If you can only make it to one night of Phuzz Phest, consider making it Saturday. You won’t get the chance to see M.C. Taylor, the man behind Hiss Golden Messenger, for quite some time as he embarks for a U.K. tour at the end of the month.
Diversions editor Joseph Chapman spoke with Taylor about his success in the U.K. as an American folk artist. Hiss Golden Messenger rounds out Saturday’s day shows with a solo acoustic set at 7:15 p.m at Krankies.
Diversions: How long has Hiss Golden Messenger existed?
M.C. Taylor: I have been working as Hiss Golden Messenger since about 2006, 2007. I’m the songwriter with the project, but I have a collaborator I’ve been working with named Scott Hirsch for almost 20 years.
Dive: What’s your connection to UNC?
MT: I taught a class there, a folklore class. It was great. It was big. It was maybe 100 students or more. It was like the introduction to folklore. I’m a folklorist by trade, so it wasn’t like … I mean, they knew who I was and everything before they hired me to do it. I attended the graduate curriculum in folklore at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Dive: Does your experience as a folklorist crossover into your music career?
MT: Yeah, I think it probably seeps in, sure. I do a lot of field work and often times I’m hired to do field recordings of musicians. There’s a huge — I shouldn’t say huge — there’s a respectably sized old-time music community in the North Carolina Piedmont. I wouldn’t say that I’m an expert on old-time music, but sure, that type of music is important to me, definitely.
Dive: How did you work out a U.K. tour? What’s your reception been like overseas?
MT: I put out a couple records with a label that is based in London called blackmaps. They started putting together shows over there and they’ve been well-attended. It hasn’t been completely by design, but as circumstances would have it, I just do better over there for whatever reason.
There’s something exotic about Americans from the American South coming to play American roots music in England. Part of that is that it’s another country, another component of that is that there’s a big music scene in England and the U.K. in general — Ireland and Scotland — that is American roots music.
It’s an interesting phenomenon, definitely. I haven’t really tried to tour in the U.S. as Hiss Golden Messenger. I suspect it would be a rougher go than it is in the U.K.
I mean, I spent a decade on the road with another band that Scott (Hirsch) and I were in and it was just — it was a hard go. I got burnt out. That’s part of why I don’t really play shows that much. I got burnt, you know?
What I can get from music, the meaningful parts of music, I can generally get that at home, just playing at home.
I have to have an incentive to go out and play shows — not to sound cynical about it — but there needs to be a special reason.
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