One bright Sunday morning, MC Taylor is driving through his patch of North Carolina, past New Hope Creek and the Eno River, over the Chatham County Line and the James Taylor Bridge in Chapel Hill, near the Haw River and the valley that he has meditated upon in song these past few years. Through appa...
Justin Vernon on Hiss Golden Messenger
“When I first got the mixes of the new Hiss record, it’s honestly all I listened to for an entire month. I haven’t had that happen to me in years. ‘Mahogany Dread’ is one of those songs that I can play over and over and over again and I never tire of it. So unique, so beautiful, so honest. What a voice. What a man.”
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“A crucible of American music…”
Paradise Of Bachelors’ Brendan Greaves on the musical riches of North Carolina
“North Carolina is a central crucible of American vernacular music. Many of the 20th century’s greatest soul, jazz, gospel, country, bluegrass, and old-time artists — from John Coltrane, to Roberta Flack, to Nina Simone, to Earl Scruggs, to Don Gibson, to Maceo Parker, to Blind Boy Fuller, to Charlie Poole, to Doc Watson — hail from our state. In many ways, North Carolina can lay claim to being the home of old-time string band music and bluegrass. It’s an incredibly diverse place — we have the largest American Indian population east of the Mississippi and the fastest growing Latino population in the nation. The tradition and legacy of complex musical cross-pollination surrounds us and persists, spanning the state from the Outer Banks to the Piedmont to the Smoky Mountains, reflecting and countering those disparate landscapes. Both Mike [Taylor] and I have worked as folklorists in North Carolina, which involves a lot of travelling around, conducting oral histories with musicians, attending church services, eating barbecue, and listening as selflessly as possible. If you want to pursue a focused artistic practice, sense of place matters. This place contains some heavy musical ballast, and you’re bound to be influenced as a musician. If your ears are open, it seeps into your bones and stays there.”
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“It knocked you on your ass!”: Remembering Jason Molina
MC Taylor first met Jason Molina in 2004, when they toured together. Earlier this year, he joined the surviving members of Magnolia Electric Co for a string of shows that revisited Molina’s songs
“Jason was an enigma. He was a straight shooter. He was a very funny guy. But there was also a mythology about him and his work that he wore like a shroud, even around his friends. I suspect his undoing was partly due to his living this compartmentalized existence: He was a good married guy trying to do right by his family and friends, and he was also a haunted soul placing talismans and charms in each of the four corners of his room to keep evil spirits away. And rarely did those two men meet.
“I talked to him several times a few months before he passed and we were trying to arrange a session for him in North Carolina with my crew backing him up. It was meant to be purely therapeutic. I didn’t want anything to do with the business side of it. Both of us valued honestly and honed our craft in a very personal way. When he found that direct line between his soul and his voice, it knocked you on your ass.
“I got a call from Jason Groth, whom I consider the musical director and lynchpin of Magnolia Electric Co, not long after Jason’s death. He told me that they felt there was some unfinished work that they wanted to complete in playing their songs one last time for the people who loved Molina’s work so much. He asked me if I would be interested in joining them for a string of shows, making clear that I would not be taking Jason’s place, but would be helping them all deliver the songs. It was a collaborative effort.
“I felt very proud. I was deeply honoured to be a part of those shows. And make no mistake: It was fun. It was a rambling Irish wake, to be sure. There was a lot of laughter and a lot of tears.”