ON SALE NOW
FANTASIZING ABOUT
BEING BLACK
Trance Blues Festival Records
"Raw and unflinching"
— The Guardian
Features musical guests Jerry Douglas, Brandon Niederauer, and Ron Miles
LISTEN TO 'TWELVE STRING MILE' ON NPR
Otis Taylor's new album opens with a bumpy rhythm section under a freewheeling solo cornet, stinging lap-steel guitar and a devastating representation of a black man who, in the Deep South in the 1930s, wouldn't dare look a white man in the eye: "I'm alive now, be dead soon," Taylor intones on "Twelve String Mile." Taylor calls his style of music "trance blues" — moody, repetitive grooves that create space for spare, evocative lyrics and urgent ideas. On 2013's My World Is Gone, Taylor tackled the treatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government; now, on Fantasizing About Being Black, he confronts the historical trauma of the African-American experience. The subject matter isn't easy, but the hypnotic style won't let you go. "A big black man, got dark, dark eyes / Big, big man, got dark, dark skin," Taylor moans. "Nobody sees me." But we hear him.
—Micah Schweizer, Wyoming Public Media's Wyoming Sounds
ON SALE NOW
HEY JOE OPUS
RED MEAT
TranceBlues Festival Records
On sale now
With Special Guests:
Warren Haynes
Langhorne Slim
Bill Nershi
OTIS on the BLUES CRUISE
Otis on the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise"
MY WORLD IS GONE
My World Is Gone on Telarc, a division of Concord
Music Group, is a lightning bolt of musical creativity
and social commentary. Its songs crackle with poetic intelligence and a unique, adventurous sound that
balances the modern world with echoes of ancient
Africa, Appalachia and more.
OTIS NOMINATED FOR JAZZ FM AWARDS 2015
OTIS NOMINATED FOR BLUES MUSIC AWARD
OTIS WINS DOWNBEAT CRITICS POLL FOR TOP BLUES CD
NEW YORKER MAGAZINE
Posted by John Donohue
Otis Taylor, a blues singer, guitarist, and banjo player who was born in Chicago and raised in Denver, started in music in the late sixties and seventies, and then gave it up for a while to become an antiques dealer. He came roaring back with ten albums in the last ten years, though, and his new one, “Otis Taylor’s Contraband,” is full of sharply rendered songs about a wide range of subjects, including the Jim Crow era, slavery, and romance. Listen to “Never Been to Africa.”
