Tara Jane O'Neil

Songwriter Tara Jane O'Neil launched her musical path in 1992 at age twenty by joining the Louisville, Kentucky art-punk group Rodan on bass. Although the band endured only two years and produced a single album, her profile secured her a key part in the film Half-Cocked, a fictional portrait of a Louisville punk outfit that included members of June of 44, the Grifters, and Rachel’s. During the project she formed a lasting bond with Ruby Falls guitarist Cynthia Nelson. The pair founded Retsin and issued multiple full-lengths from 1995 to 2001, among them the 1998 collaboration with Ida titled The Ida Retsin Family Album, Vol. 1. Outside Retsin, O’Neil, after relocating from Louisville to New York City, assembled the Sonora Pine, which operated from 1994 to 1996 and yielded two albums; she later returned to Louisville and contributed to recordings by Danielle Howle and Come.

In 1997 she moved once more to New York City, where she connected with Ida and began work on her debut solo effort, Peregrine. The lo-fi set, captured largely in her apartment bathtub, appeared in early 2000. She stayed occupied by engineering and performing on k.’s first album, then returned to Louisville, added guest appearances with Papa M and Naysayer, and issued the 2002 improvised collaboration Music for a Meteor Shower with Daniel Littleton of Ida. That same year she released her second solo album, TJO, before settling in Olympia, Washington. Additional guest spots followed, among them vocals on Saturday Looks Good to Me’s All Your Summer Songs and contributions to Victory Park’s Antietam.

Further solo releases arrived with You Sound, Reflect in 2004, the A Raveling EP and In Circles in 2006, and Ways Away in 2009. Beyond music, O’Neil maintains a parallel practice as a painter, with her canvases appearing on every solo release. In 2008 she encountered Japanese vocalist Nikaido Kazumi in Kyoto; the two became close despite sharing no common spoken language. Joined one afternoon by Geoff Soule and Norio Fukuda along with an array of stringed and primitive percussion instruments, they recorded four hours of improvisation. Returning to Japan in spring 2010—this time to Kobe—the pair expanded those sessions with altered instrumentation and electronic treatments, conveying directions through paintings, drawings, and handclaps. The resulting Tara Jane O’Neil/Nikaido Kazumi album emerged in spring 2011 on K Records.

In 2014 she returned with Where Shine New Lights, her seventh studio album and first for Kranky. Three years later she aligned with Gnomonsong, the independent imprint co-founded by Devendra Banhart, for the self-titled Tara Jane O’Neil.