![]() I think I’ve always tried to live up to those standards. I love a lot of the soloing on Pink Floyd records. With them, it wasn’t like, “I’m gonna play this pentatonic riff over and over and amaze all my friends.” I love great guitar playing. I grew up listening to songwriters like David Bowie, Neil Young and Lou Reed. ![]() Who Is Blues: Are the musical traits we hear on Simple Life, the melodic element et cetera, merely a case of all your influences coming out? Or do you make a conscious effort to avoid the standard blues formula?ĭudley Taft: I try not to make any conscious efforts, if I can help it. Joining us – and occasionally adding their voices to the conversation – were the members of his current road band: Hamilton, Ohio’s Kasey Williams, the bassist on Simple Life and its predecessor Summer Rain, and drummer Darby Todd, who has also added his thump to the music of Robert Plant, Gary Moore and Jethro Tull-guitarist Martin Barre. Moreover, the record is an ode to the domestic bliss he has found after navigating the turbulent waters of parenting.ĭudley and I sat down a few days prior to the release of Simple Life to talk about the album and assorted aspects of his personal journey. The album’s twelve tunes celebrate the new beginnings of the past few years: With his youngest child now grown and out of the house, the 53-year-old Taft has doubled down on his musical efforts and rededicated himself to touring. Those elements are in full display on his September 2019 release Simple Life. Catchy choruses, layered vocal harmonies and unexpected chord changes make for a bracing, multicolored listening experience. Rather than toss those skills overboard when he founded the Dudley Taft Band some twelve years ago, he has utilized them to create a fascinating blues-rock hybrid. His background – which includes study at Boston’s Berklee College of Music and successful stints in a pair of Seattle-based rock outfits during the grunge boom of the 1990s – has given him the tools to expand upon the rigid 1-4-5 of the blues. What sets Taft apart from the vast majority of his contemporaries is his songwriter mentality. He grafts that onto a strong blues foundation, as evidenced in the songs he chooses to cover: Johnny Winter’s “Leland Mississippi Blues,” Freddie King’s “Palace of the King,” Skip James’s “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.” On the one hand, he boasts the sturdy chops and aggressive, rock-oriented attack fans love. Among today’s blues-rockers, Dudley Taft has a fairly unique skillset. Yet with each new release, a few more people do seem to be picking up on what the persevering, axe-wielding longbeard from Cincinnati is putting down. Anything from the “mid-ship balcony” category upward will do.) (*Note to Joe: I’d be happy to accept your invitation to the next cruise. For now at least, he’s a lone wolf – an outsider who may or may not be looking in. And perhaps his “outside the box” approach means he never will. ![]() You know – those overblown guitar orgies at sea that seem to be popping up all over the place.* Six albums into his solo career, the singer/guitarist still hasn’t become part of that exclusive back-patting mutual admiration society. Last time I checked, Dudley Taft was still waiting to be invited on one of those fancy schmancy blues cruises. Keep It Weird An interview with Dudley Taft ![]()
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