Banjo-playing bluesman Otis Taylor offers raw tales from the dark side of life on Truth Is Not Fiction

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON JAN. 15, 2004

By Steve Newton

As a kid growing up in Denver, Colorado, in the ’60s, bluesman Otis Taylor spent a lot of time hanging around that city’s Folklore Center. One of the aspiring musicians he met there was a teenage guitarist named Tommy Bolin, who would go on to replace Joe Walsh in the James Gang, then garner worldwide recognition as Ritchie Blackmore’s successor in Deep Purple.

“He was always sort of a bright light,” Taylor recalls from his current home in Boulder. “He was an incredible rhythm-guitar player, and an incredible lead-guitar player. You could hum something and he could play it right after you hummed it.”

Tragically, Bolin’s bright flame was extinguished in 1976, when he died of a drug overdose at the age of 25. Less than a year later, Taylor himself disappeared–from the music scene, at least. He became an art and antiques dealer, and didn’t return to the stage until 1995. Looking back, he says it was “no big deal” to abandon the musical life back then.

“I just walked away,” he points out. “Life is to try and find some peace for yourself, you know. If something’s really stressing you out and making you unhappy, I guess you should leave her. That’s what the blues song would say, right?”

Maybe so, but you won’t find generic tunes about relationship troubles on Otis Taylor albums. He does offer up a version of Big Joe Williams’s oft-covered “Baby, Please Don’t Go” on his latest CD, Truth Is Not Fiction, but it’s a lighthearted romp compared to the 11 original tracks.

“Kitchen Floor” tells the story of a Native American farming family that commits suicide together in the 1930s; “House of Crosses” is about a Russian child, the product of a rape, who grows up to see his father imprisoned in the jail where he’s a guard.

In the past, Taylor has composed grim studies of everything from fatalities in a Mexican car race to the real-life lynching of his great-grandfather.

“If you went back in any African-American family, or black family, chances are that some cousin or somebody got lynched,” he relates.

Taylor has made ominous subject matter his stock-in-trade since his 1995 debut album, Blue Eyed Monster, which was followed by the brooding When Negroes Walked the Earth, the Handy Award-winning White African, and 2002’s Respect the Dead.

He feels that his hard-hitting approach may hinder his chances of success in the short term, but benefit his career in the long run.

“The funny part about it,” he notes, “is that half the movies you go to on the weekend are depressing. But if you write a depressing song, everybody gets upset.”

Don’t expect the haunting, banjo- and cello-laced blues Taylor is noted for to turn upbeat any time soon. His next album–which will feature the bass-guitar and lead-vocal debut of his 17-year-old daughter, Cassie–continues his provocative retellings of suffering and social injustice.

“In World War II, black soldiers would make a V for victory in Europe,” he explains, “then make another V for victory for civil rights. So that’s why I’m calling the album Double V.”

Taylor expects Double V, on the Cleveland-based Telarc label, to be in the stores by April. In the meantime, local fans of his intense, no-holds-barred music can see him perform solo at the Yale Hotel on Thursday (January 22).

“Just remember to tell people the banjo came from Africa,” he says before signing off. “I always like that.”