Tim Flannery’s Outside Lands carries forward the wild spirit of San Francisco’s 19th century “Outside Lands” neighborhoods, and echoes the atmospheric sounds of the city’s best roots and rock bands. The songs also live in the edgy current moment—sometimes in the third base coaching box of the San Francisco Giants, where Tim spends his seasons in the lands just outside of fair territory. The Lunatic Fringe are led by ace producer and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Berkley, with Dennis Caplinger on many acoustic strings and Doug Pettibone on pedal steel guitar, among many Fringe players. They’re joined on Outside Lands by Bob Weir, Jerry Jeff Walker, Mickey Raphael, Steve Poltz and more. Together, they cherish performance over perfection, on songs with a harder edge and more open instrumental space than on Flannery’s twelve previous albums. It’s a natural sonic evolution, after the recent time Tim has spent sitting in with Railroad Earth, Jackie Greene, Hot Buttered Rum, and Yonder Mountain String Band. The harder edge is always an edge of love. “All we can do is love harder,” Tim says in response to the brutal hate crime that befell Giants fan Bryan Stow. Every cent of Outside Lands sales will be donated towards Bryan’s crushing medical expenses. “Everyone lending their hand proves about love,” he adds. “Watching how they care and don’t quit, the Stow family inspires me to be a better father, a better husband.” The love of San Francisco has crept more into Tim’s music and soul, after seven years there coaching third, and after finding the city hunger for his music. “I wanted this album to sound like it was coming out of Golden Gate Park,” he says, comparing Jeff Berkley to T-Bone Burnett in his ability to bring that natural sound to the songs. The band loves harder from the opening note of “Hillbilly Rain,” a song of spirit and grace partially written in the coaching box in Cincinnati, when Tim had scoreless time to look through the beautiful mists into Kentucky and remember his father. A more violent St. Louis storm caused “The Tornado Song,” and if Tim’s songs are often inspired by the baseball road, they’re rarely directly about it. Even “21 Days,” born from the three final weeks of the Giants’ 2012 World Championship season, translates the magic of never giving up into more personal terms. And nowhere is persistent loving magic deeper than in the ancestral spirit of “Footprints of Love,” written for Tim’s daughter’s wedding. It’s all a subtle testament to trusting the wisdom of greater spirit, through the trials and triumphs. Tim recalls, “As Carlos Santana told me one day, sometimes you just have to know when to get out of the way of yourself.” In Outside Lands, being in healing service creates magic of its own, and being in the Lunatic Fringe is the only sane place to be.