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The California-Kentucky-Ireland Connection With Pieces of the Past, singer-songwriter Tim Flannery makes the final transition from being a
professional baseball player with a musical avocation, to being a professional-level musician whose day job is coaching third base for the San Diego Padres. Reviewers and other listeners would be well-advised and well-served to judge the new CD (his third since 1995) on its musical merits alone; the qualifier that Flannery pursues his muse between major league baseball seasons is made totally irrelevant by an achievement born of emotional tides, not calendar modules.

The proof of Flannery's coming-of-age as an artist arrives with the
very first track, "Coming Home," written by Irish tunesmith and
co-conspirator Mick Hanly. Flannery sings its hopeful/wistful
sentiments in a clear, sonorous voice whose yearning seems to project
from his coastal home in Southern California, take flight over the
deserts and plains, resonate in the Kentucky hills, and finally cross the
Atlantic to nestle in his ancestral Irish roots. "Coming Home"'s ambling
pace, its open, laid-bare feelings and rural-Irish-American
instrumentation, create a template for the heartfelt songs that follow.

Pieces of the Past was inspired by and is dedicated to Flannery's
father, Ragon, a second-generation American of mostly Irish and
some Cherokee descent who was born deep in the Kentucky
mountains. Last year, Tim returned to those mountains to emerse
himself in the family gestalt. In early January of this year, two days
before bringing his custom 810 to the Taylor repair shop for a new
pickup, he placed his dad, an Alzheimer's sufferer, in a local nursing
home. The complex emotions loosed by that gut-wrenching experience
were still fresh on his face and in his voice, and they provide the
underpinning for the music on Pieces of the Past. That music --- Tim
calls it "Irish hillbilly music" --- was the soundtrack to Ragon
Flannery's youth, and now is Tim's only means of reaching and
connecting with his father.

It didn't hurt the recording process or the project's integrity that Flannery is joined on this journey through his Kentucky/Irish heritage by a host of
musical "ringers," including noted Irish musicians Manly and Matt Manning
(who produced the album); pop maestros Jackson Browne, Bruce Hornsby, and Steve Poltz; San Diego instrumental exemplars Dennis Caplinger and Chris Vitas, and even local Native American musicians. These collaborations, however, remain dutifully subservient to the album's purpose and never become star turns. The players contribute their talents intuitively, generously. The 12 songs (six of them written by Flannery) run the stylistic and tonal gamut --- at turns dark and melancholy, light and
jaunty, earnest and hushed --- yet they are unified by Flannery's focused vision and realized by empathic accompaniment (Browne's father also suffered with Alzheimer's).

Having grown accustomed to the technologically advanced wonders
wrought by the modern recording studio, we sometimes find it easy to
equate depth with textural density and power with decibel punch. Pieces of
the Past celebrates the power of deceptively simple, organic music crafted with care and love; of earthy gems allowed to sparkle in uncluttered settings; of emotional depth limned with acoustic guitars, mandolins, fiddles, uillean pipes, banjos, and laundry-room percussion that combine to forge a sound as unpretentious and bracing as that first breath of morning air on a Kentucky porch, or a Celtic meadow, or a California beach.

On January 17, Flannery and his new band, the Acoustic Warriors
(featuring Manning and Caplinger), sold-out two CD-release concerts
at the East County Performing Arts Center (in El Cajon, not far
from the Taylor factory). At that show, Flannery surprised Manning
with a new left-handed 310-CE, a thank-you for his ethno-spiritual
and musical guidance. Meanwhile, Manning had mailed an advance
copy of Pieces of the Past to a friend in Ireland, and before long it
was on the radio garnering listener response strong enough to
encourage Flannery and Manning to consider a concert tour of Ireland
at the conclusion of the 1999 baseball season.

As St. Patrick's Day approached, Manning was in Ireland meeting
with a label whose artist roster includes Nanci Griffith. Flannery was in
Peoria, Arizona going through the spring-training rites with the Padres.
Life does, indeed, go on. A portion of the proceeds from Pieces of
the Past is being donated to the Tickets for Kids program, which
enables underprivileged children to attend Padres games. In a recent
call, Flannery said that the CD already was doing so well that they'd
written TFK a check for $3000. Pieces of the Past can be ordered
online at Flannery's new website, www.timflannery.com. [The concert
photos above, first of Flannery and Manning (left to right), and then of
the entire band, were taken by Patrick Ready]