Hiss Golden Messenger on Rockport, Finding Inspiration and Why Reinvention Isn’t Everything
When Hiss Golden Messenger arrives at Rockport’s Shalin Liu Performance Center, MC Taylor won’t just be bringing a guitar and a catalog of music that spans nearly two decades. He’ll be arriving in a town with the very thing that has often found its way into his songs: a strong sense of place.
Led by singer-songwriter M.C. Taylor, Hiss Golden Messenger has spent years blending folk, country, soul, gospel, blues and rock into music that feels both deeply personal and distinctly American. The band’s 2019 album Terms of Surrender earned a Grammy nomination, while Taylor’s latest record, I’m People, continues his long-running exploration of family, aging, love, solitude, community and the general messiness of being human.
Taylor has also described the geographic references in his songs as something of a travelogue of his life—places serving as markers for where he was and what was happening to him at the time.
So, naturally, we wanted to know what Rockport might inspire.
Rockport MA Guide: You’re playing the Shalin Liu Performance Center, a relatively intimate room in a town with a long history of attracting artists. What are you expecting from the experience?
M.C. Taylor: Every show is unpredictable regardless of where I’m playing. I’ve never been to the venue and I’ve never played in Rockport, but I’ve been told it’s an artist-friendly place to play, so maybe I’ll come in with slightly different expectations.
What I do with just an acoustic guitar rewards listening. I’ll play for anybody, anywhere, but it certainly makes things easier for everybody if people come ready to listen. So I’m hoping the crowd is up for that.
Rockport MA Guide: You’ve said that the place names in your songs can act almost like markers in the story of your life—“I was here.” If you were to write a Hiss Golden Messenger song about Rockport after this visit, what would you need to see, hear or experience?
Taylor: I don’t think it necessarily has to be a place that’s picturesque, bohemian, beautiful or dramatic.
The places that appear in my songs are usually there for one of two reasons. Sometimes they simply have the right number of syllables, the right rhyme or the right cadence. Other times, it’s because I happened to be there while I was in the middle of something in my life, and that place became associated with that event.
I love being somewhere inspiring and beautiful, somewhere that animates me, but it’s not a requirement.
Rockport MA Guide: So you’re not necessarily looking for the most photogenic corner of Rockport?
Taylor: No. It’s more about where I am in my life intersecting with a place.
Rockport MA Guide: Have you gotten any recommendations for what to do while you’re here?
Taylor: I’ve been told I need to go swimming at the beach next to the venue.
Rockport MA Guide: That would be a very Rockport way to start.
Taylor: Maybe I’ll do that. I don’t know—what do you recommend?
Rockport MA Guide: Bearskin Neck is probably the obvious place to start. It’s our little artist strip, with galleries, pubs, shops and all the boats. And you’re playing in one of the most spectacular venues in town. The back of Shalin Liu is essentially a two- or three-story glass wall overlooking the ocean. There’s a bit of a running debate among locals about whether the curtain should be open or closed during a concert because opening it gives you the view, while closing it can help the acoustics. Which way are you leaning?
Taylor: Seeing the ocean sounds pretty good to me. I guess I have to be there to see. I’ve played in some pretty acoustically chaotic situations, so I can’t imagine this place would even hold a candle to the worst of them.
I love the idea of the curtains being open. So for now, let’s say curtains open.
Rockport may hold him to that.
Finding the Song Through the False Starts
Much of I’m People was written across very different landscapes, including Bolinas, California, Santa Fe and Taylor’s home studio in North Carolina. His description of the Bolinas experience in particular sounds almost cinematic: walking to the water before sunrise, staying at a farm and encountering a parade and a mariachi band before eventually writing the line, “Truth, lies, magic, faith.”
We asked whether he consciously tries to find those almost dreamlike states when he’s looking for inspiration.
Rockport MA Guide: Is that a state you consciously seek out when you’re creatively stuck?
Taylor: Not really. That was just a moment in time when I was trying to untangle some things in my life, and it happened to coincide with being in those places.
I was consciously trying to write toward something that would become a record, but I was also driven to write simply because that’s what I do. I had some guitars and some time.
Being in a dream state is nice, but sometimes writing is just putting yourself in the seat and starting—even when you’re not creatively fired up. Eventually, I can usually find my way there.
There isn’t really a shortcut through all the false starts and the stuff that doesn’t feel like it will ever become a song I’d sing publicly. I have to write it anyway to get to the genuine stuff. I haven’t found a shortcut through that.
And I think that part of the process is important.
The Introvert Who Loves People
Taylor has described himself as an introvert who essentially trained himself to become an extrovert through performing. After years of touring, we wondered whether those two sides of him still feel distinct.
Rockport MA Guide: Do you still feel like there are two versions of yourself—the person who writes the songs and the person who walks onto the stage?
Taylor: Yeah, maybe.
I love being on stage. I love being around people. It’s a big, big part of my life, and it’s not something I do with any hesitation.
But I’m also very happy to get back to my hotel room at the end of the night and zone out alone. That’s how I recharge, which I think is pretty common for people who think of themselves as introverted.
I love people. And I also love recharging on my own.
No Reinvention Required
With I’m People, Taylor describes himself as being somewhere in an “in-between” period. He’s writing, but doesn’t yet know exactly where those songs are leading.
That uncertainty doesn’t seem to bother him.
Rockport MA Guide: You described I’m People as another chapter in a book, with plenty left to explore. Where do you think the next chapter is leading?
Taylor: It’s hard to say right now. I’m in that in-between period where I’m doing a lot of writing without really understanding what it’s pointing toward thematically. Check in with me in six months and I could probably give you a better answer.
I’ve always worked with the same themes. Artistic evolution is important and it’s part of what happens if you’re an artist for life. But I have some strange feelings about the idea that every record has to be a complete reinvention of what you do.
That’s not how creative life works, I don’t think.
That’s how business works. Business and creativity are strange bedfellows.
I’ve always tried to be a little more peaceful about what I am doing as Hiss Golden Messenger. I do this unique thing. The individual parts aren’t necessarily reinventing the wheel, but I’m the only one who does specifically this thing.
And I still feel energized by it. There are still lots of facets of it to explore. Maybe that’s part of why I’ve been so consistent with my output.
I’m not trying to reinvent everything from the ground up with every album. That’s just not very interesting to me. It’s not what any of my favorite musical artists did.
How Do You Get Bruce Hornsby to Play on Your Record?
I’m People was recorded at Dreamland, a decommissioned church outside Woodstock, New York. The space had the kind of atmosphere Taylor and producer Josh Kaufman were looking for, and the album eventually grew into a remarkably collaborative project featuring musicians including Bruce Hornsby, Sam Beam, Marcus King, Sara Watkins and Amy Helm.
But there wasn’t exactly a corporate strategy behind assembling the lineup.
Rockport MA Guide: How does a collaboration like that actually happen? Is it planned, or does it evolve organically among friends?
Taylor: At this point in my life, having been doing this for so long, it’s mostly organic.
We finished the basic tracks and started thinking, “You know who would sound really good on this?” In Bruce Hornsby’s case, we were looking for a specific piano voice for a song called “Depends on the River.”
Then I happened to be playing a festival in Boulder where Bruce was playing right after me. I hadn’t even thought of him until I saw him backstage.
So I texted Josh and said, “I’m here with Bruce Hornsby right now. What do you think about getting him to play piano?”
Then I just asked Bruce. He said yes and told me to send him the tracks.
That was it.
All of the connections on the record were basically me or Josh getting in touch with friends. We weren’t going through management or anything. We were just texting our friends.
Rockport MA Guide: You’re making me rethink my friends and wonder if I need to get more talented ones.
Taylor: That’s the thing. I guess it’s a byproduct of doing this for so long. When you run up and down the roads for 30 years, you end up meeting people.
I’m sure you know people who do amazing things, even if they’re not musicians who show up on the internet. Everybody has friends who are incredibly talented at what they do.
I have friends who have dedicated their lives to music. I ask them to help me when I’m working on something, and I add things to other people’s recordings, too.
The Most Important Rockport Question
After all the discussion of songwriting, artistic evolution and Bruce Hornsby, there was really only one way to finish an interview with a musician visiting Rockport from North Carolina.
Rockport MA Guide: You’re coming from North Carolina, so here’s the important local question: Have you had New England lobster before—and if not, are you planning to remedy that while you’re here?
Taylor: I’ve been married to a Mainer for 25 years, so New England is no stranger to me. It’s actually one of my favorite places in the world.
Will I have lobster while I’m there? Maybe.
I find eating a whole lobster to be quite a messy endeavor so definitely not before the show.
Rockport MA Guide: It is.
Taylor: I do love a lobster roll, though.
So I will have lobster sometime in the next week. Let’s put it that way.
Hiss Golden Messenger performs at the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport on Friday, August 21.
All photos are credited to Graham Tolbert.
