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MC Taylor, the frontman of the folk music band Hiss Golden Messenger, spoke with WTBU DJ Morgan Lee to discuss what inspires him and what is to come from his band in the coming months. \u00a0Hiss Golden Messenger is set to perform on the last day of the highly-anticipated music festival Boston Calling. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Morgan Lee: What drew you into the music world? \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: I don\u2019t know why, I\u2019ve just always loved music ever since I was a little kid. My dad plays music. I was just drawn to music, and I don\u2019t know why.<\/p>\n ML: Whose music style would you parallel your own to? \u00a0Are there any artists that have inspired your own music?<\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: I\u2019m not sure; that\u2019s more for you to say. I like a lot of stuff from the past. There are a lot of bands that exist today that I really like a lot, but generally speaking there are not a lot of people that are my same age that you know\u2014I\u2019m off doing my own thing. There are a lot of bands that I\u2019m friends with now that I really like, but I\u2019m generally drawing inspiration from older stuff. \u00a0Oh boy, I can go as far back to artists that appeared on the Anthology of American Folk music, which is a compilation of music that came out in the 1950\u2019s. \u00a0That to me is almost biblical in terms of how old it is and the sort of bedrock or foundation that it offers to so much American music. \u00a0I really like old time music, which is pre-bluegrass, string band music. I like certain types of bluegrass, I like country and western, blues; I am definitely an American artist, and I don\u2019t try to hide that in my music. \u00a0I live in the sound, and my music draws on a lot of southern vernacular music. But at the same time, I think of American music as a pretty big tent, so I\u2019m always going to include artists like John and Alice Coltrane in the way that I think about American music and the art ensemble of Chicago; that is American music too. \u00a0I\u2019m not very conservative in the way that I define American music. I certainly like to think of American musical tradition as deep and rich\u2014it includes a lot of stuff.<\/p>\n ML: How did your latest album <\/b>Heart Like a Levee<\/i><\/b> get written?<\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: Well, like a lot of my records, I just sat down and started writing. \u00a0I generally am collecting melodies over the course of 9 months, or maybe a year, and I\u2019ll go back and see what I have, and see if there are any words that I feel like could fit rhythmically to the melodies that I have, and go from there. \u00a0It\u2019s almost like birds flying south in the winter; there\u2019s usually just a time where I will sit down and start writing, and it\u2019s almost instinctual. \u00a0I don\u2019t really say in a month I\u2019ll sit down and write a record. It\u2019s usually just something in my blood that makes me start writing. I\u2019m writing until there seems like a critical mass of material, and then I step back from it and try to discern what the themes are, because usually they\u2019re thematically connected even if at the time of writing they seem so unalike. Usually there\u2019s a lot of emotional similarities.<\/p>\n ML: What would you say is the theme of <\/b>Heart Like a Levee<\/i><\/b>?<\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: I don\u2019t know; what do you think the theme is?<\/p>\n ML: \u00a0There seems to be a lot of references to faith, so do you think that your faith or lack of faith played a role in your writing?<\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: \u00a0A big part of my journey has been trying to understand the place that spirituality plays in my life. \u00a0I\u2019m not a church-going person, and I don\u2019t subscribe to a Christian faith, but those things play an important part in American culture, and I\u2019m always curious about whether I have a relationship with those things. \u00a0My music has a lot of questions in it. It doesn\u2019t have a lot of answers, but it has a lot of questions.<\/p>\n ML: To shift things to a lighter topic, what was your favorite song from the album?<\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: It changes all the time. \u00a0The title song seems to be one that people connected to. \u00a0In our live shows, that\u2019s one that people are singing along to, so that makes me feel good.<\/p>\n ML: Speaking of live performances, I know that on March 30<\/b> you are going back on tour. What is your favorite thing about being on the road? \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: I like traveling around this country a lot. \u00a0There something about traveling through small towns in America that still feels very romantic to me. \u00a0I think that I\u2019ve been thinking about this a lot because it was Jack Kerouac\u2019s birthday a couple of days ago. But when I read \u201cOn the Road\u201d for the first time, that was a life changing book for me, and it really hit me in the right time in my life. \u00a0I was maybe 16 or 17 years old and I felt like I recognized that type of wanderlust that Jack Kerouac talked so much about in that book. \u00a0As it turns out, my life has been a wandering one. I have wandered around a lot all over the place playing music, and it\u2019s funny how that works out. Traveling through the United States is a really thrilling thing for me still. I love going to the big cities, and I love going through the tiny town. Travelling through the Mississippi Delta in the springtime, that\u2019s a really special thing that I get to do that not too many people get to do.<\/p>\n ML: I actually had to read \u201cOn the Road\u201d for my writing class last semester.<\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: [Laughter] It\u2019s a funny thing, I have tried to pick up Jack Kerouac books since then; it\u2019s been so many years since I first read him, and he doesn\u2019t really hit me in the same way that he did when I was a teenager. \u00a0But that\u2019s ok; that\u2019s totally cool. I still am so thankful that he wrote the work that he did, because it touched me in such a profound way.<\/p>\n ML: What is the craziest experience that you have had while on the road?<\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: There\u2019s not really one that sticks out. I have so many stories from tour, but there\u2019s not one that sticks out that I can tell you in a few sentences. This whole life has been really funny. It\u2019s funny to have lived and still to be living this life, of traveling around and meeting different people every night. I\u2019m really thankful for it.<\/p>\n ML: Is there something that you always do before a live performance?<\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: I will warm up. \u00a0Everyone in the band would take like 30 seconds to a minute sort of hugging before we go onstage. \u00a0It might sound a little bit corny, but it\u2019s really helpful for what we do. When you come out on stage, I feel like the most compelling type of musical performance that you can see by a band is when you can tell that everybody on stage has a unique connection, a unique, emotional connection. \u00a0And I definitely feel that with the people in my band. We\u2019re all very close to each other, and it\u2019s nice to be able to show that.<\/p>\n ML: What can we expect from your set at Boston Calling? <\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m not sure yet. \u00a0That feels like a long time from now. \u00a0I\u2019m excited; it seems really cool. \u00a0The lineup is really great.<\/span><\/p>\n ML: Excluding your own band, are there any artists that you are excited to see at Boston Calling?<\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: I\u2019m always excited to see Chance. I think he\u2019s awesome. Bon Iver, those guys are really good friends of ours, and I always like to see them. I don\u2019t know; I think that the atmosphere of a music festival is a really sweet one, because usually I\u2019m getting to connect with people that I really only get to see on tour. \u00a0It\u2019s a funny, weird little meet up, usually in a town that none of us live in, but we\u2019re all catching up, hanging out, talking about our families, showing each other pictures of our kids, playing each other new songs, and stuff like that. \u00a0There\u2019s a whole universe of stuff going on backstage that people going to the festival never see.<\/p>\n ML: Will your performance feature things from your latest album, or should we expect more of your older tracks?<\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: Honestly, there is probably going to be a lot of new stuff, because we\u2019re going to be making a new record really soon, so my head is pretty much in new music zone.<\/p>\n ML: You mentioned a new record, is there any information you could give us about that?<\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: I haven\u2019t totally wrapped my head around it yet. \u00a0I just know that I have a bunch of songs that I\u2019m really excited about.<\/p>\n ML: Are there any artists currently that you are really into?<\/b><\/p>\n MC Taylor: I would have to look through my records. \u00a0I\u2019m a fan of Real Estate. They just put a new record out today that I\u2019m excited to listen to. \u00a0There\u2019s an artist from Toronto called the Weather Station whose music I just love; I think they\u2019re great. \u00a0There\u2019s a guy named Brent Cobb that I really like. He put a record out last year that is one of my favorites. \u00a0He\u2019s great too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Catch Hiss Golden Messenger at Boston Calling on May 28!<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MC Taylor, the frontman of the folk music band Hiss Golden Messenger, spoke with WTBU DJ Morgan Lee to discuss what inspires him and what is to come from his band in the coming months. \u00a0Hiss Golden Messenger is set to perform on the last day of the highly-anticipated music festival Boston Calling. \u00a0 Morgan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,92],"tags":[30,98,29,99,59],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":541,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions\/541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}