Next year, singer and songwriter MC Taylor will have been leading Hiss Golden Messenger for two decades. For most of that time, critics and listeners have relied on a few familiar narratives about Taylor: that he is a singular figure, for example; or that his move from California to Durham, North Carolina, marked a formal shift from punk to Americana; or even that he thinks slightly more than he feels. Talking to Taylor, from his home in Durham (well, there was a Zoom call involved), I found these cliches about his practices were limiting, factually accurate but emotionally untrue.
Instead of laser-focusing on one narrative, on telling the same stories over and over again, listening to Taylor speak, I encountered a new understanding of his practice, one which placed Taylor in the background and moved his bandmates and genre-play into the foreground – shifting from the centrality of a singular figure to a greater emphasis on generosity and expansiveness.
That the new album is called I’m People is the first clue that Taylor wants to expand the perception of his music; it’s a title that considers mutuality as central to the enterprise of musicmaking. So, how does one expand this thinking – one could consider him geographically or complicate these tales of origin, or think about who is playing on this record, or even refuse the standard narratives of genre.
Instead of focusing on the fact that Taylor began playing in hardcore bands in California, think about the other influences: that he played in a band named after Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark, an album marked by an urbane distrust of other people’s desires. Or that, around the time he was carefully listening to Mitchell, he was also following that most American portable utopia, the Grateful Dead. Or think about his move to Durham, not strictly to play in a band, but to study folk music academically.
Or, consider how this album was recorded – at least partially – in upstate New York. A more cynical writer would note that Taylor borrows from Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, and that album itself was the foundation of a more isolated, lonely understanding of tradition after abandoning folk music, seeking a slightly more commercial understanding. Recording this in the Hudson Valley could be considered a pilgrimage or homecoming.
I don’t think that it is a homecoming just for Taylor; the record sounds lush, expansive formally, too. Perhaps because the people who sing or play on this record play in a collective of other bands, including Rhett Miller, the Mountain Goats, Bonny Light Horseman, and the Hold Steady.
The expansive nature of the band is not only connected to the history of music they listen to, or the other bands that they play in, but also more unexpected influences like Sade. The idea that Taylor is the band is false, and it is not even that Hiss is the band. Taylor expands the possibility of Hiss, but Hiss itself pushes the possibilities – because of where they come from, their other projects, and even the possibility of geography. Not because Durham is magically a place where music coalesces, but because for a long time it was a college town where rent was relatively cheap and lots of people liked playing music together.
When addressing genres, the promotional material calls the album Americana – but Americana is a useless category, one which might be country or folk or something else entirely. I’m People has a kind of intense richness that is neither of these genres. Listening to the LP, something happens where the expansion or fracturing of those playing on this record becomes its own kind of post-genre.
There are a lot of reasons not to love America right now, but emphasizing the American instead of Americana allows us to consider this album as a consequence of the totality of American music – Taylor addresses the improv nature of jazz as part of this, or traditional folk music, or even 1970s easy-listening. He speaks fondly of the detective novels of Elmore Leonard, and on at least one of his early albums the photography of William Gedney became a powerful totem.
I think of I’m People as a kind of ebbing and flowing for and against tradition, part of that decades-long wrestling with aesthetics and history. Consider the last song, “Depends on the River,” is another of his great songs about waterways. In a 2016 profile of Hiss, New Yorker critic Amanda Petrusich wrote about Hiss’s long tradition of river songs and how it fits into a century of metaphors from blues singer Geeshie Wiley to Joni Mitchell, working this tradition. Petrusich writes: “Taylor frequently evokes river imagery in his work; the river, of course, can be understood as its own kind of road, a direct line to somewhere else, far away.”
I don’t know if that’s wrong, but I also think about rivers as they turn into oxbow lakes, rivers which flow into swamps – literally bogged down – rivers that flow into oceans, and rivers that dry up depending on the season. Hiss’s meandering, deepening quality depends on that river, both the direct line that Petrusich talks about and the larger metaphor, one where Taylor literally talks about whether he dares to cross it. On I’m People, he not only crosses it and crosses it again, but brings along a whole community of other performers. And, an audience who is hungry for the difficulty and ambivalence of so much time playing – and thinking – with him, to the other side.
I know you have a degree in folklore studies, I also noticed that in the last few years there has been a cluster of second- or third-generation performers who have some academic training in folk traditions (see also: Jake Blount, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Willi Carlisle, etc.). Can you talk a little bit about the kind of intersection of formal and informal folk studies and also about your relationship to people who are making this kind of work? I’m thinking about the line on the song “Mercy Avenue” where you talk about the “boys on the corner knowing more than those with PhDs.”
MC Taylor: Well, it’s been a really long time since I was in the academics here. And that universe was one that I feel like I passed through briefly. I wasn’t destined to be in that realm forever. So, I’m not sure that I can totally speak to [that]. Like the place of academic/creative work.
I will say that my time in that space was a really good time for me, when I was restarting my brain and re-centering myself. School was a good way for me to step away from whatever I had been doing previously. I did a lot of field work at that time. I interviewed a lot of people, and I think that it made me a much better listener.
I think that, more than anything else, [that] is what I came away with, this feeling that people really, really like to be heard. So I think I just really tried to develop my listening skills.
Can you talk a little bit about working with a band – especially this band – and about how the bandmates are part of their own creative worlds? Is there a kind of politics there, or a kind of community making?
The basic tracking of the album was done with JT Bates playing drums and percussion, Cameron Ralston playing bass – both electric and upright – and Josh Kaufman, who was producing the record with me, playing guitars, mandolin, piano. My friend Chris Boerner was engineering the record. He plays guitar.
The road version of Hiss Golden Messenger, you know, [are] involved in a whole variety of things. JT, Cameron, and Josh play in Bonny Light Horseman. All three of them have also at various times been members of Hiss and have toured with Hiss. And in fact, that’s where those guys met – playing in Hiss. All of us have known each other for many, many years, so I consider those guys really good friends.
But we’ve never made a Hiss Golden Messenger record before. … They’ve worked on [other] records [together], but we never came together to create a Hiss Golden Messenger record together. It was this funny and unique situation in which we were already old friends, doing something that felt new and fresh. It didn’t feel like a complicated record to make for me. I think Josh Kaufman maybe would say the same thing, but Josh was performing sort of a different task than I was in the situation. It was a complicated record to write, but that was something of the solitary endeavor that took place over probably a year or a year and a half.
I really love those guys and I am delighted that they could be there to play on the record. I think of them as absolute top-tier musicians, every one of them. Cameron is currently playing with the Mountain Goats, he plays all kinds of jazz, he plays in the Spacebomb House Band. JT Bates plays drums with Big Red Machine, which is Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon. And [he’s] just a legendary drummer in Minneapolis. Josh Galvin plays with everybody.
There are some songs on this album about hope and I wondered about making work about hope in this specific social and political moment? “Shaky Eyes” or “Heavy Worlds,” for example.
[I am interested] in how we [have] the energy to get through the messiness of life. And not only this particular time that we’re living through – although that is the most depressing. But just like life in general. I don’t think that we can do – or I don’t think I can do – life alone. So, in a way this record is me writing to myself. Maybe now [about] how important other people are.
I think I realized that the most important part is moving through, and needs to involve being around [other people]. Over the past few years, just speaking personally, the idea of community has felt like a more and more important part of it.
Thinking about that – and how dense/lush the production here is – though you are marketed as “Americana,” I wonder about how you view genre. And also how your band does – I’m thinking about background vocalist Annie Nero’s bio for radio: “She loves to find the common thread between musical ideas and genres…but also break free of genres because life’s too short to limit ourselves based on perceived taste!”
I listen to lots of different stuff. I think all of that stuff finds its way into what I’m doing. It’s a little tricky. I used to have a stronger stay-in-your-lane [attitude] about the term “Americana,” but I just don’t think that I care very much anymore. It’s not a word that I generally use. But I understand why it exists. Many of my favorite songwriters exist in that world.
What would you call your genre then?
I mean, I wouldn’t. I guess that’s what I’m saying.
Like, if I was at the dog park and I was talking to a stranger, and they said, “Oh, you’re a musician? What kind of music do you play?” I’d probably say, “Kind of rock and roll.” I generally am not describing my music in terms of genre, I guess. If I told someone that I played rock and roll, and they asked me to extrapolate on that, I would say something like, “Rock and roll that’s really swinging.” I try and concentrate on the rhythmic elements. I love singer-songwriter type music from the ’60s and ’70s. I like really oddball stuff. I love Bruce Ruffin reggae; I love free jazz. There’s a lot of music that I have inside of me. There’s a lot of music that Josh, Cameron and Chris – [that] we all have inside of us. I think it’s just a question of how we get it out and put it into use in a way that feels genuine and not forced. …
Thinking about the tension on this album between distinct geographical spaces and a more universal emotions – for example on “Seneca (Time is a Mother, Baby)” or “Mercy Avenue.” And also that becomes a larger theme of your work, thinking about how Amanda Petrusich writes about your decades-long commitment to writing about rivers. There’s even the river song on this album. What do you think your relationship is to the land, to rivers – especially. when you sing “Depends on the River.” Or is there specifically one river?
On previous Hiss records there are specific geographical places like city names mentioned. And not only are those places part of the fabric of the story that I’m trying to tell, but they sort of served as poles, maybe? What I’m trying to accomplish is sort of like a poetic travelog of my life growing up in America. I’ve been traveling as a musician since I was 18. I have been, it seems like, everywhere in this country – more than once or some places 10 times. I’ve been all over every highway. So, maybe the dimension of place names throughout is sort of like carving my name on a tree or something. It’s just kind of like, “I was here.” “This is where we are in this song right now.” “This is where we are in my life.” And then, “Now we’re over here.”
In terms of rivers, a river is always flowing, always changing. A river can kill you if you’re not careful. It can keep you alive and get you to the next place if you treat it with respect and understand its rules. The coda on that song, [“Depends on the River”], the last thing that we hear on the record is “the line depends on the river exactly.” I guess the meaning depends on what river of life we’re talking about. It depends how lucky we get.
I’ve always been impressed by the wide range of your reading, listening, and looking. For example, your careful thoughts on the photos of Gedney. What are you reading, what are you listening to, what are you looking at these days?
Well, you know what I’m reading right now? I’m like about 200 pages into this Gary Stewart biography. Gary Stewart, the country singer. It’s called I Am From the Honky-Tonks. Gary Stewart actually was someone that Chris Smith from [record label] Paradise of Bachelors turned me onto like 15 to 16 years ago. Those of us that are obsessive about him all knew that this book was coming. It’s finally out and yeah, if you’re Gary Stewart fan, it’s kind of like you can’t believe it exists. I’ve been waiting for it.
In terms of what I’m listening to, I’m always listening to all kinds of stuff. I just bought this record [that’s] The Sun Ra Arkestra doing Disney themes. It’s so beautiful, really makes you think about those compositions in a different way, [about] actually how deep they are. I’ve been revisiting some Ted Lucas. I’ve really been liking this McCoy Tyner record called Asante. It’s a 1974 record; might be my current favorite. It’s very deep in the zone with like Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders – that era. Oh, it’s beautiful. [I’ve been listening to] some Paul Brady from ‘78. He’s amazing! I’ve been listening to Welcome Here Kind Stranger. [Also] a record that I was checking out for a while [was] by the Universal Liberation Orchestra. It’s kind of this weird, very minimal– I guess it would be jazz.
Photo Credit: Graham Tolbert
