Tim O'Brien

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American and Irish roots still deeper than bluegrass. By now there are few others who approach traditional music with his breadth of vision. When he visits the Ark on Thursday, October 27, he'll come with a pair of brand-new albums ready to sell, and new musical thinking ready to realize in sound.

Releasing multiple albums simultaneously can be a self-indulgent move, but O'Brien's Fiddler's Green and Cornbread Nation have interesting things to say to each other. They're neither two parts of what's really one album nor two independent releases. Instead, they represent differing approaches to a question that has plagued folk music ever since Pete Seeger "turned a bright purple" and began "kicking his feet and flailing his arms" (per Robert Shelton) as Bob Dylan took the stage at Newport on July 25, 1965: how can electric instruments be used in the service of music rooted in tradition?

Cornbread Nation is the "electric" album, with electric and pedal steel guitars and a variety of percussion so gently integrated into the texture that they come out quieter than O'Brien's mandolin or acoustic guitar. Fiddler's Green has some bluegrass pieces and some sparer old-time textures, including a couple of numbers on which it's just O'Brien with his fiddle or guitar. He does a magnificent, irregular fiddle-and-vocal tune from British religious tradition called "A Few More Years," cut from the same cloth as Ralph Stanley's "O Death."