A Conversation with Otis Taylor – HuffPost 2.5.13

Mike Ragogna: My World Is Gone is your latest album, and the title was inspired by one of the other musicians on the project. Can you go into the story behind that?

Otis Taylor: Basically, Mato Nanji and Chuck Campbell were doing the Hendrix tour in Denver. I was backstage talking to them and Chuck was complaining about things, and then Mato said, “My world is gone.” That’s when my head snapped back–that’s a pretty heavy comment. Later, I said to him, “Why don’t you write about it?” He said, “I can’t write. People think I’m a protestor.” He didn’t feel comfortable. I said, “I can write about it, s**t…” I had already started an album and had four songs done, so I just sat down and started writing these other songs about these issues. There was one song I had written a long time ago, “Lost My Horse.”

MR: When you write, it seems like you’re creating more than music, you’re also creating commentary.

OT: I’m storytelling. I’m not telling you what to think, I’m just telling a story. I don’t think I said anything that wasn’t true. I did get something wrong where I said Colonel Nichols instead of Captain Nichols, so I got a couple of technical things wrong, but besides that, it’s true.

MR: How did you identify with this subject matter as you were writing about it? You obviously connected with it on a deep level, but what was the thing that made you need to write about it?

OT: In my younger life, I made my money selling Native American art–old blankets and jewelry–that’s how I made my living when I was very young. So, I’ve sort of always been around that sort of culture. Not their culture, but the culture of their art, which is a lot different than their culture. Buying and selling their art is a lot different than hanging out at their reservation or being a Native, you know?

MR: Did hanging around Mato Nanji and making this album educate you even further about what was going on with Native American issues?

OT: I think a couple of things I learned from Mato. I learned about who Mato is. He’s a very quiet person. If you ask him a question, he will answer it completely, but then he may not say anything for half an hour. He has a great sense of humor. He’ll laugh at a joke, but then again, he might sit there for twenty or thirty minutes and not say a word. It’s a different culture, you know? I had to win his trust and I hope I’ve won it. Everything was vetted through him. He was sent the songs before it came out. I didn’t vet it with the whole Native American nation, but I vetted it with him because he’s playing on the record.

MR: What was his reaction in the end?

OT: He was always cool because I was always very sensitive towards it. We were talking about historic photos for the album and I said, “I bet you want no photos of Custer,” and he said, “No, I don’t.” He had a bottom line, but I was always really sensitive, so in the end we just agreed on things.

MR: What was the recording process like?

OT: No problems. I don’t do an album if I can’t record with somebody. I had jammed with him when we were really young, so we already had music history. So, I wasn’t worried about that. Playing with him was the easy part–a cake walk.

MR: Can you tell us more about what happened at that Jimi Hendrix tribute concert, where Mato said those words, “My world is gone.”

OT: Chuck Campbell was there, and he had played on a couple of my records. So I was talking with him about coming to my music festival. I put on a festival called the Trance Blues Festival, and that’s where they get hundreds of people sometimes playing in the same room. That takes place in Boulder, Colorado, and Mato’s been there twice.

MR: What was Mato’s reaction when he heard the album?

OT: He liked it. It was cool. It’s not a long process to like it. it’s a lot of fun. You can’t get a lot of words out of him sometimes, but if it’s negative, he’ll say something, believe me.

MR: We talked about how you’re a storyteller with your albums, be it My World Is Gone, or your last album, Contraband, about American slaves during The Civil War. I’m curious about what drives you to a topic that you take your theme from?

OT: It’s really simple. Number one, I guess I just don’t care if I make money. Number two, I’m looking for interesting stories. Number three, I’m black, so I’m a little more familiar with the black experience than I am with the white experience. It’s nothing complex–I’m just not deep. (laughs) Dylan had a lot of lyrics–I don’t have a lot of lyrics–I’m like the anti-Dylan.

MR: On the other hand, what you say with brevity is a lot larger than what many others might say with thousand dollar words.

OT: Well, you tell the story, and then you help the people imagine the story. They have to imagine children starving, or they have to imagine a massacre, you know what I mean? You don’t go into the details of the massacre, you just say there was a massacre and then people can go in their minds for the detail. So that’s how I write. I give people the room to imagine what they want to imagine. I don’t tell them what to think, I’m just reporting a story. “My World Is Gone”…is that a political comment, or is that just the truth? A writer uses words, but I use words and music to tell a story. A filmmaker uses words, music and film to tell a story.

MR: At this point in your life, what is your observation of your musical adventures?

OT: I’m just trying to stay above water, you know? [laughs] I’m a not a rock star–I’m too old to be a rock star–so, what am I going to be?

MR: On the other hand, the quality of your music and writing has led to movie and television uses, and that’s not the story with most people.

OT: I hope it gets to be the story even more. [laughs]

MR: And best of luck with that. Otis, your style of blues is very different. It incorporates more instruments, and it takes more left turns than most blues.

OT: Well, I’m trying to be an artist. I’m not a blues interpreter, I’m a blues artist, and there’s a difference. In a classical orchestra, you have interpreters. They interpret how you play Bach. Then, you have a conductor and you have a composer, right? I consider myself more of a composer, not an interpreter. I’m an artist, and I’m searching for all these different things. I know who I am…I’m an African-American, I’m a black man, and I’m not worried about my roots. I wake up in the morning, I look at my hands and I go, “Ooh, another negro in the room.” I’m not going to forget who I am, you know what I’m saying? It’s not possible until I go blind or something, and then I’ll rub my head and go, “Hmm, kinky hair.” I have this theory that sort of freaks out the blues world. I go, “What if the greatest blues musician hasn’t been born yet?” There’s still depression in the ghetto and it’s worse than ever–kids killing kids. Do people think that it’s gotten less depressing or that there is less blues in the ghetto than there was in the 1900s?

MR: In the same way, gangsta rap, to me, is really folk music.

OT: It is folk music. Folk music is a music of the people, that’s what folk music is, and classical music is music of the upper class.

MR: In addition to being folk music, I was going to say it can also be considered as being the blues.

OT: See, that’s the whole thing about blues. I don’t have a lot of chord changes in a lot of my songs, and I get a lot of shit. You know, John Lee Hooker didn’t have a lot of chord changes sometimes, and rap music and hip-hop doesn’t have a lot of chord changes, so that’s more like trance music.

MR: I’ve never heard it put like that.

OT: I get a lot of shit for not having a lot of chord changes, believe me. They wanted me to play twelve bar blues, and that wasn’t going to happen. In thirteen albums, I’ve only done one twelve bar blues song.

MR: That’s part of why I was saying earlier that your blues is not a traditional blues.

OT: To me, it’s traditional because it’s the way I come about it. Blues is a thing that comes from Africa, and it’s a reply. That’s the attitude of blues–BB King sings a line, and then he plays a line–that’s the blues. That’s what I think the blues is.

MR: What brought you to the blues?

OT: I don’t know. I discovered it when I was a little kid. I was playing with my mother’s ukulele and broke a string. So I walked into this folk music store that had music and instruments–it was the ’60s–and it became my third place. I just went there every day after school. The teachers taught me for free between classes because I didn’t have any money. I saved up and I bought a banjo.

MR: I love how you discovered the banjo. Can you go into that?

OT: Well, thank God for NPR. Nobody told me. I’m not a learned person. I don’t read a lot, so I’m not the learned, deep, intellectual person people like to think I am. I’m not stupid. My wife calls me a low-grade genius–low octane. I’m not even like a half-a-genius.

MR: But there are those who think you’re a genius regardless.

OT: That’s fine. I get to be low-octane.

MR: [laughs] Otis, you’re married to Carol Bjork.

OT: I married Carol Bjork, but she’s Carol Taylor now.

MR: And you have two daughters, Cassie and Jae?

OT: Yes.

MR: And it’s Cassie that has been on a lot of your releases, right?

OT: Yeah, but she’s not on this one. We cut her off when she was twenty-four. She’s got a new album coming out with Yellow Dog Records. She just produced and wrote it herself, just like I did.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

OT: Well, if you don’t give up, you might find out something, but if you give up, you’ll never find out. Does that make any sense? It’s also serendipitous. So, you have to have your preparation ready for your luck. Who’s to say who is good or bad? It’s all subjective. All the people who are good think they’re good, and all the people who are bad think they’re good, so I don’t know. I’m mean this sincerely. So, basically, you have to believe in yourself and not give up. That’s all you can do, if that’s what you want to do. If you want to be Jesus, you’re going to get crucified.

MR: That’s a wonderful line.

OT: I think I made that up, I can’t remember.

MR: Will you be going on tour?

OT: Yeah, The Blues Cruise was a tour, believe me.

MR: Right you just came of the cruise. How was it?

OT: Well, we have a kick-ass band. I don’t want to get cocky, but that’s why we got invited again; the band that we had was really amazing. I remember as a little kid I saw an interview of The Kinks, and they said “We’re the best band in the world.” I thought, “That’s really arrogant.” Our band is pretty amazing, but I don’t like to say that arrogantly. I’ve had fifteen years of putting together good bands, but this band is the best I’ve ever had, and people are responding to it. It’s the same people who played on my album except Ron Miles isn’t in my band, and Brian Juan–the guy who plays organ–he’s in medical school. He’s so good I just bring him into the studio.

MR: Though this album is about to come out, do you already have an eye on the next project?

OT: I drive the record company crazy because they say, “You never give the last album a chance to do what it’ll do.” I say, “I’m almost sixty-five and I have a finite time.” In my family, we’ve had a lot of medical problems, and I’ve had some major operations–you know, we don’t know when we’re going to die. This is my legacy, so why should I wait to make a record? When I have enough material and I’m in the mood, I make a record. I don’t make records, like I told you, to sell millions, I just make them when I can put them together. If you search through my records, you’ll find that they’re all different in a funny way. It’s really hard to be the same, but different, and it gets harder every album. I have a lot of friends go, “Oh, that’s your best record.” Then I’ll do another one and they go, “Oh, this is your best record.’ Then I do another one and they say, “No, this is your best record.” It’s hard to paint that painting.

MT: Do you feel like My World Is Gone is your best album?

OT: I’m really proud of it. Different albums are good for different reasons. I had an album called Below The Fold, and I thought I put together a sound that people had never heard, but it wasn’t that successful, you know? They’re all different for different reasons. This one is different historically. The banjo record was very historical. I’m really proud of this record because Contraband was considered a work of art by some people, and people didn’t really expect me to do one as good or better. Some people say it’s as good or better, and the response of people who know my work is that they’re pretty impressed.

MR: Well, it really is a one-two punch to have an album like this following Contraband.

OT: I did a thing called Pentatonic Wars And Love Songs. It was supposed to be about love songs, but I’m so twisted that it was about love songs; they’re pretty dark. Eighty percent of the songs you listen to are love songs, so it’s like people don’t need any more love songs because there are a ton of them. So I tried to go in a little different direction. My live concerts are very high energy. They’re very psychedelic, very trance like; they’re not like the records. People say, “Why don’t you do a live album?” I say, “When I’m dead, they can do my live albums.” I’m a songwriter, and Otis Taylor is going to play Otis Taylor songs as Otis Taylor. I don’t see a reason to do a live album. I think a lot of people do a live album because they don’t have any songs. That’s how I feel. I have enough live takes that somebody can make a live album someday.

MR: Hopefully, you won’t have to worry about that for a very long time. Otis, thank you for the chat, have a great release and future.

OT: Thank you, Mike.

Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney