Tara Jane Oneil: For Lovers of Birds

by Meghan Jones
10/13/2006

photo by Mirah

Tara Jane Oneil is a jill-of-all-trades kind of girl. Not only did she do the cover art of her new album Circles herself, she also played most of the instruments as she traveled around to empty wooden houses of friends on vacation with her self-assembled "mobile studio/environment" named Cloud Mountain. Tara refers to it affectionately as a "state of mind with recording gear," and she has been collecting items and instruments for it for the past seven or eight years. She is an artist of many forms: musician, painter, engineer and lover of all things beautiful. Currently in "some crazy mill town in Virginia," I got a chance to chat with her for a bit before she heads down to Athens to play at the Caledonia Lounge on October 13.

Her music career started unassumingly in Louisville, Kentucky as a member of a punk rock band, but Oneil has come a long way since then. She is referred to as a "multi-instrumentalist," a sort of Holy Grail as far as musicians go, and has played drums, bass, vox, recorders, guitar and banjo. She does not restrain herself to the instruments she knows, though, and says, "I'd like to think that I could make musical sounds with most anything. I wouldn't say that I could play the piano well, but I could make musical sounds with it, and the same with a block of wood."

Tara's music as of late has grown folksier, and her voice, ghostly and haunting, contains no traces of a punk rock growl. She sounds as if she is in mourning but not emotional about it; there is a concession in her voice acknowledging that she is fated for this kind of melancholy existence, and the almost Irish lilt to some of her songs suggests her attempts to find the sweetness in it. The album is perfect for a rainy Sunday afternoon when you're procrastinating about all of those things you have to do before the next week starts its dizzy, busy spin.

And when she's not recording her newest album? Not one to lounge about, TJO produces musical scores for theatre and short films. Don't look for them at your nearest cinema, though. "They are independent, pretty arty films," Tara says, "and those are usually not produced for mass consumption, unfortunate as it is." However, they are shown at art shows all over the world. One is being shown next week at the Vienna Art Museum, and one was shown a while ago at the Istanbul Biennial Art Show. Speaking of art shows, Tara herself puts one on every now and then while she's on tour. She paints, and sells some of her works at her concerts; they have also been displayed all around the United States, Europe and Japan. She also published a book of her paintings and drawings available for sale online.

There is a recurring theme of bird imagery in her postcards, paintings, album art and song lyrics (a track on Circles is entitled "Lonely Sparrow"). But is Tara Jane Oneil simply for the birds? I wouldn't say so. Check her out tonight at the Caledonia.

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