Mark & Maggie O'Connor

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Maia Rosenfeld

Mark (right) and Maggie O'Connor and instruments.

Mark (right) and Maggie O'Connor

$40 ($35 adv.).

media release: Global music company ONErpm is proud to announce the release of Life After Life, the latest album from GRAMMY Award-winning Americana and bluegrass artists Mark and Maggie O’Connor, out on all platforms Friday, April 26.

A seven-time CMA Award winner, Mark O’Connor is a legendary multi-instrumentalist famous for his work on fiddle, guitar and mandolin. On Life After Life, Mark not only brings these talents to bear but is also the principal songwriter and harmony singer, in addition to producing the album. Maggie, a talented artist in her own right who won a GRAMMY for playing and singing bluegrass with her husband Mark in the O’Connor Band, debuts as the lead singer as well as an instrumentalist.

 The compelling theme flowing throughout Life After Life is the idea that while our common experiences can turn into challenges—even hardships—we still seek optimism and hope. As Mark explains, “Our new songs are about learning to fall in love with life again after being utterly frightened by it,” as this collection took shape during the pandemic.  

The title track, written by Mark and folk singer/wordsmith Joe Henry, references poet Denise Levertov, who writes of a particular woman whose “life after life after life goes by without poetry, without seemliness, without love.” The songwriters wanted to build on the idea but with some surety.  

As Henry explains, “For me, it speaks quite simply to the way life continues to tumble toward us: not in neat, compartmentalized chapters but in overlapping, cross-fading––confounding, misleading, wondrous and glorious––concurrently racing episodes we are nonetheless invited to embrace…even when they mystify us. Maybe even especially when they do.” Mark agrees, saying, “Joe’s words truly embody why this song is the perfect title track as the lyrics so genuinely describe the lives Maggie and I lead together.”  

Mark’s original songs on Life After Life range from taking a leap of faith together in “We Just Happened to Fly” to testing faith in “All We Will Be,” both of which he co-wrote with Henry. “Ride Towards Home,” a song Mark wrote with Maggie, talks about horses and what they have meant to mankind, while “Spice of Life,” written with Jim Parker, is about remembering to enjoy the little things. Mark wrote the current single being offered to Americana radio stations, “One Sunray At A Time,” about raising his daughter, Autumn.  

Each of the album’s songs showcase intricate interludes featuring a wide range of acoustic instruments. Mark says he “drew upon years of experience interpreting vocal songs instrumentally, while also reflecting on my work with some of the great popular songwriters of our time, such as James Taylor, Paul Simon and Bob Dylan.” O’Connor adds that after sitting in a recording studio next to Dylan as he noodled on his guitar between takes, “It raised my curiosity about him purely as a musician. So I designed the solo sections for these songs by imagining what it would sound like if Dylan fully articulated his own music as a guitar soloist.”   

Along this same vein, Mark’s arranging skills and Maggie’s storytelling vocals offer new interpretations of three covers for the album: “Love’s in Need of Love Today” by Stevie Wonder; “Something to Love” by Jason Isbell; and the timeless “Wildflowers” by Dolly Parton.  

“Dear Mark, I got the wonderful cut of “Wildflowers.” I was very, very proud of both you and Maggie. It always touches my heart when somebody likes one of my songs well enough to do it, especially someone as great as you. I’ve always admired you and respected your talent. And Maggie, you sound awfully sweet. Just wanted you to know that I received it and I love it. 

Love, Dolly.”

Wonder’s “Love’s in Need of Love Today” likewise offers a message as relevant now as it was in the 1970s, notes Maggie, adding further that “Isbell’s song has great advice on finding something you enjoy to get you through the tough times. We picked these three songs to cover,” she explains, “because they gave voice to our own feelings, given how recent history has changed our landscape.” 

The recording of Life After Life is an all-acoustic Americana sound garden, with the authoritative upright bass of Dennis Crouch, an old-fashioned drum set masterfully played by veteran John Gardner and the O’Connors using practically every acoustic instrument in their collection. You will hear a Civil War–era Martin guitar, a hundred-year-old Gibson mandocello and a string quartet consisting of two violins, a viola and cello commissioned by Daniel Pearl’s family (for the Wall Street Journal writer killed in Pakistan at the outset of the Iraq War). The Pearl family loans these beautiful instruments to students of the O’Connor Method String Camp each year as a message of fighting hatred.

Life After Life concludes with a heartaching piece. Mark and Maggie return to the violin duo setting their musical relationship began with 10 years ago, but this time in a way even more deeply felt. Mark composed a violin duo reminiscent of his own “Appalachia Waltz” that he recorded with internationally renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma but based on the old Ukrainian folk song “Verbovaya Doschechka” (the willow board). The couple learned the traditional melody line while performing with string players from the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra in an online violin choir recorded in March 2022 while orchestra members were in basements-turned-bunkers taking shelter from Russian missiles.  

“It is an honor to team up with the O’Connors to showcase their many talents and musical creativity,” says Tim Wipperman, managing director of ONErpm’s Nashville office.