Tim O'Gara "Sticky As Tobacco" -- This CD saved my life (1/13/2006)
Michelle Broussard, MFA
The Topanga Journal
1/13/06
Often the blazing truth with music, but even more so with “Sticky As Tobacco”. I was headed out on my lonesome way to the Reno desert plains in the deep dark of a blustery August midnight, with looming engine trouble and too much tinder weighing down my pickin-up truck. Bless ol’ St. Chris for ignoring the whole decanonization debacle; he must have switched on my dome light, so to speak, et voila: O’Gara’s CD, a metaphysical Cajun-style cafe au lait, sandwiched between the trail mix and the baby wipes. I was going to have to drink and drive, and pray for a courage buzz. What I got was all that and a bag of beignets.
Sweet, hot, deceptively creamy, with a complex story and a dark rich underside (ok, so I was weaned on Chock Full O’ Nuts). The first sound you hear: pristine, compelling. Imagine a friendly stranger reaching inside your chest to wiggle a dangling harmonic loose tooth you didn’t know you had…that’s some buzz. It’s “twang twanga-twang”, that funky mouth-harp called a kubing that might be O’Gara’s signature were it his only outstanding talent. Nothing’s further from the truth (Tim wrote and sings all his songs, excepting the traditional “Inis Oirr”, and plays guitar and harmonica on many of them), but as a first impression it mesmerizes. Next a clear, high voice, trembling slightly, as if interrupting a raucous argument to make an, um, unorthodox suggestion to the furious… “I hope when you know too much/you’ll come and dance with me”.
Tim sings even his fast songs just slow enough to make you itchy—in a good way—sort of hungry for the next line while you are still chewing on the last one. An insistent lag in the vocals gives you the impression he is making it all up as he goes along, juggling the cadence until all inanimate objects of your imagination are set to spinning and just tipsy enough to two-step.
Lyrically, it may be Tim musing on the speed and trajectory of his kids growing up too fast, like “Bamboo”, the song’s title. “Dancing with your legs high/dancing with a lazy eye.” Huh? Hang on, you’re in for a wilder ride than you guessed. Tim invites YOU to dance, whatever the circumstances, as if he were gazing right into you, not demanding, exactly, but not taking no for an answer.
Once he has you by the hand, or the collar, he swings you on an old tire way out over the middle of the bayou and drops you clean into the title track. Splash around in the song “Sticky as Tobacco” and decipher the details hidden in that saucy alligator stew, if you dare. Damn those who don’t publish their lyrics! You’ll catch the word “Algonquin” clear enough and you’ll be hooked like a crawdad at Christmastime. Crazy chicory in the homebrew. Or, as my grandpa Odilon Broussard used to say, “Bean must be cheap where you live, Girl”... a juicy, voluptuous, mysterious Cajun Queen of a song.
When you’ve frog-crawled back onto dry land, the “Heroes of Old Ireland” will shine a warm radiant sun down upon your soggy hide. O’Gara and his Celtic-leaning musical buddies (many of which make exquisite aural appearances on the cd) nestle into the Hills of Calabarra for a celebratin’ o’ the orange and green:
Topanga is my refuge/she is my safety/she’s my help/I love that crooked canyon /like I love nobody else/butterflies surround you there/and there’s a beauty mark that grows/Oh Take Me to Topanga please/Its time to burn my clothes/
You can’t not dance to “Heroes”. Its the same with the whirling “Jacaranda”. They, like many of Tim’s songs, dare you to be happy in spite of the whole world’s strangeness (portrayed to creepy perfection on “Hollywood Woman” and “Fly By”). If you stand there stupefied yet unconvinced, he infuses you with the swirling paradox of what it is to be alive, sensing, feeling, loving, doing your thing against/with all odds, and the happy perversity of it all, ‘til you think maybe you can just hide that subtle toe tapping down somewhere inside your spine. Before long you’re grinning and shuffling and glancing sideways reaching for a willing dance partner. Don’t worry, they’ll be reaching for you.
Maybe that is the message of “Sticky as Tobacco”. It’s a messy thing, this life, but messy like licking the beaters from a chocolate cake a-bakin’...mucky deliciousness. Tim makes you feel as if someone just cooked your favorite Birthday Dinner and then called you up to casually suggest you “come on by”. Or maybe he’s some modern day specter, like the Ghost of Summer Present, pointing your psychic eye toward all the beauty and horror of life and whispering, “Look, look….breathtaking, isn’t it? Lovely, aching, sad, shocking, gorgeous, twisted, wondrous, awful, miraculous…” then out of your shared silence comes this quirky, sweet little tune, that lets you to BE with it all, joyously. I suspect O’Gara is actually Tom Bombadil in disguise: an eerily insightful cool uncle with a quirky sense of humor, singing songs that dispel the darkness.
By the way, I made it out to Black Rock City just fine. A week later (in human reckoning), heading back to civilization, “Sticky as Tobacco” softened the blow of reentry, and somehow between the music and the Burn’s inspiring blast I made it safely to the kindest auto shop in NoCal, and then on beyond…a good ol’ fashioned odyssey that continues to this day. Yum. Yes, I do believe I’ll have another cup.
Michelle writes an entertainment column called “The TASTY” for the Topanga Journal