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Chip Taylor ascribes his family's success to a solid upbringing. |
BY JONAS BEALS
Chip Taylor's father was an immigrant kid from the wrong side of the tracks. As Taylor tells it, his father used to sneak onto a local golf course when he was little. He learned the game and made a career as a golf pro.
"My dad would wake me and my brothers up in the morning and say, 'Boys, the world is your oyster,'" Taylor said. "Mom and Dad were encouraging us to hop our own fences."
It worked. Taylor's oldest brother, Barry Voight, is a renowned geologist and volcanologist; Jon Voight is an Oscar-nominated actor; and Chip Taylor, the youngest, is the songwriter responsible for "Wild Thing" and "Angel of the Morning," among many other hits.
The whole thing sounds like the epilogue of a feel-good novel, but truth can match fiction on occasion.
Or the difference can be hard to detect. On the first track of his latest album, "Yonkers, NY," Taylor admits that he grew up believing his dad was a CIA agent, thanks to the stories he used to tell his sons.
As a songwriter, Taylor has assumed his father's storytelling mantle, stringing listeners along an autobiographical arc too heartfelt and pure to be questioned.
Vignettes touch on mundane events that eventually defined the lives of one American family. Taylor describes sitting on the periphery on his father's gin rummy games--a formative moment for Taylor, who temporarily left the music business in the 1970s to become a full-time professional gambler.
"Hey Johnny (Did You Feel That Movie)" catches the moment that might have inspired two lives--when he and brother Jon saw "Blackboard Jungle" as kids. Jon may have been focused on Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier, but Taylor got a full dose of Bill Haley.
On "Bastard Brothers," Taylor ribs his siblings for precipitating a turning point in his life--when they managed to convince their mother to replace young Chip's noisy violin with a more subtle ukulele.
It's comforting, particularly in the holiday season, to think of Taylor's latest album as a sort of Jean Shepherd-ian tale of idealized suburban upbringing. Taylor stops mid-song on occasion to tell a story rather than sing it, unearthing gauzy childhood tales reminiscent of "A Christmas Story."
The format--mixing music with straight storytelling--is a cinematic way to present an album. There are even "guest" appearances by Johnny Cash and Bill Haley, played by Taylor, thanks to snippets of "Big River" and "Rock Around the Clock."
The spoken interludes serve the songs well--adding context without bogging things down. The oratory breakdown in the middle of "Barry Go On (Put Yourself On The Mountain)" clears up any misconceptions--the song is about his brother Barry, not our current president.
The format gives listeners a chance to understand Taylor's songwriting process.
"When I wrote the songs, I was thinking of little stories," he said. "I'm a stream-of-consciousness writer."
This particular "Yonkers" stream is thick with family memories. These are intimate slices of a life that Taylor shows great care and respect for, embellished with the folksy tones of country and rockabilly that Taylor connected with when he was young.
"My whole life has been guided by physical sensations--my body getting chills," he said.
Taylor recalled a moment that isn't mentioned on the album, but fits the theme. It was when his parents took him to the theater and he heard "My Wild Irish Rose."
"My whole life changed when I heard that orchestra play," he said. "It was the sound of the music--I felt it in my body. I was almost crying. I didn't want it to end. It was like when I had my first dance with a girl at 12 years old and I didn't want to get her perfume off my wrist.
"When I write songs, I feel it. It's a real, physical sensation."
Not all of us are songwriters, but most of us can recognize and remember moments of stunning emotional impact. It's falling in love, and it can happen with music or brothers as often as it does with boyfriends or girlfriends. Taylor brings those moments to life in his stories by polishing important memories that might have lost some of their shine.
"When you grow up in Yonkers, it's a wonderful thing," Taylor said. "Mom and Dad were from poor families. Most of the folks in Yonkers were poor. It was not a glamorous life. It was like we were the Brooklyn Dodgers, not the Yankees. We were the underdogs."
Jonas Beals: 540/368-5036
Email: jbeals@freelancestar.com
| What: Chip Taylor and Kendel Carson with special guest Jon Voight Where: The Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria When: Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Cost: $35 Info: 703/549-7500 Web: Birchmere.com or trainwreckrecords.com |
