An outsider singer-songwriter, M.C. Taylor has been making music as Hiss Golden Messenger for nearly 20 years. Before that he was in the Court & Spark, a rocking San Francisco alt-country group named after the 1974 Joni Mitchell album of the same name. The Hiss catalog is expansive, and can be somewhat hard to pin down; sure you could just call it Americana, but why simplify things with such a broad label? Some Hiss songs are imbued with a swampy funk feel, some have the urgency of early protest songs, some are celebrations of life and love, and some express spiritual angst, but they are always tied together with driving, rhythmic guitar work and poetic lyrics.
For this AG Session, Taylor plays two tunes from Hiss Golden Messenger’s 2010 album, Bad Debt: “Call Him Daylight” and “Balthazar’s Song,” plus a cover of Tim Hardin’s “Shiloh Town.”
“All three of these songs existed in my life around the time of the Bad Debt record,” Taylor says, “They all feel connected. There’s something about the melodic quality.”
Fifteen years down the road, Taylor is having realizations about how the songs on Bad Debt have evolved thematically over time. “There’s stuff in there existentially that never occurred to me that feels really obvious now,” he says. “But the way I feel while I’m playing the songs is still the same.”
After the performance, Taylor talks with us about his 12-fret Martin 000, how poetry impacts his songwriting, and why he likes strumming so close to the bridge.
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