Country blues collided with country and bluegrass when Chris Smither and Tim O’Brien and Jan Fabricius split a Nov. 5 bill at the Holland Theatre. 

The musicians collaborated at the end of Smither’s set with O’Brien (on mandolin) and Fabricius (vocals) reading from a lyrics sheet on “No Love Today” and “Leave the Light On.”

A standing ovation resulted, causing Smither to re-emerge from the wings to perform his jaw-dropping, rip-roaring rendition of Blind Willie McTell’s “Statesboro Blues” to wrap the evening. 

“I should’ve practiced more,” Smither said when he took the stage following O’Brien and Fabricius’ splendid, 60-minute set. 

Smither needn’t have worried. At 77, he remains in top form and offered not one muffed not and zero filler across his 75-minute, genre-of-one performance before a tiny crowd of fewer than 100 in Bellefountaine, Ohio’s, recently restored atmospheric theater replete with spinning windmills. 

With a microphone at his feet for percussion, Smither, six-string plugged in and raspy baritone alternating between exasperation and exclamation, was as masterful an entertainer as a musician and songwriter. He played originals like “Train Home” (“my gospel song for agnostics,” he calls it) and “Drive You Home Again” and a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” with eyes clenched tight and one-man-band precision. 

Between numbers, Smither talked about songwriting and threatened to make an LP titled Songs My Mother Would Hate, as he spun his web of country blues, heavy on bottom-string fingerpicking, boom-chuck beats and sustained notes, with his legs (aka, drum sticks) in constant motion. 

Unlike Smither, O’Brien (guitar, fiddle) and Fabricius (mandolin) were unplugged and shared an old-fashioned mic for harmonies to start the evening. The husband-and-wife duo looked as if they’d just walked off the farm in denim and casual tops as they played traditional fare like “Sod Buster” (“they’ve lasted because they’re good,” O’Brien said of those songs) and originals from 2021’s He Walked On. 

At 68, the former Hot Rize multi-instrumentalist remains a creative force, as the just-written, not-yet-recorded “Cup of Sugar,” about neighborly relations, demonstrated. 

O’Brien’s other recent originals span American history, working backward from modern technology (“Nervous”), the late John Lewis (“When You Pray (Move Your Feet)”) and the children of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (“Can You See Me, Sister?”). 

O’Brien explained the difference between a violin and a fiddle (“you don’t spill beer on a violin”) before playing a solo spiritual. And when his guitar intertwined with Fabricius’ mandolin, and she joined him in high harmony, the couple proved the adage about playing together. 

The Carter Family’s “Little Annie,” a quick kiss and a bow wrapped their set.