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Is that something that you worked on intentionally? Your playing and singing are very aligned and share a powerful rhythmic drive, which is so important for playing solo. Those hymns are really sort of 101 for Western music, and it's a great foundation.” “Learning to play the guitar by playing those songs was really like a doorway into the roots of Western music. We weren't a church-going family, but when I went away to school, I got a big dose of that stuff, and I would transpose them and try to play them. Those hymns that I was exposed to in boarding school. The 'classical' thing you’re hearing is actually church music: the Church of England hymnal. “No, I really never studied guitar formally. There is also a classical sense to your playing, but you never studied classical guitar, did you? And Ry Cooder, who's still sort of my favorite guitar player. I've emulated him as much as I can.” “Reverend Gary Davis was huge for me, as well as Joseph Spence, music of the Bahamas. It was a great time to be a guitarist and a developing musician it was so accessible and there were clubs with open-mics and a community of people that played and shared things and were largely self-taught.Ĭhurch hymns are really sort of 101 for Western music, and it's a great foundation “Early on, I was very influenced by what my friend Waddy Wachtel calls the great folk scare of the early '60s. How did you come up with your style? What did you pattern it after?
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It’s very complex, and very different from anything, with elements of Blind Blake and Reverend Gary Davis as well as an almost classical sense of structure and some jazz voicings. On his most recent releases, 2020’s American Standard and the three-song EP follow-up Over the Rainbow, Taylor focused on songs he learned in his childhood, including Moon River, Somewhere Over the Rainbow and Surrey with a Fringe on Top, mostly performed as guitar duets between Taylor and the jazz great John Pizzarelli.