Otis Taylor didn’t intend to make an album that sounds as if it was recorded immediately after scouring recent headlines but that’s the accidental result of Fantasizing About Being Black.
“I’ve taken all of my thoughts about the history of racial injustice and created a musical interpretation for modern times,” he said in regards to his 15th album. “When I started recording in 2015, I had no idea the topics would become even more relevant.”
But, he points out that in spite of the subjects and themes his music isn’t meant to go up against the system. “I’m not telling you what to think. I’m just reporting history. I’m not a protest singer or social commentator. That’s a difference. My things are just stories. I’m a storyteller in the Black tradition.”
The 11 songs connect situations from the past that connect to the present. On “Banjo Bam Bam” Taylor focuses on a slave in shackles. “D to E Blues” evokes the desire for freedom. “Roll Down the Hill” rallies for self-preservation when you’ve hit rock bottom. “Jump to Mexico” discusses the perils of an interracial couple. “Jump Jelly Belly” details black soldiers in World War II who had the terrifying responsibility of transferring cargo between ships on the English Channel.
Aiding him in this endeavor are his band members – violinist Anne Harris, drummer Larry Thompson and bassist Todd Edmunds – along with guests Jerry Douglas (koa lap guitar), Brandon Neiderauer (guitar) and Ron Miles (cornet).
Once again, Taylor draws on African-American culture musically by using banjo and fiddle but uses them in an innovative manner that’s become a genre all his own. His descriptive term of Trance Blues takes the seeds of Africa and the roots from the Mississippi Delta and Chicago and creates a hypnotic wave of sound that throbs and pulses, intensifies the drama within the songs and releases that tension, occasionally, when the arrangement loosens its grip on the listener.
Taylor will showcase all of this at his Trance Blues Festival which will take place this Saturday, November 11 at eTown Hall in Downtown Boulder. Colorado
JPG: The idea behind the album, did it coalesce while writing it or after you recorded a few songs?
OT: I recorded some new songs but I used old songs. I didn’t have enough new songs for the whole concept. I knew I wouldn’t because I can’t do a horrible song. It has to be okay or great. On the album, sometimes, the okay ones set up the great ones.
When I was working this record, the Trump thing didn’t exist. He wasn’t even running. We started the record about a year-and-a-half out. Then, I was tuning into the whole Ferguson [Missouri, Black Lives Matter] all that stuff where the energy was really bad but I didn’t know the Trump thing was going to happen. I did not predict that. (slight laugh)
JPG: The album seems very today with current events and what you focused on here.
OT: I always do a few songs about black issues on my album but I wanted to do something different. I needed something totally different. Did you hear the Hey Joe Opus [Red Meat] album?
JPG: Yes.
OT: So, I needed something different. You’ve got to be the same but different. It’s a puzzle. It gets harder as you have more albums.
JPG: I understand the “harder” side of it because there are some artists who find something meaningful late in their careers and others who release stuff and you wish that they didn’t.
OT: Yes. Everybody goes, “When are you going to do a live album?” I say, “They can do it when I’m dead.” As long as I can write a song…right now in the last eight months I’ve come up with one nice song. I’m slowing down and I like it.
JPG: Could it be your standards are so much higher…?
OT: I don’t know. I don’t know. Sometimes, I wonder how I even come up with a song I like. “How did I come up with this idea? How did I come up with this tune?” Some days I’m amazed (slight laugh) but I do.
JPG: I remember Lou Reed described songwriting being like having a radio station playing in his head and he just needed to pay attention.
OT: I do subconsciously but it’s just amazing that I can come up with something I wrote and not something somebody else wrote.
JPG: Back to the idea of having standards; you do have your own style and it’s a matter of creating something that doesn’t sound like other things.
OT: It’s weird how I come up with it. It’s a curse. It’s not a good thing. If I just did lyrics, it comes easy. Sometimes, I just need a tune that doesn’t sound like somebody else did it. I write lyrics so strangely that I usually don’t overlap anybody’s style.
JPG: In the CD booklet where you discuss each sondo you do that because you don’t want anyone to misinterpret?
OT: Well…just because I mumble, because I don’t feel like writing the lyrics because I feel like changing the lyrics whenever I want onstage. I’m not locked into something where some guy’ll be, “Dude, you didn’t do the record.” Could be laziness. (laughs)
JPG: This is your 15th album since you’re returned to music 22 years ago.
OT: I kept on thinking it was 18 years ago but I keep losing a sense of time. Since 1995, I go, “Whoa!” I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for that long again.
JPG: Is it just the need to express yourself that drives you?
OT: Well, performing’s very difficult because you’re the lead guy and band members come and go and you have to concentrate. Sometimes, I have fun but, basically, I have to really be paying attention because we don’t practice. We don’t rehearse. We just play. If you can’t play my shit then you don’t need to be with me because it ain’t complicated. Most of the songs don’t even have chord changes.
In the recording studio I feel the best because I can control the product where it’s hard to control it live. An amp breaks. You have to pay attention to the audience and make sure you’re pulling them in. Be a performer. Doing all that at the same time. It’s a little difficult for me as you get older — I’m always with a poker face, mean-looking guy — but I don’t show it but it is. When I get really tired onstage I start saying weird shit. The band just knows when I’m exhausted. Once I was in Paris. We flew in from Portugal and I was exhausted and had to play that day. I just laid on the floor for two minutes and people thought it was part of the show. (laughs) I was just wasted. I couldn’t stand anymore.
JPG: At least the band was used to it.
OT: It looked good. It was like a Betty LaVette move but it wasn’t because I was performing the move. It was because I had to lay down for a second.
JPG: On a song like “Roll Down the Hill,” anyone can attach themselves to it because of the idea behind it. You may roll down that hill but you’re going to pick yourself up and climb back up again. That’s a great tune to have near the end of the album.
OT: I wrote that in a friend’s office, Harry Tuft at the [Denver] Folklore Center. We’re just talking about things and I said, “Harry, you just got to roll down the hill ‘til you get to the bottom.” I was like, “Oh shit! That’s a song!” (slight laugh) I made him email it to me so I didn’t forget it. Conversations can become songs.
JPG: There are some people who complain about politics mixing with music or the shut-up-and-sing crowd…
OT: Yeah, but I’m not telling you what to think. I’m just reporting history. I’m not a protest singer or social commentator. That’s a difference. My things are just stories. I’m a storyteller in the Black tradition. I usually don’t tell any lies. These things are proven.
You listen to my songs and it’s a story about this guy or a story about a couple.
JPG: There are some people who can’t even handle that. I just feel that as much as I love music, politics needs to be paid attention to even more because that affects our daily lives.
OT: But I don’t put my politics in my music. People do that. I don’t have to do that.
JPG: I’m not saying you have to do that. I’m just saying that I don’t think it’s wrong if politics and music mix.
OT: Yeah, but it’s not what I do. Here’s a funny story for you. Bob Dylan got the Nobel Prize. He should have got the Nobel Prize five years after he was writing songs. They should have given it to him a long time ago.
JPG: Maybe it’s the musician stigma.
OT: But he was still a poet, a writer, and he still affected people about peace and his protest songs.
JPG: The guest musicians on your new album – Jerry Douglas, Brandon Niederauer and Ron Miles, I really love the cornet…
OT: Well, Ron Miles has played on seven to 10 of my albums. He’s played on so many I can’t remember anymore. Ron came up and recorded with us [for “Fantasizing About Being Black”].
JPG: I see that Jerry and Brandon’s parts were recorded elsewhere. Was it a matter that after you record a song you think you need something more added to it? When that happens how do they end up on there?
OT: The rumor was that somebody told Jerry that I was doing a record and Jerry said, “I’d love to play on his record.” So, I called him up because I knew I had the right songs for him.
Ron, he’ll play something and after the first comment we usually have it locked down. He goes really fast. He’s amazingly fast. It’s very easy with him because he plays so good. I just have to give him the kind of vibe I want – fast, slow, Spanish. I get the vibe down and he’s right on it.
JPG: Was Ron doubletracked on “Walk On Water?”
OT: He does that sometimes. He did an album where he did three tracks. On “Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs” a guy named Jason Moran, a jazz guy, flipped out watching Ron do it. He’d record and he’d memorize what he just played and then play over it. It was just unbelievable. He did that three times. Jason flipped out, couldn’t believe it. No charts. Just knew what he played. Total recall.
JPG: I like your writing on the CD booklet – “The folk thing was about civil rights… Folk music is the music of the working class, the music of the folks. Blues is folk music.”
OT: I said that once and, I don’t know if you know this but I’m in the Museum Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. It’s really an honor. There’s a banjo in a case and next to it there’s a picture of me playing banjo. Then, they had this record store and “Hey Joe Opus” is in there as an LP. The quote pops up on another board. That quote is in the Smithsonian. So, that’s why I put it in there. (laughs) I’m calculated.
My father was a hipster, a bebopper. So, I’m first generation hip.
JPG: I read that you were a rebel because you didn’t go into jazz.
OT: He was not a happy camper. He was completely upset. He wanted me to be a painter. He wanted me to play jazz. He wanted me to be intelligentsia but I’ve got long hair and I’m a hippie. Kind of didn’t work for him.
JPG: Did your dad paint while listening to jazz or he just played jazz?
OT: That painting [in the CD booklet for “Fantasizing”] with the OT on it. That color painting. My father liked to paint clay. That picture is part of his painting. My father’s name is Otis, too. My name is Otis Mark Taylor and his name was Otis Taylor. So, I’m technically not a junior. I’m sort of a junior. I’m a half-junior, I guess.
JPG: The reason I brought that up is I know painters whose work is done while listening to jazz. It’s influenced by the music. Jazz elements such as musicians and instruments will show up in the paintings.
OT: My father, he only painted for 10 years because he died. He started painting in his early 60s. He died at 74. He didn’t paint for very long. He was really good but he didn’t have enough of a body of work to start a big gallery deal. I have seven of his paintings.
JPG: At least you get to expose his work in this way. Maybe you can display his paintings at the Trance Blues Festival.
OT: I paint, too. I tried to do a show of my stuff and my father’s stuff at a local gallery. They didn’t go for it. They wanted something more contemporary. One day it might happen. I do some pretty out there shit.
I’ll get a gallery to do it together, father and son. That’s a whole other story. Whenever I wasn’t playing music I was probably painting or doing conceptual sculptures. One time I put a car inside of a van, like a ship in a bottle, crazy shit like that. Way out there.
JPG: The term “trance blues” that’s used to describe your music. Is that something you came up with to help offer a description of what you do?
OT: Yeah, me and my publicist a long time ago, we came up with it. Well, we talked about “alt blues,” “indie blues,” I didn’t like that. I go, “How about trance?”
Trance music is what I do. It’s something with repetition. Ravi Shankar, Mississippi hill country or Mali music or voodoo music is totally trance music. There are no chord changes. Hip hop is trance music, too. There’s very few chord changes in hip hop songs.
JPG: Tell me about the Trance Blues Festival.
OT: It was a fluke. Nobody wanted to hire me close to the holidays…I ended up being a little famous then because I did it.
I never had work in November so I thought I’ll do a workshop. The workshop was packed. People loved it. I thought, “Maybe I’ll try this at a festival.” Then, the festival, it took me a long time to get it where it needs to be. I had some great musicians onstage – George Porter, Mato Nanji (Indigenous), Tony Trischka, Bob Margolin, my daughter Cassie, my bands…Last November, Marcella Simien and Mato Nanji were the main out-of-state people.
JPG: From promoting shows myself I know how there’s a lot of work put it into it. Is it still fun for you?
OT: It’s a nightmare. (laughs) I’ve been wanting to stop doing it forever but I can’t because…in France I have a better following. One year I was really smart – the second year I rented the Boulder Theater, a big theater – and invited four French journalists to come, and one was from a major magazine. They all showed up. Had a great time. So, it got written about in France a lot. So, whenever I get interviewed they always ask about my Trance Blues Festival because I’m noted for my trance music in Europe. Well, watch what you [ask for]…know what I mean? Maybe, my daughter will take it over someday.
JPG: Maybe you need to start distributing responsibilities to others so you can diminish your role.
OT: Yeah, but I’m not good like that. That’s the only problem.
We had Bill Nershi from String Cheese Incident who came to the workshops and taught. Didn’t come to the big concerts but came to the workshops, which is really cool. It’s actually kinda cooler.
People have a great time at the workshop. We get an average of 60-70 people in a room. We all play music at the same time – piano, djembes, cellos, violins, banjos…ukuleles. The way it should be.
JPG: See, that is why you continue to do it because of moments like that.
OT: Yes, I can’t stop because this is the best way to promote trance music.
JPG: Well, there’s the stress of putting it together until it actually takes place and then there’s the joy of it happening.
OT: There’s no joy. (laughs)
People go, “Encore” and the band looks at me like, “Do you think he’ll do one?” I’m not one to even do an encore. I’m not the guy who wants to jump onstage. You know how you go to a party and this guy pulls out his guitar and starts playing it? I’m not that guy. I’m the opposite. I’m not as bad as Barbra Streisand but I’m not the guy.
JPG: I respect you more for not doing an encore. I wrote an essay years ago about encores being a part of the overall setlist makes them not true encores.
OT: I do ‘em because I have to. I try to build up my set to end it when it ends. It’s hard to get there. And I don’t want to build it up and then I don’t get an encore then it’ll be like I didn’t go 100 per cent. Make sense?
I used to tour with Gary Moore and he’d do three encores. He’d do an encore. Then, I’d come out and play with him for the other encore. Then, he’d do an encore after I played. (laughs) It was all set. It was all designed. Three encores.
JPG: If it’s on your setlist then it’s not a true encore. It’s just a part of the overall setlist.
OT: That’s my thinking, too. I did one because they were banging on the stage. I thought there was going to be a riot. I got my ass out there quick. (slight laugh) It scared the shit out of me. “These people are gonna go fuckin’ nuts, man. (laughs) Let’s go before they jump on the stage and go crazy.”
JPG: That’s a compliment of sorts…I guess.
OT: It’s more scary than anything. It means I lost control of the crowd. I always like to have control of the crowd. That’s an important thing to control your show. I like to watch Buddy Guy because he really controls his show and really controls the crowd. He’s so good at it, it just blows my mind.
