THE
GREAT DIVIDE • Eric Taylor
One of
the front runners for song-poet laureate of Texas. And that’s a fertile
field.
His number
isn’t posted anywhere as one you should call for a good time. There
aren’t any good time numbers on this record, but there are many good
numbers. Like his playing and his singing, the songwriting of Eric Taylor
is very deep and very precise. He’s the only songwriter besides David
Olney you hear the adjective ‘Faulknerian’ applied to, for instance.
Like Olney, he’s old school, in a good way. But he hails from Texas,
and that’s a different animal. Wasn’t born there, but he’s
been there since running out of money on the way to California landed
him in Houston in the '70s.
Many,
like Lyle Lovett and former wife Nanci Griffith, revere the artist with
words of the highest praise. In song, he is a narrative expert, and several
of those on this record bear special mention. "Big Love" tells the story
and perhaps the last moments of a fellow named James Willis Hardin, weight
459. With the grace and timing of a novelist or short story writer, Taylor
draws the listener in to the flower shop, the house of the mother he lives
with, and into the broken heart and mind of "Big Love" as his mother calls
him. The other story that really knocked me out was "Bonnie and Avery,"
about a dance hall girl (the ten cents a dance kind) and a player in a
coronet band who have a bar they close at midnight every night in their
later years.
All
except when Panama left them childless
Time’s been pretty good
The author’s
not out to please anybody but himself, and the songs and the renditions
bear that integrity out. He’s one of the few songwriters playing
his own resonator and electric tracks behind his acoustic work, and it’s
real good. Apart from that, there are some background vocals, some percussion,
saxes on one song, and bass on one of two covers, a song by Peg Leg Sam.
(The other cover is a Townes Van Zandt medley, near as I can tell.)
If you
like a serious song that’s played like it might be his last, Eric
Taylor is your man. One of the greats. •
FG
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