Two nights in to a short, five-night run and Tim O’Brien and Jan Fabricius were feeling it.

“Last night we were rusty; tonight we’re burnt out,” O’Brien said April 20 from the stage of Natalie’s Grandview, a restaurant/music hall in Ohio’s capital city, where the duo turned in a down-home, uplifting set comprising 18 songs, including covers and selections from 2021’s He Walked On and the forthcoming Cup of Sugar, across 90 minutes.

The intimate setting – about 80 people at tables and around the bar – gave the feeling of listening to your uncle and aunt entertaining the family at a decennial reunion. But this hootenanny was for fans and, anyway, O’Brien, the former Hot Rize multi-instrumentalist and singer, is a world-class, Grammy-winning bluegrass musician, while your uncle likely is not. 

But the familial vibe was strong enough that O’Brien jokingly thanked his kin for coming to the show. 

The husband-and-wife duo were unplugged, with O’Brien’s guitar and fiddle and Fabricius’ mandolin aided only by microphones as they sung into a shared mic between them; he on lead, she on harmony. And they were locked into mountain harmony and melody from the holler as the initially chatty audience got quieter and quieter as they realized what a gift they were receiving.

In O’Brien and Fabricius’ world, Bob Dylan’s “Señor” is an uptempo energy builder. The Carter Family’s “Little Annie” is, meanwhile, rendered close to the original, just as old A.P. would have it.

With serious songs about John Lewis in “When You Pray (Move Your Feet)” and getting along with your neighbors in “Cup of Sugar,” O’Brien is nevertheless full of good humor. He advised the audience a fiddle differs from a violin in that you can spill beer on the former and cracked that he and Fabricius had written “Gila Headwaters” while tripping on mushrooms, though the look on the latter’s face quickly disabused concertgoers of that notion.

Halfway through the show, O’Brien busted out his beer-soaked violin – playing one, he said, is “like collecting stamps, it’s not for everyone” – and wowed the now-pin-drop-quiet attendees with the solo, gospel stomp “Working on a Building.” After singing his heart out, O’Brien reunited with Fabricius for the traditional instrumental “Rye Straw” before digging into Cup of Sugar’s “Diddleye,” which, while not yet released, seems destined to be a much-covered O’Brien number in future years. 

He returned to his six-string picking instrument for the homestretch, which included the new album’s lead single, “Little Lamb Little Lamb,” and two of its companions, including the rambunctious celebration of life that is “The Pay’s a Lot Better Too” and “The Anchor,” a melancholy paean to Walter Cronkite and the long-lost virtue of shared reality.

“And that’s the way it is, April 20, 2023,” O’Brien said, before he and Fabricius made their way off stage and through the crowd to prepare for night three of five.