Terry Scott Taylor
Los Angeles, California9 reviews across 4 releases
Terry Scott Taylor is an American singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist from Southern California whose work moved between country rock, New Wave, alternative rock, folk, and comic experimental music. He formed Daniel Amos in 1974, and later worked with the Swirling Eddies and Lost Dogs while maintaining a solo career. His writing joins spiritual questions to ordinary troubles: unpaid rent, creative frustration, family strain, moral failure, and the hope of grace. The 1998 John Wayne placed those subjects in a dense rock setting with jangling guitars, strong harmonies, and noisy edges. Neverhood Songs, also from 1998, pushed his humor into a soundtrack of clay-animation absurdity, using banjo, horns, percussion, and spoken fragments. By Avocado Faultline in 2000, the arrangements had turned mainly acoustic and country-based, supporting detailed songs written from inside troubled characters.
In 1991, Taylor joined Mike Roe and Derri Daugherty in forming the Lost Dogs, adding a roots-oriented project to his work with Daniel Amos and the Swirling Eddies. His solo records continued to alternate between personal faith writing and invented voices, a method that became especially pronounced on Avocado Faultline, where the narrator might be a barfly, a grieving parent, or a bigot without being Taylor himself. After the 2000 release, he returned to the Neverhood material with Imaginarium: Songs from the Neverhood in 2004 and toured in 2009 with Steve Hindalong and Andrew Taylor. Daniel Amos, the Swirling Eddies, and Lost Dogs remained active in changing forms, while Taylor continued releasing and performing music under his own name.
4 releases reviewed
Neverhood Songs
Glimpses of Grace
Avocado Faultline