OTIS TAYLOR

Contraband

Telarc 33188-02

By Eric Steiner

Otis Taylor’s 12th CD, Contraband, is a diverse collection of 14 original songs that capture Taylor’s eclectic approach to the blues.  While many tracks reflect  his own unique brand of “trance blues” on Contraband, Taylor effectively blends the contributions of djembe, acoustic and electric banjo, pedal steel and fiddle, each complementing the traditional blues trio format featuring guitar, bass, and drums.

            Taylor was born in Chicago but calls the Centennial State (Colorado) home; and most recently, he’s created a new blues community through the Otis Taylor Trance Blues Festival.  The inaugural event over Thanksgiving 2011 featured: fellow Blues Music Award recipient Bob “Steady Rollin’” Margolin, banjo virtuosi Tony Trischka and Don Vappie, the Meters’ George Porter, Jr., Indigenous’ guitar ace Mato Nanji (Standing Bear), along with Contraband performers Ron Miles, Cassie Taylor, and Anne Harris.  Taylor purposefully encouraged non-musicians to participate, and he presided over a collaborative process that brought a wide variety of fans and musicians together for a number of workshops and jam sessions at several Boulder venues.

            There are a number of tracks on Contraband that further Taylor’s focused, repetitive interpretations of blues with few chord changes, such as “On My Delta Bed” and “The Devil’s Gonna Lie.”  The upbeat “Banjo Boogie Blues” features some stellar pedal steel guitar from sacred steel’s Chuck Campbell, rock solid bass lines courtesy of Otis’ daughter Cassie, and the Gospel-tinged Sheryl Renee Choir buoys the song nicely.  On “Blind Piano Teacher,” Ron Miles’ cornet adds texture to Cassie Taylor’s and Todd Edmund’s bass lines.  This song would be right at home on a jazz station as well as on KBCO-FM’s Red Rooster Lounge blues program in Boulder, Colorado.

The plaintive and wistful “Yellow Car, Yellow Dog” features Chicago’s Anne Harris on fiddle adding color and spice to a sparse, sad love song alongside Otis’ acoustic and electric banjos and Cassie’s bass.  Harris, an accomplished, award-winning producer and singer-songwriter in her own right, joined Otis onstage at the Fall 2011 Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise, and delighted blues cruisers with an explosive fiddle show.  Harris’ musical career includes five solo records on her Rugged Road label, and work with local roots-rockers the Juleps and the always hard-to-categorize band Poi Dog Pondering.

            The two closing songs are among my favorites: “Never Been to Africa” recalls the story of a black soldier fighting abroad in World War I, and “I Can See You’re Lying” is an amped-up psychedelic blues rocker with blistering guitar leads from Jon Paul Johnson.  Contraband offers a wide range of musical experiences, and reflects Otis Taylor’s diverse musical interests rooted in West African and Mississippi Hill Country traditions.

Eric Steiner is president of the Washington Blues Society in Seattle, Washington, and a member of the Board of Directors of The Blues Foundation in Memphis, Tennessee.