M.C. Taylor
There aren’t many things in this world more enriching than a close friend. Someone whose soul hums at the same frequency as yours and whose existence only adds to the color in your life.
Talking with Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C. Taylor and Phil Cook, it’s clear they’ve found that in each other. The two musicians met about five years ago in the fertile artist community surrounding the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina and have been constants in each others’ lives ever since.
Listen to the music of both Taylor and Cook and it you’ll begin to understand the roots of their connection. Cook’s work in Megafaun and The Shouting Matches showcased a penchant for crafting gorgeous hybridizations of folk, blues and psychedelia that resonated on a deeply soulful level. Last year’s Southland Mission was a lifetime in the making, a tour-de-force of vibrant self-expression that combined all of Cook’s musical influences onto one album.
As Hiss Golden Messenger, Taylor has been releasing music that offers raw portraits of his life on a bedrock of sturdy folk-rock for years. His storytelling is at its most revealing on this year’s standout Heart Like A Levee, which grapples with the intricacies of moving through life balancing art, work and family. Taylor and Cook’s respective albums represent the best work each have released and it is no wonder that they both employed the other to play on their and help bring their visions to life.
When I caught up with them recently over the phone they were finishing a U.S. tour behind the release of Heart Like A Levee. Their collaboration was playing out as beautifully on the road as it had on the record with Cook lending his deft touch on guitar and piano to Taylor’s music. They were jovial as they discussed how they’ve enhanced each others’ lives, their individual creative processes and the tight-knit community in Raleigh-Durham. The journey is all the more better when you have someone with which to share it.
Thanks for both hopping on the phone today to talk. I’ve never interviewed two people over the phone before, have you done an interview like this?
Phil Cook: I’ve sat in a lot of rooms where Mike was the only one getting interviewed, but this was the first time I was specifically requested to be somewhere with him, which is cool. (Mike Taylor laughing in the background).
Well I think both of you put out some really good stuff and the fact you guys play together is really cool so I thought I’d talk to both of you.
M.C. Taylor: I think Phil knows more about what’s happening in my music than I do (Laughs).
Well, we can get a second opinion on things.
MT: Well mine would be second and Phil’s would be first.
PC: Theory wise it’s probably accurate.
Mike, I’ll start with you. Reading through press stuff you mentioned that the song “Heart Like A Levee” came to you while you were in a hotel room in the midst of a tour, struggling with your position as a working musician in life at that specific moment. I’m curious, was the emotion that was the catalyst for that song find itself elsewhere on the album?
MT: Yeah, I mean I think the emotion that you’re talking about on “Heart Like A Levee” is a mixture of guilt and elation. It’s kind of the theme of the album honestly. I think it’s probably most condensed on that song, but I can’t think of a song on the record that doesn’t contain at least a kernel of that vibe.
Do you usually find the road an inspiring place to write?
MT: No, not really, it’s not quite my vibe. But sometimes I have to, either because I have some kind of self-imposed deadline or there’s just something going on inside that I need to deal with. That was certainly the case when I really sort of started the writing of this record.
Do you think you learned something about yourself as a person when you wrote this album? It seems testimonial in a way.
MT: Yeah I definitely did because I know I am a changed person from two years ago or a year and a half ago when I started writing this record. It would probably be hard for me to articulate in what ways, but there is something inside me that… It wouldn’t be worth doing unless it was transformative for me. First and foremost, I always assume that anybody interested in this music is eventually going to disappear (Laughs), find something more interesting. So first and foremost I am writing for myself, then it branches outward to my family and my kids, maybe they’ll find something on one of these records to put on my gravestone. Then I’m writing for Phil, and Brad (Cook) and for everybody that I play with, because they are the ones that sort of make this music live in so many ways now.
Phil, I have a question for you. Your last album Southland Mission, you wrote in the woods over the course of three days in Virginia. Are you usually a purge-all-there-is creative type where you need to get it all out at once?
PC: No, I think I am slowly waking up to the potential that I’ve had over the course of my life. I think I really should have spent some more time doing more of that stuff. Like, I had never spent that much time alone by myself, three days is the longest I’d ever spent alone by myself. So that was really huge for me. My thoughts and my actions didn’t really have anything to bounce off of. Making music in that scenario, kind of isolated was pretty cool. I don’t know, I didn’t have anyone to come back at me and be social with all the time and to figure out how to navigate it was pretty honest and straightforward. Now that is kind of what I gotta do in order to write, I just kinda gotta get away. Mike and I both have kids and it’s kinda hard to write because you kind of have to write around your family life in a lot of ways. When your kids are home with you it’s kinda hard to squeeze in time after the kids go to bed and you are just exhausted. You feel like you wanna be honest but goddamnit I am so tired. Also, it’s hard to do that at anytime where it involves running your house. So for me that was the key, to go away for a few days.
How did you guys first meet? How long have you been in each other’s lives?
PC: Meeting Mike is just one of those situations for me that, like, I don’t remember not knowing him anymore. I can’t picture my life before him at all. So that’s there.
MT: I think technically we’ve been together for like four or five years.
PC: Which seems so short, it’s crazy how short that feels for me.
MT: It definitely was the start of a new chapter. It was the culmination of a lot of things for me. I was recently at the end of a road with what I was trying to do with my music and it just so happened that Phil and his brother Brad came into my life, like, that day (Laughs).
PC: We were just at the end of the same thing, the end of the road we had just traveled which started when we were 15 and culminated with Megafaun. I think with that being done, we didn’t know what we were going to do next. We met Mike, again, probably right when we got home from our last Megafaun tour when we decided we were gonna be done. I didn’t know what I was gonna do next but we heard we should listen to this record Poor Moon and I had like a whole bunch of friends ask me if I had heard it yet. I remember one night listening to it and this was before I had met Mike. I remember listening to the record and I had a whole bunch of photos and I was framing them all, cutting mattes. I was by myself before I had a kid, or maybe it was right after I had it, I can’t remember. I just remember, again, having this really honest moment with the music, and I was like “Holy shit.” So me and my brother sought Mike out and saw his album release show for Poor Moon and we met him afterward and I went and recorded on Haw less than a week after meeting him for the first time.
Wow, that’s an in-it-to-win type relationship right there.
MT: It’s one of the great relationships of my life. I mean the Cook boys are really special people, they are deep dudes. They brought, like, a really necessary energy to me. They brought a model for what it means to be a sensitive male in my life, which is helpful (Laughs).
Strictly musically speaking, what do you admire in each other’s playing?
MT: Oh wow, this could take a very long time. He has the most advanced sense of harmony all in his head. So when I’m pointing something out I really love about a song we both like, he can explain to me why it is that a certain harmonic interval pulls a certain string. That’s not something that is really in my toolbox and I don’t know if that sort of knowledge will ever be, now that Phil is in my life. I can be even lazier. He can also be extremely technical and you’d never be thinking this guy has crazy technique when you see or hear him play. But goddamn this guy is a musical dude.
PC: I think one of the biggest things that I’ve always gotten from Mike’s playing is that Mike’s got an incredible sense of rhythm that all of his songs start with. Even as a songwriter, his lyrics alone … the way they’ve changed my life is so mappable from song to song. I could absolutely turn things over while I get older and things are resonating with me. I think rhythm wise, I can tell when it’s Mike. If Mike is on his guitar, whether he is fingerpicking or strumming, I can tell it’s him even if he isn’t singing. I could pick him out of a lineup of 40 people playing the same chords. That is distinct and singular to what he is doing, which is my favorite mark of any musician, especially instrumentalist. With singers you hear their voice, that’s Billie Holiday or Bob Dylan. You can tell within one second that’s that person. With instrumentalist, to be able to achieve something like that is really quite a feat, to hear someone’s personality come through an instrument like that. That’s a pretty cool thing.
I’m big fan of both you guys, but also the music scene where you’re from in the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina. Sylvan Esso, Mount Moriah, the record label Paradise of Bachelors are all down there. How does the Raleigh-Durham scene feel to you as musicians and how does it compare to others you’ve been a part of?
PC: I grew up in a place where nobody, including me, was touring. The entirety of my youth even up to when I was a young man was like that. But moving here was really cool because people really tour here. A lot of your friends are people that are constantly gone and constantly coming back and out there making a scene, making a name for the scene. And that could be in all different kinds of genres of music. I like slowly becoming aware of how many people are out there doing it and traveling the world and bringing those experiences back here to the Triangle. I understand it as a long build, like it’s snowballing in a really cool way. I guess I’m speaking real generally about it, but I really appreciate the people who moved here from somewhere else like Mike and I and were seeking something different than where we were from and found it here. That’s as much as I appreciate people that are from here, like Heather McEntire from Mount Moriah, who are from here and are writing from a distinctly Carolinian viewpoint about being queer in the south in 2016. She’s written songs that speak to that and more universal themes in an incredible way. I think it’s resonated with so many people that are from these parts.
Is there anyone who has caught your attention lately from the area that the greater world should know about?
MT: Probably (Laughs). I feel like we lately have been around some people that like to be considered more like veterans. I don’t know why exactly. We’ve been doing it for a little while and the people around us have been here for a long time. Someone like Tift Merritt has been singing with us and we’re huge fans. She’s been doing it for a long time and she continues to evolve and sharpen her thing. Speaking personally, I’m really interested in what happens on someone’s eighth or ninth record, you know what I mean? Do they keep the faith? Do they continue to shape the art? How does the musical career evolve at a time like this? That’s a pretty heavy thing to watch, it’s a sincere tightrope act.
PC: There’s this guy in our band, Ryan Gustafson, who is in a band, well he is a band, called The Dead Tongues. I think that’s one that where we just see him play every night. He plays in my band as well, I’ve toured with him for the last two years basically. I’ve seen him play so many damn times and every time he just absolutely baffles people with how authentic his thing is, it’s just beautiful. And he’s an incredible songwriter also, his writing is growing in leaps and bounds. So Mike and I would both say Ryan Gustafson, everybody should know about that guy.
