At one point early on in our conversation, veteran real-thing trance-bluesman Otis Taylor offers the advice that “You can’t judge a book by its cover, you know?”
No kidding.
I mean, consider the cover photo of Taylor’s new Otis Taylor’s Contraband album. The man himself faces the camera, dark wide-brimmed hat shadowing black-framed sunglasses. The only skin visible is Taylor’s nose and a little bit of cheek above his grey-flecked beard. His mouth looks humorless – grim, almost – making it easy to believe that the white fur draped around his body came from something that Taylor himself must’ve taken down with his bare hands, skinned, and consumed. The heavy metal necklace draped around his shoulders and down the front of the fur looks like it weighs 50 lbs. itself.
The photo actually only shows Taylor from mid-hat down to the bottom of his rib cage with nothing else in the photo for perspective, but nonetheless he looks huge – huge – and mean. Mean as hell. One mean-as-hell sumbitch.
In other words, not an easy interview subject.
So it was easy to wonder if I’d dialed the wrong number when a relatively gentle-sounding voice answered “Hello?”
And when Taylor exploded in laughter within the first minute, I couldn’t help but glance at the CD alongside my elbow and think, “I’m talking to this guy?”
We’d established the fact that Otis was in Colorado and I was in Maine when he started to … well … darn near giggle.
“You know, you can’t get there from there,” Otis said, then busted up completely at his version of a well-worn punchline from the bowels of Maine humor.
“Hey,” I answered in mock consternation. “Nobody here in Maine actually says that, you know. I’m convinced that somebody from away made that up years ago.”
“Yeah,” says Otis, suddenly serious. “It’s a … southern conspiracy.”
And then we’re both laughing and it’s all good.
In the blood
I was looking forward to asking Taylor about his oldest daughter, Cassie, a monster bass player and killer vocalist in her own right. As a dad of two musical daughters myself (I have my own bass-playing Cassie, along with her guitar-picking sister Jessica), I’m wondering if Otis remembers the magical moment when his daughter came to him, looking for her musical start.
“Naw – I made her do it,” Otis deadpans. Then, chuckling, he tells me that it was the bass line on Jimi Hendrix’ version of “Hey Joe” that first caught the then 14-year-old Cassie’s ear: “She heard that bass run on ‘Hey Joe’” – he scat sings: “da-da-da-da …” – “and she said, ‘Show me how you play that on bass.’ She learned it in 10 minutes.”
“A natural,” I offer. And Otis allows how Cassie must be, seeing’s how she plays as well as she does despite hating to practice. “She used to cry because I’d make her practice 15 minutes a week. It’s funny: you make a kid play piano and it’s okay; you make them practice the bass and everyone gets upset, you know?
“The hard part was, it really did hurt – Cassie had little blisters on her fingers at first,” he tells me. “Then she said she had tendonitis: ‘I can’t practice, my wrist hurts.’”
Otis recognized his eldest daughter’s natural talent – practice or no practice – and she was on tour with him by the time she was 16. “She’d just go and do the gigs; she’d never practice. Even now, the only time she’ll sit down with the bass is when she’s writing a song.”
Hearing Cassie’s contributions to Contraband (she shares bass duties with Todd Edmunds), it’s scary how locked in she is to the rhythm of her father’s right hand and his stomping foot. I ask Otis if he feels it’s a matter of nature or nurture?
“Your children walk like you and talk like you … so why wouldn’t they play like you?” he says.
Good point, Dad.
Just the facts
Listening to Contraband – or any of Otis Taylor’s music – you realize that there’s no filler or fancy fiddly bits that exist just for the sake of being fancy or fiddly. Everything you hear is integral to that particular song’s vibe, boiled down to the bones of its soul and groove. Solos are taken simply to drive home the emotion of the moment.
Sometimes the arrangements aren’t much more than Taylor’s voice and guitar or banjo accompanied lightly by drums and bass (“2 Or 3 Times” or “Look To The Side”); other times it might be thick layers of sound (including pedal steel, organ, fiddle, or cornet) laid down over a pulsating, primal rhythm, such as on “The Devil’s Gonna Lie” or the dark, hypnotic spiral of “Contraband Blues”. It’s simply a matter of what was needed to get the job done.
The same applies to Otis Taylor’s lyrics: he uses simple words to paint elaborate pictures. Listen to “Blind Piano Teacher”, for instance. In the course of about two dozen words, you feel everything – from the couple’s happiness to the late afternoon ocean breeze stirring the curtains in the windows of the home they share.
“You boiled away every bit of fat and gristle, didn’t you?” I ask Taylor.
“All those things were floating in my head,” he says. “There’s this beautiful blind piano teacher and this old white guy … and everybody’s going, ‘What are they doing ?’ But they were happy, you know? She can’t tell how old he is because she’s blind and he doesn’t care that she’s black. None of it matters – they were happy …”
Taylor offers a description of each song’s story or theme in Contraband ’s liner notes – delivered in classic Otis-ese:
A Southern man tells a Northern woman to come be with him. – “On My Delta Bed”
When love is strong enough, you will cross the ocean. – “Look To The Side”
If the Romans had their way in war, would we still be here today? – “Romans Had Their Way”
As sparse as these offerings are, I’m surprised that Taylor wrote anything, thinking he usually leaves the interpretations of his songs completely open to the mind’s eye of the listener.
“Although I guess you still are,” I say, thinking it over. “You’re basically stating the obvious in most of your descriptions … you’re still leaving plenty to the audience to decipher for themselves.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not a … a protest singer,” says Taylor. “I’m more like a … sort of an audio reporter.
“Like … ‘There was a plane accident today; they hit a barn, but everybody’s safe.’ You say it in a few words and that’s what happened. I might take it to another level – ‘But while they crashed, the pilot pissed on himself’ – you know what I mean?” We laughed; “Yeah, I do,” I said.
“But really, I’m just telling a story,” says Taylor. “I wouldn’t say if he was a Republican pilot or a Democrat pilot. I’m like, third party – that’s what I’m comfortable with.
“People always ask about my music being dark, but I’m not the only person that sings about dark stuff. If you listen to Appalachian music, that can be very dark. I guess I just always have a twist on things.”
He laughs. “When I was kid, I used to like Edgar Allen Poe. I guess I’ve always liked things with a twist.”
With scenes this vivid and grooves this powerful, I can’t help but wonder what comes first – do the words inspire the music? Or do the rhythms conjure up the stories?
“It works all kinds of ways,” says Taylor. “I might have a groove that’s waiting for some words or I might have some words that are waiting for a groove or some chord changes – or a hook. You gotta have a hook, you know what I mean?
“Sometimes they come all together; sometimes they come in parts. Sometimes I take an old song and redo it. It happens in all different ways, you know? I don’t sit down to write a song; when the songs come to me, then I write them down. Might be in the car; might be in the shower …”
Such is the life of the “audio reporter.”
Just in case
When I mention that much of the album has a live, eye-to-eye-and-locked-in-on-the-groove feel, Otis laughs.
“There are a couple that were done with everyone in the studio, but most of them were built from basic tracks – sometimes just me and an acoustic guitar.” It turns out that Taylor received some tough news just as he was about to go in to the Contraband sessions: what he had been thinking was a really sore back that was worthy of a chiropractor turned out to be a mass the size of a softball that required immediate surgery. Not unlike Neil Young‘s Prairie Wind sessions (recorded just prior to Young undergoing surgery for a brain aneurysm), Taylor hurried into the studio to lay down a batch of solo acoustic tracks – “So to have something – just in case,” he says, with a little bit of a laugh.
“The first song on the album – ‘The Devil’s Gonna Lie’ – was one of the ones I did by myself before the surgery, but I ended up taking the acoustic parts out. I kept on adding to it and finally said, ‘If I take out the acoustic stuff, this song might work better!’”
Taylor offers a lot of credit to drummer Larry Thompson for his ability to “just lock in on my guitar parts – we didn’t use click tracks … he just locked in to me. It’s all about the pocket.”
“2 Or 3 Times” is another tune based on one of Taylor’s pre-surgery “just in case” tracks – and Taylor admits that even he himself found it a challenge rhythmically to finish later on. “When I did that song by myself, it kind of floated … later on, it was hard to get in the pocket. We had to make an imaginary pocket, with Larry on drums and Todd Edmunds on bass. It was really hard to play without singing it – and even then, I’d think, “What am I singing? I think I’m on the wrong chord!”
Maybe so, but you’d never know it by listening to that track – or any of the 14 tunes on Contraband. Other key players who meld perfectly into Taylor’s rhythms include Ron Miles on cornet, djembe master Fara Tolno, Brian Juan on organ, and the brilliant Anne Harris on fiddle. Legendary Sacred Steel picker Chuck Campbell adds his instrument’s unique voice to a number of tracks, while NY-based guitarist Jon Paul Johnson lays down tasteful (yet powerful) 6-string to Contraband. On the album-closing “I Can See You’re Lying” Johnson sounds like he’s channeling the blues-soaked soul of the late, great Gary Moore – a friend of Taylor’s who passed away in 2011.
“Gary had a heart attack last spring and didn’t make it; I had one last fall and I’m still here,” says Taylor. “When it’s time, something’s gonna get you.” He offers little explanation about his own cardiac episode – you get the feeling that Otis Taylor spends little time worrying about “what if,” preferring to keep moving and living.
Not a bad outlook for us all.
“Not that jive”
Before we end our conversation, I feel like I have to make an admission to Otis Taylor. The fact is, I never would have known that some of the songs on Contraband were built around his electric banjo, rather than an old vintage hollowbody guitar honking through a near-death-but-still-funky tube amp. This apparently is not news to him. “I’ll have guys try to play my songs on YouTube, but it’s not the same; they’re doing it on guitar.”
Between the high drone string of Taylor’s banjo, his picking style, and a tone that he laughingly describes as sometimes being “a little distorted – a little disturbing,” his songs are blends of old-as-this-world rhythms and bluesy grooves.
“Do you have a main electric banjo?” I ask.
“Yeah, a Blue Star – they have an Otis Taylor model,” he says.
“How about the acoustic banjo?” I ask.
“Ome,” answers Otis. “They have an Otis Taylor model, too.”
Up until now, he’s been totally dry – but now I think I have him. “How about acoustic guitars – do you have a fave?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“Well, mostly my Santa Cruz,” says Otis. “They, uh … they make an Otis Taylor model acoustic guitar.”
I wait a moment – and then Otis starts to laugh a little.
“I don’t have an Otis Taylor model mandolin – I’m not that jive!”
And then we’re both laughing big-time – me and that stone-faced guy on the cover of Otis Taylor’s Contraband.
You can’t judge a book by its cover. Or a bluesman.
