Trouble and Troubadour

“We’re pickin’ riffs on an old guitar, workin’ on a brand-new tune,” veteran Austin. TX. rocker Natchet Taylor growls just ten seconds shy of a minute into “Texacana Summer,” a key note in a batch of country-flavored tunes penned for his Americana/punk outfit, Natchet Taylor and The High Lonesome. Putting aside that the song could decimate every other track around it were it played on commercial country radio, that line could serve as his motto going into the new phase of his long, multi-faceted career.

“I’m doing an Americana/old school country thing that (whether I want it or not) has that punk rock tinge to it,” Taylor agrees. “I just can’t escape it. Anyway, I find myself the new kid on the block again.

“It’s just heavily song-writing focused,” he muses about his new direction. “I am no Jeff Buckley or George Jones. I have just enough of a bucket to carry a tune.”

Coming off ten years in the Clash-like punk outfit Nowherebound, the deep twang and honky-tonk poetry imbuing new material such as “Blue Bell and Modelo” and “Running Out My Wild” might catch his mohawked and denim-vested fans off-guard. That is, unless they’re aware the man was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1978, but his family picked up sticks for San Antonio when he was 3 and he escaped to Austin when he was 21. Hence a barking Telecaster and John B. Stetson hat is as natural to him as a cranked Marshall amp and black leather jacket.

But it’s always been about solid compositions for him since he first laid his tiny hands on both a guitar and piano as a child.

“To me, it’s all about the songwriting,” he says. “If a song takes flight and strikes that chord, I don’t much care what genre it is. If a song is great, it can transcend being labeled.”

Which has led him in all new directions, after a lifetime rocking Austin’s Red River district, applying his raunchy Keith Richards-inspired guitar with New Disaster and Nowherebound, then drifting across the US and Europe as a solo acoustic troubadour. The last few years, he’s dropped a solo album, Rainy New Moon, and a single, “What’s Going On Today.” Now he’s in the studio with a crackerjack band of veterans from all over the musical map – former Alejandro Escovedo drummer Hector Muñoz, ex-Agony Column bassist Billy “Chainsaw” Dansfiell, ex-Soulhat guitarist Mac McNabb. Together, they are crafting a new album and playing local venues, with a new sound owing as much to the Rolling Stones as to Townes Van Zandt.

“I know a lot of rock n’ rollers and punk rock people and not a lot of folks who work in the genre I’m playing now,” admits Taylor. “Alas! I am in a whole new world again, which is fun. But like Strummer, I need to craft that mythology all over again. Or Bowie. It’s time to reinvent myself once again.”

Natchet Taylor Gallery