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January 27, AMERICAN STATESMAN FEATURE by Brad Bucholtz
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AMERICAN STATESMAN FEATURE by Brad Bucholtz
January 27, 2003

Will Taylor has a musical proposition for you -- a playful, dignified, off-kilter idea that brings honor to Austin's identity as "The Live Music Capital of the World." It's a cool concept. But it's just a bit . . . different.

Imagine what might happen, suggests Taylor, if we took Austin's most popular singer-songwriters -- Abra Moore, or Jimmy LaFave, or Patrice Pike, or Ray Wylie Hubbard -- and let them perform, live, in a church? Then imagine if you paired those artists with acoustic "chamber" instruments -- cello, violin, viola, trumpet and hand drums -- and wrote new arrangements, adding dashes of jazz and classical music, that revealed new facets of their most beautiful or familiar songs?

Imagine what might happen if you dared to blur all these boundaries between pop music and jazz, between rock music and classical music, between the musical realm and the lyrical realm, between the honky-tonk and the church, and in the spirit of art and fun and experimentation, you reached out for something . . . transcendent?

Imagine. Will Taylor and his acoustic ensemble stage this dream at St. David's Episcopal Church once a month. This spring, the Strings Attached concert series features one-night-only collaborations with Hubbard, Tish Hinojosa, Eliza Gilkyson and Slaid Cleaves, Albert & Gage, Jon Dee Graham and Jimmie Dale Gilmore.

"The whole point of what we're trying to do is communicating song to soul -- and that seems to happen very well with these artists, and these pairings, in the church," says Taylor, a classically trained musician with strong jazz influences. He plays viola and violin, piano and guitar, and writes most of the arrangements for the Strings Attached series. "Sometimes, people are thrown off by the venue when they first hear about it. A church? But the point is that it's not a bar. It's not smoky. It's not loud. And though it's not a built-in concert hall, it's a beautiful space with beautiful sound."

Since their first experiment with jazz singer Beth Ullman two years ago, Taylor and his ensemble (which currently features Steve Zirkel on bass and trumpet, Jason McKenzie on tabla and drums and Charles Prewitt on cello) have collaborated with more than a dozen Austin vocalists. Each concert brings with it its own musical challenge to forge a union with the guest artist's specific musical vocabulary. Some pairings feel like weddings; others feel like lightning storms.

"I'll do almost anything for the challenge of it, to test my arranging ability," says Taylor. "I see it as an exercise: Can I connect with something that's further away from my style than anything I know -- and still make it work?"

Will Taylor's story begins, like so many Austin music stories, at the Armadillo World Headquarters -- the late great concert hall, beer garden and artists' haven that both nurtured and reflected the open-minded spirit of its patrons. Taylor was raised in Austin, and his parents loved music. So it only followed that young Will spent many nights at the Armadillo, listening to music, in the company of his parents.

The Armadillo was all about inclusiveness, for it was the home of rock and country, ballet and jazz, folk, blues and the spoken word. There were no boundaries. Form didn't matter as much as passion. As a boy, Taylor wandered about in this landscape without thinking about it.

As he came of age in the late 1980s, Taylor gravitated toward jazz and classical music -- a world void of lyrics -- even though his parents had always been aficionados of singer-songwriters such as Townes Van Zandt. He mastered the viola, toured with the Turtle Island String Quartet and eventually put together a string jazz ensemble in Austin. His compositions were adventurous, creative . . . and well outside the lines of the mainstream.

Once, in the midst of a cross-country tour in the mid-1990s, Taylor and buddies in the band began listening to Joni Mitchell's "Hejira," one of several Mitchell albums that weds a songwriter's lyrical soul with a jazz sensitivity. "The songs on that album -- like 'Black Crow' and 'Refuge of the Roads' -- about being an artist, being on the road, just blew my mind," says Taylor. "The lyrics in those songs cleansed my soul . . . and they opened up an entire avenue of creativity in me."

While remaining true to his jazz and classical roots, Taylor began to build a music library stocked with lyric-driven artists: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Neil Young. He began to recognize the parallel harmonies in music and the written word. In Austin, he'd seek out folk singers at the Saxon Pub and Cactus Cafe. He began writing arrangements for vocalists such as folksinger Sara Hickman and jazz singer Suzi Stern.

"Will has an innate sense of bringing a song to fruition in the most beautiful way he can," says Hickman, who records frequently with Strings Attached. "It can be from a country song to rock song to a lullabye. It's not just one genre. The first tune Will ever arranged for me was an a capella lullabye I wrote for my daughter called 'It's Alright.' All l had really was the song in my mind and then I sang it into a tape recorder at Will's house. When I came back, he'd done this beautiful string arrangement to my melody, with a depth and lushness that brought me to tears."

Taylor knew the idea of mixing popular music with classical forms wasn't new. Leonard Bernstein had done it. Aaron Copland had done it. He knew, too, that mixing popular music with jazz forms wasn't new. Sting's solo career was built around the idea. In Austin, jazz guitarist Mitch Watkins has always been comfortable mixing his textured, compositional sensitivity with the pop visions of Joe Ely or Abra Moore. Most of all, Taylor knew that music in churches wasn't anything novel. The idea is as old as medieval Europe.

The magic was in bringing it all together, in a single vision. Why not, thought Will Taylor? Why not wed the worlds of music, in the name of creativity, in a Strings Attached concert series? "The only thing that surprises me," he says today, "is why someone else didn't think of it first."

**

When a vocalist signs on to play a Strings Attached show, Taylor first asks the artist to pick some favorite songs. They don't have to be the most recognizable, or the easiest to play. The idea is not to stage a greatest hits production at church. Rather, the challenge is to select songs that lend themselves to different moods in the context of strings.

After choosing the songs, Taylor writes out the musical charts from the original CDs -- including solos -- and then works out new arrangements at his computer. In the meantime, he gives copies of the original tunes to members of Strings Attached, so that they might become acquainted with the singer's style and vision. This is before they ever see new arrangements or rehearse.

Taylor listens to the original tunes, too, for he needs to know when it's best to shoot for understatement -- or when to gamble.

"The artists usually want to be comfortable. But I don't want them to be too comfortable," says Taylor. "I think that's how creativity happens, in the taking of risks. But at the same time, our job is to respect the integrity of the musicians and enhance what they do." A lot of times, that means walking a tightrope.

At rehearsal, Strings Attached and the guest artist gather at Taylor's house, where ideas and arrangements are discussed, refined and often tossed out. The confluence of vocabularies is fascinating. In December, Jimmy LaFave brought Jack Kerouac to the creative table, while Taylor and cellist Charles Prewitt ventured into the land of J.S. Bach.

"So. We're ending on a 5? Or are we ending on a 1?" said Prewitt at one point, pencil in hand, studying the sheet music on the music stand before him as the ensemble worked through its arrangement of LaFave's "When It Starts to Rain."

"Well," answered Taylor, "we're actually ending on 3 if we're in an F-sharp major!"

Inside the musicians' circle but also apart from it, LaFave looked up at the heavens and rolled his eyes in bemusement -- for he is an artist who knows only the feel of music and doesn't know the language of flat fifths and the potential benefit of tabla in C-sharp.

But in the end, the union of these disparate visions -- even if it's a bumpy union -- is what makes the Strings Attached concerts so special. LaFave is a master of interpretation; it's his very signature as a singer. How challenging, in a creative way, for Strings Attached to take on the challenge of interpreting an interpretive artist!

And so it was, at St. David's Episcopal Church, that Will Taylor and Jimmy LaFave looked each other in the eye and, without words, faced the proposition of "Why not?" In the first half of the show, LaFave performed "Buffalo Return to the Plains" to rich string textures that suggested Americana, and Appalachia, which added a delicate drama to a Woody Guthrie-flavored tune that LaFave fans know oh so well.

But in the second half of the show, LaFave turned the tables. "Now we're going to play by my rules," he announced with a mischievous smile -- and promptly launched into a 12-bar blues, forcing the cellist and violinist to leave their comfortable place and play strictly by ear.

Risks are taken. Boundaries are broken. The musical realm and the lyrical realm become one, in the heart of downtown, inside one of the oldest churches in Texas. Amazing grace, indeed.

bbuchholz@statesman.com, 912-2967