Taylor pulled from much of his oeuvre, playing fifteen songs, with five new ones from Quietly Blowing It. The air felt almost chilly, all while the songs held us in thrall and kept us warm.
The wind blew throughout this first set, leaves swirling around the stage all afternoon, and the sun moved a little lower, a little warmer. His voice rang clear through the woods (the sound was exquisite, thanks to both Billsville and Luc, the sound man and copilot for Taylor on this solo tour). When he learned Jess and I had come from Baltimore, he asked after the city (doing mostly okay, for what it’s worth) and talked about the formative hardcore scene of the 90s (Taylor himself was briefly part of the hardcore scene in California).Īgain, though, I must emphasize that the songs were the centerpiece. He joked about playing “sad folk music in Vermont in the summer.” He talked about the short story “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” by Alan Sillitoe before singing “Glory Strums”, a song as interested in social alienation as maintaining as much control over our lives as we can. Taylor told stories throughout (as much as I want to tell them, they are his to tell if you see him, though, ask about his Gretsch), and engaged with the audience as directly as I’ve ever seen. Most often, Hiss Golden Messenger is a touring band instead of a solo act, focused as much on the deeper grooves they find together as on Taylor’s lyrics solo, the focus is very much the song, the voice, and the dialogues in between. Taylor walked to the stage – adorned with two stools, a mic, and a three-guitar stand – and got right to work, singing a perfect first line, “Yeah, when Saturday comes, I’m gonna lose myself.” “Saturday’s Song” acted as a kind of beginning benediction, carrying a hope for something good and maybe a touch of the divine. The first set of the day started early, under the mid-afternoon sun, the leaves dappling the light. Doug greeted every single person who entered the yard, checking for vaccine cards (an obvious and appropriate requirement for participating in society) all while sharing half-jokes and smiles. Doug and Caroline have cultivated a space that welcomes audiences and musicians alike, their house and yard an easy embrace.įor Hiss, the show took place in their backyard, a natural amphitheater in Manchester Center, Vermont, a slightly sloped hill ending at a small stage under the trees, a canopied merch table next to it. It is, in every way, a destination venue. Leaving early in the morning, we grabbed bagels and coffee (NJ bagels still the best of all), and drove north with the sun on our shoulders.īillsville is a place you cannot comprehend until you’ve been there. We left Baltimore well before the sun’s setting on Friday, stopping halfway to Vermont to visit friends. And still, the truest theme of Quietly Blowing It – and maybe all of Hiss’s music – is that it’s better to hope and act for goodness’s sake. He sings about the glory of having and granting sanctuary.Īt their core, these are songs exploring the metaphysics of being human. Taylor also sings about the importance of hope and the constant value of family (whatever that word means to you). Taylor sings about class, working, inequity he sings about self-loathing (which has come up throughout his work this last decade), alienation and isolation, and even maybe the specter of climate change. Hiss Golden Messenger released Quietly Blowing It in June, a dynamic album exploring themes relevant to nearly all times, but especially resonant in the last few years it’s not a pandemic album, but to call it uninfluenced by the pandemic seems wrong. We committed immediately, regardless of when, if only because we had to. We’d made in-person acquaintances at Solid Sound, connecting through our mutual affection for house shows (I wore my Club 603 shirt), followed each other on socials, and he knew Hiss’s songs buzz in my marrow.
It’s a quietly prescient and subversive statement, one that betrays more about what it means to exist than we’d think.Ī few months ago, Doug Hacker – the man largely responsible for the Billsville House concerts and a scion of the house show scene – sent me a message that Hiss Golden Messenger was coming back to Vermont for a show.
Taylor (Hiss Golden Messenger) shared those words in the lead-up to releasing Quietly Blowing It, written in his journals near the edge of disaster in England.
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