Otis Taylor’s got a lot going for him when it comes to the blues. He’s got a Randy Newmatic voice, a masterful grip of how blues guitar should be played, and some pretty imaginative ways of making the blues sound fresh. All of these tools come into play on his new album, Clovis People, Vol. 3.
Taylor starts out his album with “Rain So Hard,” a mystical take on the blues that swirls his mystical guitar riffs through horns, drums and of course, Taylor’s plaintiff and dry voice. The man always sounds like he desperately needs a glass of water.
Through the rest of the album, most of these devices show their faces again. The soft horns will accompany a different instrumentation on “She’s Ice in the Desert” and “Past Times.” Technical riffs play on songs like “Ain’t no Cowgirl,” and the drum riff is usually the same. From the very start of the album to its closing notes, you know exactly what you’re in for.
Great blues can sometimes be hard to distinguish from mediocre blues — the latter can too easily be the same old depressed, my-baby-left-me clichés, while the former ignites self-awareness. Taylor’s “trance blues,” as he calls it, feels different. Unique but genuine, flashy in some ways, but sincere all the same, his music shines as a beacon of hope for the future of blues as an ongoing form for musicians to express their talent and ingenuity.
Taylor flexes the blues without breaking it. He plays his genre the way every artist should, with respect for the blues’ history while still bringing his own perspective to it.
Too often people think of the same damn chord changes repeating when someone says “the blues.” Taylor fights this misconception of the blues with all his being in his albums, and his wah pedal, his horns, the string sections, and every kind of guitar possible are his weapons. It’s not always the blues you expect, and it’s certainly asks the question of what blues can and should be.
