‘An Evening with CHIP TAYLOR’ with John Platania (USA)

Date/Time Sun 03 Nov 2019 7:30 PM

Price Online - £17 + booking fee; On The Door - £17

Website: https://www.facebook.com/Chip-Taylor-40438231724/


This event is taking place over the bridge (on the ‘wrong’ side of the tracks?) at The Exchange. and it starts 30 minutes earlier than usual TwickFolk gigs.

Songwriters Hall of Fame 2016 inductee Chip Taylor has been writing and performing for nearly 60 years and shows no sign of slowing down. The New York Times says it best, “If you only know him as the guy who wrote ‘Wild Thing’ and ‘Angel of the Morning” — you don’t know him! Chip Taylor is making some of the most distinctive acoustic music around today.”

Creating distinctive music that is also enduring and influential has been Chip Taylor’s métier over the course of what is closing in on five decades as “one of America’s finest songwriters as well as a masterful singer and performer,” says Rolling Stone. His two best-known songs are only some of the many pop, rock, country and R&B chart hits he wrote in the 1960s (Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield and Frank Sinatra all recorded his songs).  Taylor was then one of the pioneers of the pivotal country-rock movement as a recording artist in the 1970s.   His 1973 album, Last Chance, remains a beloved cult classic.  But after refusing to play by the Nashville establishment rules, Taylor gave up music for full-time professional gambling in 1980.

“Chip Taylor could’ve rested on his laurels years ago and still been way ahead of everybody else today. Lucky for us he didn’t and he’s making some of the most relevant music out there,” said Buddy Miller just last year. Since returning to music in 1996 he has enjoyed elder statesman stature within the Americana, contemporary folk and singer-songwriter scenes as an artist in his own right as well as in collaboration on albums and in performance with John Prine, Carrie Rodriguez, Kendel Carson and John Platania. In a remarkable and prolific run, Taylor has released nearly an album a year since his return, each rising high on the Americana chart. As England’s The Guardian notes, “Chip Taylor, like Johnny Cash, is well worth rediscovering by a new generation.”

Fuck All The Perfect People, the title track from his 2012 album, went viral on Spotify, garnering a million streams over a couple of months. Its inclusion on the Netflix smash Sex Education in 2019 resulted in a second wave of streams recently.

As Taylor’s muse continues to fire on all pistons, musical tastemakers agree that fans and listeners should tune their ears into the continuing creativity of a true musical master. “If names like Willie Nelson, Guy Clark, Kris Kristofferson and Townes Van Zandt mean anything to you, you should make a point of discovering Chip Taylor,” urges critic Anthony DeCurtis. “Whether you know it or not, he’s earned his way into that exalted company.