MOTIF Review: Tim Taylor - "Too Long Gone"

While combing through hundreds of local CD releases over the past few years, I’ve seen many instances where the artist jumps the proverbial gun by recording far too early in their career. Rather than sharpening their skills, honing their craft, and mastering their specific discipline, they run into the studio like excited schoolchildren, with both ego and checkbook flailing about. The end result is most often a recorded document for all to examine, exposing just how little they really know.

Nobody can accuse Tim Taylor of this behavior. Quite to the contrary, the New England harmonica strongman, whose very name has become synonymous throughout music circles with traditional blues excellence, has accrued over four decades of personal and professional growth before attempting his first solo CD release “Too Long Gone”. The end result is a mature, well- conceived collection of indomitable covers and authentic original material, which despite a certain sophistication never losses the electric edge that defines a sound that Taylor has been mastering and building upon all these many years.

For those of us familiar with Tim Taylor’s work, there is almost an illusion that he somehow emerged from the womb already fully schooled in the harmonica licks of Little Walter. But truth be told, just as it was with the vast majority of teens in the late sixties and early seventies, Taylor was exposed to the standard hippie rock faire that wafted from festival stages and radios alike. That was until a chance attendance of a performance by The Ken Lyons Blues Band. The stark difference in their approach from the other acts on the bill, as well as the strange new sound of highly amplified harmonica transfixed the young Taylor, who by his own admission “was psychedelically enhanced at the moment”. In reference to his early recollections of the harp player, Taylor recounts: “To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what he was doing. I just heard this sound. He had his hands up to his mouth...he was making this big enormous sound. I got closer and realized he was playing just a regular little 10-hole harmonica. And that was it, I was hooked.”

In the ensuing years, Tim Taylor began to fully immerse himself in the performance styling of harp legends like James Cotton, Sonny Boy Williamson, and the aforementioned Little Walter. In doing so, he’s developed a unique approach that is far more about tone and attitude than it is about virtuosity. “I’m not a jazzy player or an accomplished lick player by any means. I just go for that big sound and feel.”

Before making this solo record, Taylor spent years as one of the area’s most celebrated and prolific sidemen. With credits that include Rick Mendes and Blueswagon, The Mercy Brothers (an acoustic-tinged outfit which included Barrence Whitfield), and a four-year stint with Loaded Dice, he amassed an all- encompassing understanding of his art, which constitutes “Too Long Gone” a credible, genuine effort. Along that fact-finding road, Taylor met Marlie Wänseth, a young blues singer whose vitality re-energized his own take on the music: “She had a wonderful, natural original approach to playing the blues. She was heavy into the call-and-response, Howling Wolf grooves...It really appealed to me.”

The eleven-song disc contains some re-worked classics like Slim Harpo’s “I’m a King Bee”, and a terribly moving rendition of “Amazing Grace”, which is deemed all the more so by the fact that he performed it at his sister’s wake. Thus this recorded version came at the request of his family as a keepsake of that poignant, heartfelt moment.

But truly, the record succeeds best when Taylor himself takes the songwriting helm. One standout example is “R.L.”, a tribute to the late North Mississippi hill country-blues singer/guitarist R.L. Burnside: “R. L.’s in heaven sitting down – no more walking blues, he’s left his Earthly shoes – R.L’s in Heaven sitting down ”

With a great deal of modesty, Taylor is quick to point out the help he’s had along the way in the making of “Too Long Gone”, from the assistance of Duke Robillard to the recording auspices of John Packer, of whom he claims; “it would have been impossible to do (the CD) without him in every regard. He played on it, he engineered it, he co-produced it, he played all the bass on it. He was instrumental in getting Duke to come over and play on it.”

“Too Long Gone” is one of those rare occasions where one artist’s full body of work can be summed up within a single project, without ever understating the scope of that work. It was a lifetime in the making, and from my perspective well worth the wait.