connor finally got his due. Or at the very least, a couple of very fine next best things: co-billing with one of his favorite fellow writers, Adam Carroll, on one of the best albums of both artists’ careers (the acclaimed Hard Times), and his very own star on the South Texas Music Walk of Fame — located right in O’Connor’s hometown of Corpus Christi. Along with fellow 2010 inductees like Terri Hendrix, Ponty Bone and Geronimo Trevino, O’Connor’s name is now part of the same Lone Star constellation as such Texas legends as Guy Clark, Kris Kristofferson, and the late Doug Sahm and Freddy Fender. |
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Photos by: Amanda Thompson |
Overall, not a bad way to kick off a very good year. But in the wake of releasing Hard Times and
humbly accepting his Walk of Fame honor, O’Connor did what journeymen songwriters and
guitar slingers do best: went straight back to work. On top of promoting Hard Times with
Carroll, he hit the road for another long run of sideman dates playing with Slaid Cleaves, capping
a 10-year run together with the recording of Cleaves’ first live album, the new Sorrow & Smoke:
Live at the Horseshoe Lounge. And on his days “off,” O’Connor also squeezed in several trips to
producer Jack Saunders’ White Cat Studio in Houston to record Devil Stole the Moon, his third
“solo” album and first since 2007’s Giants From a Sleepy Town.
O’Connor had worked with Saunders in the studio before, on both his own Giants From a Sleepy
Town and as a guitarist on fellow songwriter Susan Gibson’s 2005 album, Outer Space. Before
that, they crossed paths a number of times playing in different bands on the Texas circuit.
In addition to producing and engineering Devil Stole the Moon, Saunders also played bass and
mandolin and sang back-up vocals. Rick Richards (Ray Wylie Hubbard, Gurf Morlix) played
drums and percussion, and O’Connor played all the guitars as well as lap steel, mandolin and
harmonica. The record also marks the seasoned studio and road dog’s debut playing keyboards.
“I’d never really done that,” he says. “It’s just something I started messing with while we were
recording. I’m not really a keyboard player at all, but I didn’t really want a bunch of fancy stuff
on the record, and being in the studio allowed me to stop and start just enough to figure out a
little chord pattern here and there.” Playing keyboard may have been new to O’Connor, but the
songs on Devil Stole the Moon all pick up right where Hard Times left off; three of the songs
were even co-written with Carroll.
Across the somber, gritty noir-ish sweep of Devil Stole the Moon, his characters (some fictional,
others directly inspired by friends, family, and associates) wrestle with addictions, broken
dreams and mortality, while O’Connor himself confronts his own hardscrabble Corpus Christi
roots. In his late teens and all through his twenties, O’Connor honed his chops playing blues,
jazz and rock ’n’ roll in the rough-and-tumble shrimper and biker bars of the Gulf Coast before
finding his way into the singer-songwriter and folk circles via studio and sideman gigs with
friends like Terri Hendrix, Susan Gibson, Adam Carroll, Cary Swinney and the aforementioned
Ray Wylie Hubbard. Hubbard, who produced O’Connor’s 2000 debut, Green and Blue,
approvingly notes that O’Connor “has the big four: tone, taste, groove and grit. He’s cool.”
O’Connor happily spent most of the last decade devoting more time to sideman gigs than on his
solo career. But with the release of Devil Stole the Moon, the 45-year-old songwriter is gearing
up to finally shuffle over to center stage. “I’ll still be doing some selective sideman gigs, but I’m
going to be concentrating more on doing my own thing,” he says. “Its just time for a change.”
He makes it pretty clear, though, that shifting his primary focus over to his own music has
nothing to do with ego, let alone aspirations to fame and fortune. “All I can control is the work,
and I let the universe take care of the rest of it. I don’t need to be rich,” he says simply. “I just
want to make my living.”
-- by Richard Skanse
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"O'Connor's raspy voice outlines the often simultaneous desire for pleasure and salvation."
- Jeff Giddens, NoDepression, Sounds Country |
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"O'Connor may be yet another hidden gem from Texas. ...soulful vocals...and his songwriting is top notch"
- Eli Petersen, Twangville |
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"...a collection of songs that take unvarnished looks at not-so-beautiful losers who populate the margins: the has-beens, the never-will-bes...With the line "a bar tab twice as long as Billy Gibbons' beard," even losers win."
- Jim Beal Jr., San Antonio Express-News |
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"Michael O'Connor's guitar chops and heartstring-tugging tenor vocals bring the musicality up to the level of the storytelling."
- Michael Ethan Messik, Texas Music Magazine
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