“A working-class poet (…) with a knack for straightforward language held aloft by a sweet gift of melody”… Boulevard Magazine. Paul O’Brien is a singer-songwriter-instrumentalist with a gift for going straight to the emotional heart of the story and taking his listeners with him. Born and raised Irish Catholic in inner-city England, he spent the first 20-odd years of his professional life playing traditional Celtic music for pub gigs, folk festivals, folk clubs, and private concerts throughout the U.K, Europe, the U.S and the Middle East. At age 38, burned out, creatively stifled and desperately unhappy, he turned off and checked out. In 2004 he left the U.K and his music career behind, moving his family to Canada’s Pacific Northwest for a fresh start as a classroom teacher in Victoria BC. O’Brien hadn’t counted on Canada though. He wasn’t expecting to fall in love with his new home or to forge a visceral emotional connection to the land, its people, and its history. The immigration experience created a tectonic shift in O’Brien, unleashing a creative energy he had long suppressed. Suddenly, the gifted songwriter thrashing around inside him wanted OUT. While teaching full time, O’Brien wrote and recorded two CDs of original songs, both produced by the Grammy Award-winning / Juno Award nominee Joby Baker: Sacred Lines (2006) and Plastic (2008). Both were met with an overwhelmingly positive response; Plastic was included in prominent Top Ten Albums of 2008 lists published by Penguin Eggs Folk Magazine, BBC Radio (Folk Roots), and CBC Radio. “(Paul) is a listener. He picks up on real histories and issues, turning them into succinct musical stories that…hurl themselves at you and make you want to sit down and talk about the people, their lives and what we can learn from them.” Mike Scott, Ashby Folk Festival, U.K.