Ben
TaylorSay you're a gifted young artist - someone like BEN TAYLOR, for
instance. You've got a way with melody and a mastery of the understated
lyric. You've got a voice that lingers in the air - tuneful, expressive, the kind
of voice that makes its impact with the smallest turn of a whispered phrase. Under
normal circumstances, you've got all it takes to make an impression. Some might
say you're even a candidate for stardom. But Ben Taylor's circumstance is far
from normal. His parents - father James Taylor, mother Carly Simon - are giants
of popular music. And with that lineage come the expectations that make ANOTHER
RUN AROUND THE SUN a milestone as well as a masterwork. "The truth
is, the songs I write really are similar to my dad's," he admits. "That's
no surprise: I grew up mostly playing his music on guitar, and he was the songwriter
who influenced me the most, especially on the musical side, while my mom taught
me how to write lyrics." Self-acceptance was always a musical, never
a personal, issue. Raised on Martha's Vineyard, BEN enjoyed a childhood as
"phenomenal in the most absurd ways. Instead of going to high school,
I got independent credit for doing correspondence work. So I was always on
a trip, working on the Colorado River or in the Grand Canyon or on a farm in
New Mexico, and writing essays about what I'd learned. It was a pretty cool
way to get an education." "And it was phenomenally musical,"
he continues. "I toured a lot with my father, watching him onstage every
night, or wondering where he had gone when he locked himself in a tiny room
for months until he came out with works of genius. He never played his new
music for us until he felt it was impeccable. My mom was at the opposite end
of the spectrum: She was always playing her rough mixes because she wanted
our input. No matter what time of the night it was, she'd wake everybody in
the house to hear whatever song it was that she couldn't get out of her head."
NB: LINE UP SUBJECT TO CHANGE
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