"Carroll has made a career of writing about wretched people who live off the beaten path, while O'Connor is better known for being a sideman...This record finds them writing together on most of the songs, revealing the intricacies of those who live on the south coast of Texas and Louisiana. Carroll and O'Connor have crafted a complete record about a slice of life where there is little to do but laugh. Managing to realize the effects of an economic recession and combine it with a healthy dose of absurdity, they create a song cycle that entertains from beginning to end ...This is more than a collection of songs -- it is a true album, full of inside jokes, references, and carrying themes from song to song. Hard Times sets a standard for craftsmanship that is going to be tough to top."
- Jeff Giddens, No Depression
In an era of American Idols, Nashville Stars and other instant music celebrities catapulted to overnight success by MySpace hits, blog buzz and Grey’s Anatomy exposure, Michael O’Connor is a true anomaly. Not, mind you, because he found fame “the old fashioned way”; after 25 years in the music business, the 43-year-old South Texan is still a long, long way from being famous. No, what makes O’Connor stand out is his innate sense of humble integrity, his passion for playing music “for the sake of the song” and, well, simply the fact that in his mind, success has nothing to do with stardom and everything to do with getting to do what you love for a living — and best of all, doing it with friends.
Now, there’s a difference between having a sincere disinterest in fame, and sulking in obscurity while nursing a jaded ego or inferiority complex. But O’Connor is no woulda-coulda-shoulda-been martyr. On the Texas songwriter scene, he’s held his own alongside some of the best of the best from the last quarter century — from Slaid Cleaves to Ray Wylie Hubbard to Adam Carroll to Susan Gibson to Terri Hendrix. Ask them to vouch for O’Connor’s merits as a songwriter or guitarist, and you’ll be answered with a chorus of praise and admiration. Cleaves, who recorded two of O’Connor’s songs on his excellent 2006 covers album, Unsung, says that O’Connor “is the first call I make when I need a true professional to take on the road to bring my songs to their full potential … He can do four sets a day without flagging or losing that lightning-quick Irish wit.” Hubbard, who not only gave O’Connor his first steady sideman gig but produced his debut album, 2000’s Green and Blue, approvingly notes that the Corpus Christi native “has the big four: tone, taste, groove and grit. He’s cool.” And Carroll, a songwriter’s songwriter who’s drawn favorable comparisons to such luminaries as John Prine and Butch Hancock, respects O’Connor so much, he just co-wrote and recorded an entire album with him, 2010’s Hard Times. The record, a scrappy, scruffy and endlessly charming salute to “Gulf Coast Losers,” “Bernadine” (patron saint of addicts and gamblers) and, well, “Billy Gibbons’ Beard,” is credited to both artists, who take turns singing lead vocals.
“Adam kind of lent me his brand, really,” O’Connor says with characteristic humility. “People really respect his songs, so it’s a little off-putting to be on that record with him, but at the same time, it’s cool that he feels confident to have me on there. He just came to my house a few times, and the next thing we knew, we had all these songs done, and decided to go record them.”
- Richard Skanse
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