San Diego SportsTim Flannery Has Music in His DNA
New CD: Travelin’ Shoes “I have played music my whole life. Everybody in my family plays,” proclaimed beloved San Diegan Tim Flannery. For Flannery, “It is nice to be back home.” Winter is the season that allows Flannery to reconnect to San Diegans through his music. This comes after spending the last seven months on the road where he was been living the life that he loves as a baseball man serving as the third base coach for the San Francisco Giants. If Flannery had to choose between baseball and music, it would be like asking him to choose between water and air. Flannery believes, “I have the best of both worlds!” “The music is so much bigger than me.” Flannery can track his family of musicians back to the 1700s when his ancestors came over from Cork Ireland as the original white settlers of the Appalachian Mountains. “We brought the music over here ... it is in our DNA.” Today his mother plays piano, his brother Tom teaches music in high schools in Kentucky and has conducted choirs for the Pope at the Vatican. His nephews have their own CDs. Flannery joked, “If you come to Thanksgiving at my house, it would be like a four hour set with a meal in between.” For more than 30 years now, travel has been a muse for Flannery’s music as he has been constantly on the road from one baseball diamond to the next. “When I am traveling during the baseball season, I am carrying guitars and writing and dealing with being away from home and dealing with issues that come up with being on the road and come up from the pressures of life of being who I am as a father, a husband, a coach, an employee, a provider and all the stuff that we carry.”  Cover of Travelin' Shoes Picture Provided by Tim Flannery Carrying a guitar for countless miles of travel has now led to nine records. “Most of my songs come from stories; they are like photographs for me. I still call them a record because they are a recording of the events of my life.” Recently he released his latest record, Travelin’ Shoes, a soulful expression of Flannery’s life on the road. Now that Flannery is home, he will spend the next few months traveling around San Diego performing the songs from Travelin’ Shoes and his previous albums with his band, The Enablers. Flannery’s wife Donna, who often accompanies him at performances, coined the name of the band. According to Flannery, “I don’t even like to call them the band; they’re more like a bunch of great friends that happen to play incredible music.” The actual composition of The Enablers changes somewhat from show to show. Regular repeat offenders are all stars of the San Diego music scene: Dennis Caplinger, Randi Driscoll, Doug Pettibone, Eve Sellis and, by Flannery’s own definition, the number one Enabler Jeff Berkley of Berkley Hart. “For me, I just love the guys and the girls I play with.” Speaking to the process that leads to a performance, Flannery said, “I kind of rehearse with each person individually because they are so busy in their own world. So, when we come together, everybody is well rehearsed but nothing is processed perfection. So you still have the great sense of, ‘What is going to happen in the moment?’” Perhaps it is the process of imperfection that gives Flannery his great gift of being able to personally connect with his audiences. “When you are first starting out, you are afraid to open that up and let people in because the songs mean so much. You don’t want anybody to hurt you. You don’t want anybody to tell you that they don’t like it or that didn’t happen. But I have gotten to the point where I have learned that is the strength of the song - to open up my heart and my soul and to let everybody and anybody in if they want.” The venues where Flannery opens up his soul to the public varies greatly from performing for hundreds at the Star of India to much more intimate settings like the Canyon Folk House Concert series in Harbison Canyon that seats approximately 50 people. Even though he may lose money on house concerts, Flannery professed, “I love those shows!” According to Flannery, “If you not paying [the band] the going rate, they are losing money.” The Enablers are quality musicians of their own right who could be performing their own shows or in a recoding studio for artists like Eric Clapton or Lucinda Williams as they have done in the past. If you would like to see Flannery perform with the talented Enablers, please visit TimFlannery.com for a list of currently scheduled concerts. Flannery has generously provided some free samples of his music at his web site. Click on the link to listen to the title song of his new album, Travelin' Shoes.
 Dan McLellan About the author: Dan McLellan is a San Diego native and Charger season ticket holder since 1993. He also has a weekly Charger podcast at www.DanMcLellan.com. More by this author Subscribe to Sports:
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