R.I.P. Singer/songwriter Chip Taylor, 1940-2026

Sadly singer/songwriter and professional gambler Chip Taylor has passed away at the age of 86. He'll be greatly missed. 

LINKS
Chip Taylor Obituary

Happy Birthday Evie Sands!

Celebrating the birthday of singer/songwriter Evie Sands with a few vintage clips along with some interview footage. 

Chip Taylor announces new album Behind The Sky due in early 2024

Listen to the first song "Other SIde of the Moon" from Chip Taylor's forthcoming album Behind The Sky below.  

Here's the scoop from Chip...

Hi Friends - My new album is coming early 2024.  It's called Behind The Sky and is the first one we've recorded all together as a band since Yonkers NY. I wrote all the songs during the time I was undergoing radiation and chemotherapy treatment earlier this year. Some of you were there when the band all came together for a performance to celebrate the wonderful doctors and nurses who helped me through that difficult time. Following the show, Goran Grini, John Platania, Tony Mercadante and Tony Leone and I went into the studio and recorded all the new songs in a few days.

The first one you can hear is a special song for me - Other Side of the Moon. In this song, “it’s your father Elmer here ..” refers to my father, Elmer Samuel Voight, who, along with my mom Barbara, would never let us go through a day without their not-so-silent message of standing up for the “other guy”.

You can hear it here right now...

Chip Taylor previews his new album Whiskey Salesman

Here's Chip Taylor and pals playing the title track off his new Whiskey Salesman album out now on Train Wreck Records. 

Here's the scoop from Train Wreck Records...
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 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.”

You can mailorder a copy of Chip's Whiskey Salesman right here

Whiskey Salesman, his latest in a remarkable string of recent albums, is at once both personal and universal.  It is an album filled with timeless, intimate love songs - poignant, meditative odes to life.  And drinking (in moderation) songs.  Their spirit is perhaps best captured by the videos Taylor has created for each and every song (included on a DVD).  Filmed at hisown apartment and local bar, and starring his wife and friends, Taylor welcomes everyone in to his warm, heartfelt world.

"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.”

Whiskey Salesman follows closely after his acclaimed Fix Your Words and A Song I Can Live, which Sweden's foremost music site, Rootsy.nu called "so powerful and packed with emotions. Joy, sadness, melancholy, a sense of humor. And an abundance of compassion and humanity. It's an album I will treasure forever. It will have a special place in my record collection, next to Bob Dylan's "Time Out Of Mind" and Leonard Cohen's "You Want It Darker". 2015's The Little Prayers Trilogy, was among the best-reviewed album of his long career.   Mojo called it "a masterpiece while Uncut said it was the ”Crowning glory of a storied career” and placed it on its Best of 2015 list. Country Music People gave it ”Five stars .. nothing comes close.”

Taylor has been involved in a series of amazing projects in the last several years. Norway’s premier folk singer, Paal Flaata, recorded a full album of Taylor songs, Wait By The Fire, and rode it to the Top 10 and a Norwegian Grammy nomination.  He joined with Carrie Rodriguez for a reunion tour in the fall behind the 10th Anniversary deluxe reissue of their Red Dog Tracks album.  The Grammy-nominated Yonkers NY (2009) shows his facility with storytelling within songs.  Last year, a lavish reissue of his three 1970s Warner Bros albums (including Last Chance) was released to great fanfare. 2019 may also bring a new book/CD, Son Of A Golf Pro, which combines Taylor's story of growing up on the golf course with often hilarious songs about the sport.

“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.”

Chip Taylor @ Hugh's Room, Wednesday

Years before penning "Wild Thing," Chip Taylor (aka Wes Voight) was well on his way to rock 'n' roll teen idol status. 

Television vs. Evie Sands

See if you can spot any similarity between Marquee Moon and Evie Sands' You've Got Me Up Tight from 1965.