Chip Taylor – Whiskey Salesman
Train Wreck – Out Now
Near sixty years and 40 albums in, you should pretty much know what you’re getting with a new Chip Taylor release. Stories and observations from life, his and others, memories and reminiscences from an eclectic career, thought-provoking and empathetic insights into the human condition, wry humour, unfiltered emotions and the sense of a life well-lived with all its bumps and diversions. This is all delivered in his distinctive relaxed, intimate conversational and generally softly spoken gravelly style like some family repository of ancient wisdom imparting his truths and the occasional scurrilous tale around the fireside with a glass of warming whiskey and the accompaniment of spare strummed acoustic guitar.
Indeed, it’s the water of life that gives the album its title and the opening recollection of a time back in 1958 when that’s what he briefly did for a living, until the horses came along and set him on his path as a gambler, the song unfolding into a collection of horse race handicapping and life lessons before he suddenly bursts into a snatch of George Jones’ Why Baby Why with co-producer Goran Grini on piano. Naturally, it also features longtime collaborator John Platania on electric guitar, who, like Grini, upright bassist Grayson Walters and drummer Katrine Grini, contributes to pretty much all the 11 tracks.
Along with horses, women loom large in Taylor’s life and songs, promoting a romantic trilogy linked by Grini’s piano accompaniment, starting with the speak-sing Hold Her offering advice on always treating the one you love like the first time you met (“like a drunk holds a whiskey with no chaser at the bar”) and realising how lucky you are and then sliding into the piano-accompanied I Love You Today. An open-hearted song for his wife, June, in typical Taylor fashion, it goes off at a tangent to recall how, travelling back home on the train, he managed to lock himself in the bathroom and only managed to get out as the train pulled into his station, and from that into a dinner with old friends. And ending with Some Hearts, a reminder that some “need extra time to find their peace of mind” as he whispers ‘there you go’ like a father gently consoling a sad child.
The first of three tracks to pass the five-minute mark, featuring bassist and co-producer Tony Mercadante, the spoken Naples recalls a trip to the Florida town in late October, Christmas already in the air, taking you around the streets and down to the beach as, harmonising with himself, he sings of “standing next to a sand castle with blue water thinking high tide was in.”
In what is Taylor’s equivalent of breaking out into a sweat, piano, upright bass, Bonnie Sue Walters’ fiddle and a couple of Platania solos get into funky blues boogie chug with A Sip Or Two Of Good Scotch, basically about knocking back a few with friends like John Prine (who was interviewed here on Folk Radio). He pours another one with the strummed Whiskey Dreams, this time, melancholic fiddle Grini’s barroom piano underscoring how they can also have their dark sides as well as refuge, while, hitting midnight, Turn The Clock Back Again continues on a theme of its destructive potential as he talks of “5 less whiskeys, 4 less bad drinkin’ songs, 3 less fists pounded there on the bar, 2 less phones smashin’ down on the floor, and one less broken heart.”
Taking a country musical detour into vaguely Willie Nelson territory, he actually sings all of the easy rolling I Like Ridin’, but then it’s back to the narration for the six-minute Texicana-tinged See The Good Side of the Guy, Pee Wee Walters on warm trumpet and Grini on organ for a reminiscence on friendship that may have its ups and down but “helps you get to the finishing line in some manner or form” for those “little victories in that thing called life.”
The album closes with the slow waltzing strum of In The Stillness of the Night, a gorgeously romantic last dance that musically harks to his Irish heritage, with ruminative piano notes and distant tolling bells as, almost like a prayer, he talks of metaphorically finding a song you can sing along to and how, in the quiet hours, “we all need to float back to shore.”
Released as a double disc, it includes a 46 minute DVD featuring videos for each track, filmed (mostly in black and white) at his home and local bar and incorporating archive footage of his wife and brothers that, on Naples and See The Good Side especially add extra resonance to the lyrics. As any whiskey connoisseur will tell you, this album is a mellow, aged in the cask of life 18-year old singular malt. Sip and savour.
UK Dates
Nov 3: TWICKENHAM (London) – The Exchange Theatre
Nov 4 BIRMINGHAM – Kitchen Garden Cafe
Nov 5: CAERNARFON (Gwynedd) – Galeri
Nov 6: LEEK (Staffordshire) – Foxlowe Arts Centre
Nov 7: SALTAIRE (West Yorkshire) – The Live Room @ Caroline Social Club
Nov 9: KINROSS (near Perth, Scotland) – Backstage at The Green Hotel
Nov 10: MILNGAVIE near Glasgow – Milngavie Folk Club