Willmette Week, Portland, OR 09/2002 Tiny Bay Area singer-songwriter Paula O'Rourke's alt. country leans heavier into "alt" territory than "country" coming off owing more to Wilco, Victoria Williams and latter-day Soul Asylum than Tammy Wynette or the Dixie Chicks. It's O'Rourke's quirkiness that is her particular charm, which infects the music of her regular band, Tiny. Similar to the way Tom Waits cleverly revamps the blues and Tin Pan Alley, O'Rourke's skewed approach is refreshing, while remaining tethered to the strict rigors of country music. -Dave Clifford Zeromag.net August 2000 Transformation of the Month: TINY The late, great Liar was a yin-and-yang situation gender-wise (two men/two women). That band's 3fairer2 half has emerged, bringing the folkier elements of their former group's hard-rock sound (as well as themselves) to the forefront. Paula O' Rourke's vocals are conversational and understated, while Shelia Schat complements nicely with harmony vocals and fiddle. Additional, stellar support is leant by guitarist Dan Olmsted, who also is part of Mushroom (see above). And, both Olmsted and Schat are alumni of the respected group, New E-Z Devils. Box 410025 San Francisco, CA 94141-0025. RRRNO@aol.com West Coast Performer Magazine September, 2000 Tiny - Self-titled Recorded at The Wally Sound Mixed by Steve Fontano at Fantasy Records in Berkeley, CA Released on NMX Records The Bay Area is generally not widely known as a haven for buddng country stars, and San Francisco band Tiny seems to know this. Led by ardent vocalists Paula O' Rourke and Sheila Schat, the bands take typical, often sad-sack country lyrics and build crafty melodies around them. As a result, they end up sounding far closer to Mary's Danish than the Judds. This is a good thing. "Withering," the opening track, begins with some funky, laid-back reggae beats, and ends up flourishing with an old-school Trenchtown guitar solo. The most fun, though, is when the band does get around to their countrified roots, like on the hootenanny-evoking "Shame." Drummer Patrick Harte keeps the song chugging along, and Schat's fiddle playing is never far beneath the surface. This four-track EP is a precursor to Harbinger, the band's latest full-length album released last summer. The record was mixed at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley by Bay Area sound guru Steve Fontano, the engineer who worked on Santana's Grammy-winning Supernatural CD. No doubt about it, Fontano plays the fifth Beatle role here, expertly glossing over Dan Olmsted's twangy guitar ramblings with O'Rourke and Schat's lissome harmonies. The result is a sort of alt-country exercise in irony: sweet, melodic pop songs with familiar lyrics about insecurity, scorn, and long, lonely nights. -Christopher Kennedy Eastbay Express November 17th 2000 Also this Saturday, local spin-off Tiny releases its own full-length debut, Harbinger, at the Hotel Utah in SF. As a band, Tiny is only a year old, but it sounds damn good, due to the musical chemistry of Liar cohorts Paula O'Rourke on bass and Sheila Schat on violin, Schat's old New EZ Devils bandmate Dan Olmsted on guitar, and Patrick Harte manning the traps. The two women's vocal harmonies are sweet and playful, and Schat's fiery fiddling and Olmstedt's springy guitar add a fiendish edge. Started as an alt-country side project influenced by outfits like the Old 97's and the Damnations TX last November, Tiny excels at bouncy, slightly shadowy Western rockers like "Shame on You" and the sleepy waltz "Same Old Thing," the two moaning with one voice, "Tellin' yourself you won't be discovered/ Maybe someday my song will be covered." It's a familiar refrain to many a band on the scene today, but I sure wouldn't rule it out. SF Gate November 2000 It was a hot time at the Hotel Utah last Saturday as countrified quartet Tiny celebrated the release of its first album, Harbinger. Though bassist/vocalist Paula O'Rourke and violinist/vocalist Sheila Schat are best known for their work in Liar, a group that gigged constantly in the Bay Area before disbanding last year, there was no shortage of adoring fans there to hear them work their magic. Guitarist Dan Olmsted, who also has played in New E-Z Devils and Soldier of Fortune Cookie, unfortunately suffered through one of those nights where you break a string, switch guitars, break another and then go hopelessly out of tune. It was a bummer for Dan, whose unique sound gives the alt-country band an original texture, but the crowd didn't seem to mind at all. In addition to excellent opening sets by Virgil Shaw and Waycross, former Liar guitar wizard Eric McFadden made a guest appearance on the mandolin. He's been touring with George Clinton recently and sported a spanking-new Parliament T-shirt onstage to boot. Though t he Utah changed hands earlier this year, the veteran bartenders, doorman and longtime locals, both on the bill and in the crowd, made it feel the same as it ever was. SF Bay Guardian - Demo Tape of the Week 11/11/99 IN THE TIME -honored tradition of offshoot bands leaning more to one side than their primary musical source of bread and butter does, San Francisco's Tiny play way more countrified music than Liar, singer-bassist Paula O'Rourke and singer- violinist Sheila Schat's other Americana group. Tiny (rounded out by Paulo Baldi on drums and Michael Montalto on bass) play minor-chord, boxcar-hoppin' cowgirl music, and the two Liars have been singing together so long that when they bust out harmonies (and they frequently do), it's hard to tell which is which. "Shame" starts off at a jaunty pace with rolling drums and fiddle-vox counterpoint; "Harbinger" slows it down and showcases the cowgirls' vocal dexterity with a nice unison-to-octave stunt. And the way-past-I-will-survive vocals on "Loneliness" merit a quote: "Waitin' for the phone to ring, you might as well unplug that thing / Cuz callin' you's not even on my list / Thought you heard me at your door, don't know your address anymore / You must have heard the sound of your own fist." Yee-haw. Revolutions UK 03/24/01 Harbinger - NMX Records NMX-334 The name may be Tiny but they have made a big impact on me. Paula O'Rourke's tight little band is far too good to be written off merely as quirky but they do inhabit a neighbourhood that even their fellow residents in "left-field" think of as exotic. What kept me listening at first was partly curiosity - why did this sound so distinctive and attractive? - but soon I was simply basking in the overall experience. The ingredients are a thundering bass (O'Rourke herself), thrilling guitars (Dan Olmsted), a spine-tingling violin (Sheila Shat), heavenly harmony vocals (O'Rourke & Shat) and drumming that switches effortlessly between jazz, pop and country (Patrick Harte). Most importantly, however, there are the superb songs, and it's these even more than the evident ability and glee in their playing that marks out Tiny. Almost all were written by Paula and the band and they put to rhythm wit, warmth and a surgically precise probing of our vanities, not least on the title track. While some tracks brought to mind the Throwing Muses, this was more akin to Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire, conjuring via Shat's violin a delicious air of Kurt Weill. Equally outstanding is Heaven, an immensely good-humoured song imbued with boundless joie-de-vivre. Harte sets up a beat that proves as irresistible as the killer melodic hook and the beaming lyrics: "Cause everyday's my birthday and my name is ice cream." A logical move from heaven is to Paula's Guardian Angel, but although the simple, insistent tune and inventive instrumentation - Wally McClellan's marvellous mouth-harp for instance - make it great for us, she admits it can't always have been so easy on her protector. "Through the years I've really bent your ears/ Your shoulder must be tired from my leanin'." Loneliness hurtles along like a bluegrass Cossack dance and the instrumental B-Minor Valentiner combines a gorgeous violin melody - the radiant young girl in her best new dress - with a skilfully played underlying tension that reflects everyone's insecurity on that most charged of days. An album that begins with the alternately creeping and storming Withering ends with the drunkenly eerie Infinity and an unnamed klezmer-style instrumental that also flips repeatedly between gentle dance and frenzy. It's a fitting close for an album with so much energy and bounce. (Maybe that's why "Tigger" appears on the thank-yous!) 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