Tag: Paul Taylor

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Paul Taylor’s Homecoming

Courtesy Paul Taylor

The Greek word nostos, meaning the triumphant homecoming of a conquering hero, may spring to mind when one learns that Paul Taylor, aka New Memphis Colorways, will be playing his first Memphis show in over three years this week. Certainly with his multi-instrumentalism, compositional acumen, and sheer musical feeling, he’s a heroic Memphis troubadour, doggedly releasing finely wrought albums and working shows with multiple bands despite lacking a “hit” or major name recognition. Growing up “a second-generation Memphis musician,” as he puts it, was working well for him, leading to many years of steady playing around town. Perhaps the real hero’s journey began when he and his wife decided to follow their hearts and transplant themselves to Door County, Wisconsin, three years ago. What was at stake? Only everything he’d built up over a lifetime in Memphis music.

“When we moved up here in 2020, it was the great pandemic shake-up and my gerbil wheel of being a busy Memphis musician completely ground to halt,” Taylor recalls. “That was when Sarah and I thought, ‘You know, we love Door County. Why don’t we move there?’ Because this was months and months before a vaccine or anything. Nobody knew what the world was going to look like. We were like, ‘Just in case things get really crazy, what if we hid out in Door County and kind of see how things go?’ She looked and found a winter cabin that we wound up staying in for six months.”

Paul Taylor with Three Springs (Photos: Courtesy Paul Taylor)

They already loved Door County, Taylor having been introduced to the area by Memphis guitarist Eric Lewis many years earlier. “Eric does an annual show here, the Fishstock concert series at Camp David, run by this amazing family that’s almost like a hippie commune. He’s been doing it for 25 years. I started coming up and playing drums with him here in 2007. So that was a critical part of how I moved up here. Sarah fell in love with the place, too, and we wound up getting married here.”

In Covid-induced isolation, he was more productive than most, swapping tracks with Steve Selvidge and Luther Dickinson to create the MEM_MODS debut, and working on solo tracks with tweaked programmed beats and soulful singing, now being released as his New Memphis Colorways EP, Let the Mystery Be. But as the pandemic eased a bit, something unexpected started to happen.

“I think I was sort of on the ground floor of a sort of new music scene reinventing itself up here post-pandemic,” Taylor explains. “Up here, there’s always been a lot more gentle folk music and bluegrass, but there are younger people starting to come up here. I got really lucky and wound up playing a bunch of weekly gigs that I’ve been doing for almost three years now. I play background jazz guitar at a dinner gig. And then I met a 72-year-old guitarist/songwriter from Chicago who turned out to be an absolute jazz master named John Lewis, and we formed an organ trio with Sister Bay native Solomon Lindenberg on keys. We’ve been playing all this funky music for two years. And then I formed this band that I’m going to be bringing down to Memphis, which is a whole other story.”

That story simultaneously reaches into Taylor’s past and indicates his future. “I formed that band, Three Springs, with two Wisconsinite fellows that I’ve befriended, Adam Cain on drums and John Frater on bass,” says Taylor. “It started with me showing them a whole bunch of songs that were on my first few solo records that I thought had really suffered from being some of my first recordings, when I was pretty inexperienced. But they’re some of my favorite songs, so I formed this band as a vehicle to give those songs a fresh life.”

New Memphis Colorways fans know to expect the unexpected, but Taylor says the group specializes in “originals that are everything from power pop to instrumental tunes to funk,” and has plans to record while here as well. He emphasizes that a strong Memphis streak runs through all his music, no matter where he is. “Even though I’ve been up here for three years and plan to stay, I will always consider myself a Memphis musician.”

Paul Taylor’s Three Springs plays The Green Room at Crosstown Arts on Friday, November 17th, at 7:30 p.m. Visit crosstownarts.org for details.

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Music Music Features

MEM_MODS

From the days of lockdown (Photo: Courtesy Peabody Records)

Creative thinking is often spurred on by a sudden change: There’s nothing like having the rug pulled out from under you to get you thinking on your feet. And, to hear Steve Selvidge tell it, that’s exactly what happened nearly three years ago when he, Luther Dickinson, and Paul Taylor began work on what’s now the freshly released album, MEM_MODS Vol. 1 (Peabody Records). Of course, that was a time when the whole world was caught off guard, not the least these three musicians who’ve thrived on live performance for decades.

“We were all reeling,” Selvidge recalls. But then a ray of hope appeared. “I got an email from Luther saying, ‘Paul and I have been messing around with some stuff, do you want to put some guitar on it?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t have anything else to do!’” It was within the first month of the pandemic’s lockdown, so Dickinson and Taylor had not been playing together in person; they’d been swapping tracks over the internet. And that in itself was not unusual for any of them.

“We all had some sort of digital audio workstation of some sort in our homes,” says Selvidge. “And I’d been doing a bunch of remote recording pre-pandemic, anyway. It’s not uncommon for me to do guitar overdubs here in my home studio.” That might even include the odd overdub on a Hold Steady track, he notes. “Mostly last little pickup bits right at the end,” he explains. “But for that last Bash & Pop record [by Tommy Stinson], we cut half of it live at Tommy’s place, and the other half was stuff written after the fact. So I did a lot of my guitars and all of my vocals here at my place on that album.”

Dickinson and Taylor had similar home studios, though Selvidge’s home in Memphis tended to be where it all came together. “After a while, it was easier for me to be the guy running everything in Pro Tools, with everybody sending me files,” Selvidge adds. “And so it kept growing.”

As it turned out, the three began to thrive on the collaboration in unexpected ways. After the first track, says Selvidge, “I was like, ‘We made this! I love it! And it’s something to keep myself occupied.’ So that turned into another track, and then we realized we had kind of a workflow. And we exploded with this creativity. Paul might start with drums, and either Luther or I would add a bass line, creating a song out of raw drums. And I started messing with old drum machines and wrote a tune to that. There were ideas flying everywhere! So much so that we had a brief storage crisis, the music piled up so quickly.”

The result is that rare bird in the indie music world, an instrumental album. While that might be somewhat familiar in the jam band world, MEM_MODS doesn’t really fit that tag. The tracks hit more like a lost ’70s soundtrack, evoking everything from Augustus Pablo-like dub to funk bangers to smoldering Isaac Hayes-like ballads. Tasty, ear-catching synth sounds abound. Indeed, the trio leaned into their multi-instrumental talents, with Dickinson not even contributing his first instrument, guitar. Instead, he played bass and various keyboards; Selvidge played guitar, bass, Rhodes piano, and drum machine; and Taylor contributed drums, percussion, omnichord, bass, fretless bass, washtub bass, synth pedals, and “soundscapes.”

Over these elements sit some of the finest horn parts to come out of Memphis in recent years, courtesy arranger and trumpeter Marc Franklin and saxophonist Art Edmaiston. Ranging from pitch-perfect pads to nimble, jazz influenced fills, the horns (and a flute cameo) pair with warm drums, bass, and guitar to ground the album in an earthy, Memphis vibe.

It makes sense, given how far back the three musicians go, all from famed musical families. “We’ve been making music together for 30 odd years,” says Selvidge. “So everything we’ve done together and apart came to the table when we did this. We know each other’s instincts, even as our lives have changed, getting married, having children. Losing our fathers. There’s a depth there with us. And that depth has gone into our playing.”

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Film Features Film/TV

Music Video Monday: “Knotty Pine Kitchen” by MEM_MODS

Memphis supergroup MEM_MODS are back with their latest funky good time. But this one from the dynamic trio Steve Selvidge, Luther Dickenson, and Paul Taylor is in a little more laid-back vein than the frenzied psychedelia of their earlier singles. “Knotty Pine Kitchen” sounds like a lazy afternoon at Stax, when the band was just messin’ around for fun. Marc Franklin and Art Edmaiston’s pillowy horns round out the sound. The video is a tour of Memphis’ beat-up glory. Happy Monday.

If you’d like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

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Film Features Film/TV

Music Video Monday: “Capricorn Catastrophe” by MEM_MODS

Music Video Monday has been psychedelicized!

Peabody Records was an independent label created by Sid Selvidge, an influential Memphis folk singer and member of the legendary supergroup Mud Boy and the Neutrons. It played a big part in keeping Memphis music alive when things were looking bleak in the 1970s.

Now, Sid’s son Steve Selvidge has resurrected the imprint and is releasing new music. You might know Steve as lead guitarist for The Hold Steady, or as one of the founding members of Memphis funksters Big Ass Truck, or from his extensive solo work. He and some of his oldest friends got together during the pandemic to record some funky new music under the name MEM_MODS. The two compatriots are Luther Dickinson, Selvidge’s fellow Son of Mudboy and the fantastically versatile guitarist of North Mississippi Allstars fame, and prolific multi-instrumentalist Paul Taylor, most recently of New Memphis Colorways.

Since Dickinson has decamped to East Nashville, and Taylor is in rural Wisconsin, the collaboration which became MEM_MODS was done remotely in their home studios. The resulting music is a true Memphis melting pot of styles—funky, spacy, and gritty all at once. The full album won’t drop until February, but the first single “Capricorn Catastrophe” is out with an animated music video by Jake Vest, with contributions from Winston Eggleston. It’s a perfect little psychedelic snack for a Monday.

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

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Music Record Reviews

Autumn Almanac: Paul Taylor’s Old Forest LP

The Old Forest Trail, half of this year's double-EP release by New Memphis Colorways

With the Memphis Zoo now backpedaling on their ostensible commitment to avoid using the Overton Park Greensward as a parking lot, everything old is new again, and that includes a renewed appreciation of Overton Park by we, the people. How timely, then, to revisit some music inspired by that great green space. In this case, it’s two EPs by Memphis native Paul “Snowflake” Taylor, aka New Memphis Colorways, which were paired together earlier this year as a single LP in glorious vinyl.

One side of Paul Taylor’s double-EP release (Credit: Paul Taylor)

Memphis Flyer readers already know Old Forest Loop, a groovy, rollicking EP of instrumentals, which Andria Lisle profiled on its release in 2018. All riffs, beats, and changing gears, Taylor conceived of it as “homemade and light-hearted, and I see it as kind of a start-over for me. This is music I deliberately made for people to take summertime drives to — they can grill to it or swim to it.”

And yet, it somehow matches the elation Memphians feel at the return of cool weather as well. It’s an active record, an up record, and fits that impulse to get out of the house for some hiking, biking, or more. Having taken it on a test run while cooking out in the backyard, I can attest to the truth of Taylor’s claim that it pairs well with grilling.

Another side of Paul Taylor’s double-EP release (Credit: Paul Taylor)

If that’s one side of fall, the beauty of these twin EPs being brought together is that the older work, 2015’s The Old Forest Trail, perfectly matches autumn’s air of melancholy and reflection. A largely acoustic outing, it is, in Taylor’s words, “An homage to a sacred natural space in the middle of Memphis TN — the Old Forest Arboretum located in Overton Park.” The somewhat more wistful sound also matches what Taylor was going through in the year of its release, and he notes: “Also lovingly dedicated to the memory of my father, Pat Taylor 1949-2015.”

As he told Lisle, “When my dad [Memphis musician Pat Taylor, a veteran of numerous bands including the Breaks and the Village Sound] was sick, I was playing acoustic guitar by his bedside, and when he passed in early 2015, I was spending a lot of time in the Old Forest in Overton Park.” The peace of wild things, as poet Wendell Berry put it, is thus very much present in this set of songs, which sometimes echo Nick Drake’s application of a folk picking style to unexpected chords.

Another aspect of this album that is uniquely Memphis is the label: It’s the first release in many years by the great Peabody Records, founded by the late Sid Selvidge, now kept afloat by his son Steve. As Taylor points out in the notes, Old Forest Loop/The Old Forest Trail is “a joint venture between Peabody Records and The Owl Jackson Jr. Record Company.”

Ultimately, a refreshingly holistic view of Overton Park comes across with this album: a place of rambunctious activity and a place of solace. Delve into both with this multifaceted work by one of this city’s greatest players.

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Film Features Film/TV

Music Video Monday: “Strange Question” by Bruce Newman

Music Video Monday wants to get to know you.

Bruce Newman is the host of WEVL’s “Folk Song Fiesta,” where he brings you deep cuts from the long history of folk and Americana music every Wednesday from 8 to 10 a.m. He’s also a singer/songwriter in his own right, one who has previously graced Music Video Monday with his music, which can touch on the emotional and the political.

His latest song, “Strange Question,” was inspired by the looks he got when he returned to Memphis from the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada with his hair dyed. “It is usually tinted with some color before I go out to Black Rock City,” the attorney and accountant said. “I began to realize if my skin was brown or if I was blind or if you did not like a feature of mine, would you judge me or just accept me?  Would you ‘love me for me being me?’  So, accepting me for ‘me being me’ is the gist. What does it matter?  And, especially now, it is about acceptance of our brothers and sisters. Let the obvious be clearly understood, that my choice to color my hair is not to be compared with separation based on race or disability or any other factor, but rather a small, personal realization of how we are sometimes unfairly and unkindly separated by differences.”

After the song debuted at Folk Alliance, he put together a band of his Memphis friends — Eric Lewis, Reba Russell, Susan Marshall, Paul Taylor, Gerald Stephens, Heather Trussell, Carrington Trueheart, Sam Shoup, and Kevin Houston — to record it at Music+ Arts. Director Laura Jean Hocking made the music video, which stars the most accepting people of all — kids. Take a look.

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

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Film Features Film/TV

Music Video Monday on Tuesday: “Hangover Funk” by New Memphis Colorways

Music Video Monday is running on a slight delay.

We hope you had a fun Memorial Day weekend. Like most of America, Music Video Monday took the day off yesterday. But we’re committed to our mission of bringing you the freshest music videos from Memphis artists, so we’re treating this Tuesday as a Monday. And we have the perfect post-long weekend for you: “Hangover Funk.”

Paul Taylor is one of Memphis’ favorite musical sons. After starting out with Cody and Luther Dickinson as the “T” in punk legends DDT, he has played with everyone from Ann Peebles to Amy LaVere, earning Grammy and Emmy nominations along the way. During the pandemic, he recorded a new album “It Is What It Isn’t” under his new solo project handle New Memphis Colorways. Listening to “Hangover Funk,” you won’t believe that he played literally every instrument. But if you ever saw him play live as his one-man band Interrobang, you know that he can play all those instruments at the same time.

You can see Paul’s hands at work in the soothingly psychedelic video for “Hangover Funk”, but they’re attached to a visible man. Talk about a transparent process! Take a look:

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

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Music Record Reviews

New Memphis Colorways: Fueled by Fusion

It Is What it Isn't by New Memphis Colorways

“Jazz” is a big word, and can cover so many approaches to music that it may have lost all its descriptive power. That is especially true if one follows the music’s history into the 1970s and beyond. After traditional forms were blown wide open in the 1960s (with the ascendance of free jazz), the music’s influences and reference points became so far-flung that any noise, texture, or groove was fair game.

Anything being fair game is a good motto for the latest album by New Memphis Colorways, It is What it Isn’t, set to be self-released on May 21st. As the catch-all name for the various musical projects of virtuoso Paul Taylor, New Memphis Colorways has always considered the world fair game, of course, ranging from tightly woven power pop of The Music Stands to the stomping, almost surfing groove rock of Old Forest Loop.

Most of those earlier projects showed off Taylor’s inventiveness with a dollop of genre-appropriate restraint, his self-accompaniment on multiple instruments always in service of the song. But what restraints are in play when the song is jazz-funk fusion? Those are mostly the restraints demanded by each song’s groove, even as solo instruments take unfettered flight. Yea verily, this is the album where Taylor lets his freak flag fly high.

Imagining some of Herbie Hancock’s finest work from the late 70s or 80s, from Man-Child to Future Shock, will put you in the ballpark. It’s not that none of the players (all Taylor, in this case) show restraint; an effective groove requires that sense of space. It’s rather that the direction of the melodies, instrumentation, and breakdowns could surprise you with any new development at any time.

And that’s exactly what awaits listeners of It is What it Isn’t. Just take the lead single and video, “Hangover Funk.”

Video game skronks give way to the solidest of grooves, backing up some smooth/tweaked keyboard chords. Is this Herbie Hancock or George Clinton? Or Pac Man, perhaps? None of the above: this is New Memphis Colorways.

It’s first-rate funk (and excellent party music, by the way), all the better to undergird a full-on rock guitar solo that screams “good times,” which anything evoking the 1970s surely must. As the opening track of the album, it’s perfect, and sets the tone for much of what is to follow. But, having set the inventiveness bar so high from the top, what follows is essentially more funky unpredictability and more expressive synth and guitar playing.

One surprise, even in this cornucopia of surprises, is Taylor’s treatment of the jazz standard, “All the Things You Are.” It’s played with a jazzer’s sensitivity to the delicate harmonies, but what really sets it apart is the singing voice run through a vocoder. It’s as if Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman” suddenly fell in love. And in combining the sci-fi iciness of a synthetic vocoder with such a chestnut of the 1930s, an eerie, Blade Runner-esque world is conjured up, perfect for our current moment in history. It’s that restless inventiveness that keeps this from being a retro fashion accessory, and propels it into a fusion work of the highest order.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Two-fer Tuesday: Stephen Chopek and Paul Taylor

It’s a very special Tuesday edition of Music Video Monday. Two of Memphis’ finest musicians sent in videos for Music Video Monday marking big changes in their lives. Stephen Chopek and Paul Taylor are moving out of Memphis, at least for the time being. Since they’re friends in real life, I decided to pay tribute to them together.

Chopek not only has a prolific recording career, he is also a one-man music video factory. The no-budget auteur has been Music Video Monday’s most frequent feature, and his videos never fail to wow with their creativity. He’s decamping to Atlanta to be with his family, so he made this video for his song “Unspoken Hopes” as a symbol of planting a new seed and hoping it grows. “There’s only so long that you can ignore intuition,” he says.  “Recurring ideas, plans, and dreams have a way of finding their way out the unconscious mind and into waking life. ‘Unspoken Hopes’ is about your inner voice manifesting itself into reality through repetition. This song deals with leaving 2020 behind and allowing our instincts to guide us into the future.”

Music Video Two-fer Tuesday: Stephen Chopek and Paul Taylor

“Fun fact,” says Chopek. “The very first gig I played after moving to Memphis in 2014 was drumming with Paul Taylor at the Blue Monkey.” (See Alex Greene’s record review here.)

Taylor is Memphis music royalty. He was the “T” in seminal Antenna punk band DDT, along with Cody and Luther Dickinson. Since then, he’s had a an extensive solo career and been a trusted, in-demand sideman both in the studio and on stage. Trust me, the man plays literally everything better than you. He’s leaving behind the Bluff City to head north, and he’s nostalgic about the Midtown he leaves behind. He says his video for “So Long, Rembert” is “an homage to a special house on a special street; the end of a critical chapter, as my wife and I have relocated to Wisconsin for the time being. So many important things happened in my life in this house, so many things came together for me musically in this room, I can’t help but feel sentimental and want to pay tribute to these four walls! This street, Rembert, right off Poplar Ave, has been home to everyone from Alex Chilton to Jeff Buckley. It’s been one of the last vestiges of bohemian midtown Memphis. Now, half the street is being torn down for condos and the MCA dorms are being replaced with a high rise. This music for me reflects the dismal yet hopeful nature of time moving forward! This video was made by literally screen recording while i slid my thumb to move the frames of a paused video to make my own homemade time lapse.”

Music Video Two-fer Tuesday: Stephen Chopek and Paul Taylor (2)

Paul and Stephen, we’ll miss y’all. Don’t be strangers. After all, everybody knows, once you’re in the Memphis Music Mafia, it’s for life. You’ll always get pulled back in. 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Bruce Newman

Music Video Monday is on the march!

Bruce Newman is a lawyer and accountant specializing in small business and entertainment law. He’s also the host of Folksong Fiesta, airing Wednesdays at 8 a.m. on WEVL. A true polymath, when he’s not helping his clients navigate the difficult world of the music business, he’s writing songs of his own. Like most people nowadays, Newman is concerned about the state of the world, and in the best folkie tradition, he lays it all out in his new tune “Doing The Best We Can”. It’s a song of protest and solution which urges us all to listen to our better angels.

To help record the song and film the video, he gathered a crew of Memphis all-stars including vocalists Susan Marshall and Reba Russell, James Alexander of the Bar-Kays, blues guitarists Eric Lewis and Doug MacLeod, horn players Art Edmaistan and Marc Franklin, keyboardist Gerald Stephens, and multi-instrumentalist Paul Taylor. Director Laura Jean Hocking combines footage of the musicians taken at Music + Arts Studio with extensive animation to create a lyric video which really gets Newman’s point across. Take a look, then make sure you’re registered to vote.

Music Video Monday: Bruce Newman

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.