Award-winning bluesman Otis Taylor just keeps on rocking as he prepares to release his tenth album in a little more than a decade. On May 11, 2010 Telarc Records will release Clovis People, a collection of both new songs and unreleased material from a decade ago that will certainly enhance Taylor's already stellar reputation as a storyteller.
The album's title was inspired by an event close to Taylor's Colorado home, as archeologists unearthed tools and other relics belonging to an indigenous civilization known as the Clovis people. Although scientific opinion about the Clovis has been mixed for decades, it is generally agreed upon that the Clovis people inhabited North America some 13,000 years ago before mysteriously disappearing.
There have only been a handful of sites where the presence of the Clovis has been found, a fact that intrigued the songwriter in Taylor. "There have only been four or five sites like this found all over the country," said Taylor in a press release for the new album. "That means these people probably walked on my property. My music only goes back about ten years, but there's something about reaching back to an earlier time and revisiting the stories of the past from a new perspective that I find compelling."
Taylor was assisted in creating his unique, hypnotic musical style known as "trance blues" for these songs by British blues-rock guitarist Gary Moore, who has also pitched in on several of Taylor's previous recordings. Taylor's daughter Cassie plays bass on the album, and pedal steel guitarist Chuck Campbell, a member of the African-American gospel group the Campbell Brothers, appears on nine of the twelve songs on Clovis People.
The songs assembled for Clovis People by Taylor showcase the artist's innate storytelling ability and skill at matching the lyrics to the music. "I give people a starting point, and then they can take it where they want to take it," explains Taylor. "That's true for the people playing my music as well as the people listening to it. That's how art should be. A person looking at a painting should be able to interpret it in whatever way he wants. The more words you put into a song, the less freedom the listener has to decide what it means."
Related Content: Otis Taylor Profile
Photo courtesy Telarc Records
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