Staged meeting with Dylan launched Irish singer's career

By JIM TRAGESER - Staff Writer | Wednesday, March 26, 2008 9:55 AM PDT ∞

A few weeks ago, Limerick, Ireland's own Siobhan O'Brien joined the internationally acclaimed Irish legends the Chieftains onstage for a song in Boston for St. Patrick's Day. But before letting the accent and her heritage color your thoughts of O'Brien's music, know that Sunday she'll be opening at the Belly Up for local roots singer Sara Petite's CD release show.

Those twin axes of Irish tradition and American folk and roots music have held sway over O'Brien's music since she was a girl, she said in an interview earlier this week.

"For some reason, I was just drawn to the American folk music," she said. "My dad has everything ---- I just loved Dylan, Baez, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen.

"My father was into every sort of music, so his record collection would have been huge and would have been varied. He turned me on to Dylan and Joan Baez and all those folkies. His influence kind of balanced out the classical theory side from my mother."

O'Brien said she is the fourth generation of her family to take up music as a profession, and her uncle is Irish singer Brendan Bowyer.

It was learning to play guitar at age 16 that first piqued her interest in learning more about music than what she'd gotten from the lessons she'd taken as a child, drawing her to the music of Dylan, Baez and other American folk icons.

"When you start playing guitar, you have to sing those types of songs because that's what you have to do. I just loved it."

She acknowledged that coming from a music-rich culture such as Ireland, it might seem odd to outsiders that she was so attracted to foreign influences.

"Because the Dubliners and that Irish folk music was a little bit too rough for me," she said of the Irish roots music popular when she was growing up in the 1980s. "Now I appreciate it." (Of course, she also cites ABBA and the Human League as influences.)

During the '80s, the Irish pub scene was at its height, and helped support an active music scene in that country. A recent smoking ban and an ongoing crackdown on people driving under the influence of alcohol have resulted in massive pub closures across the country as the Irish retreat to their homes to watch rental movies rather than going to the neighborhood pub for an evening's entertainment, O'Brien said.

It was in the pubs around Limerick and West Clare that O'Brien first found her feet as a professional musician.

"I'd get up at people's gigs, this was all in pubs, and you'd do a song," she said of her first performanes at age 18.

O'Brien's big break came in the early '90s, when she foisted her music upon Dylan while he was on tour in Ireland.

"I waited outside the hotel he was staying at ---- and I'm not a stalker ---- and he came out, and I said, 'I want to give you a tape, and I'll go away," she said, laughing at the memory. She recalled Dylan seemed horrified at the uninvited encounter, pulled his hood over his face, and began walking away from her.

"Then I stamped my foot, and began singing a verse" of one of her songs.

"He just stood there looking at me and said, 'Sing another verse,' so I did. Then he said, 'OK, walk this way.' "

O'Brien said she walked along with him, singing some of her different songs, and then singing older classics based on random words he would toss at her.

"He'd say a word, and then I'd sing a song about it."

That night, he had her come up on stage with him and sing one of those songs for the audience.

"He was just so nice, and he brought me to dinner afterwards. Bono and The Edge and Chrissie Hynde and Elvis Costello were all around the table!"

But O'Brien said she wasn't nervous, because she knew Bono had met her uncle, Brendan Bowyer, recently. When she mentioned that to him, she said Bono moved around the table to pick her brains about her uncle.

A few weeks later, Dylan rang her up, and a few months after that, he again featured her onstage with him.

"He was just really, really nice to me."

Sara Petite, with Siobhan O'Brien and the Slidewinders

When: 4 p.m. Sunday

Where: Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach

Tickets: $8-$10

Info: (858) 481-8140 or bellyup.com

Web: siobhanobrien.com

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