So would you please help me welcome back to E-Town MC Taylor from his Golden Messenger.

Hey, everybody.

Just a couple weeks ago, I released a record called I'm People that I'm very proud of.

And I feel like one of the big themes is sort of the ways that we sort of like hold on to our joy and recognize all of the grief and chaos in the world at the same time.

I feel like this is a skill that a lot of people have developed already.

I'm just coming to it.

So I'm going to play a tune called Heavy World.

you know me Run on home

... just checking in.

For me, it has a lot to do with, like, getting older, understanding how to exist in the, in the pressure cooker that, you know, is, is, like, I wouldn't want any other life, I don't think.

Um, but it is a very specific set of challenges, one of which is, like, understanding how to maintain relationships through the different versions of yourself that you're carrying through the rooms.

But I don't know.

But I w- I was thinking about all the different studios [laughs] that you and I have worked in together and in different capacities, like, from Brad's little back house, which is really-

Yeah, like we've been doing it for so long now that, like, we're kinda running it through this mechanism that is, uh, yeah, able to own it a little bit more maybe.

Yeah.

If you're fortunate enough to, like, find your voice, and then kinda stepping with it with a confidence that is okay with saying, like, "I'm drawing my inspiration from these old records that I love spiritually.

So my question is, what can a song convey that maybe a conversation cannot convey? I think we

just give creative things lots of liberty in terms of how they're allowed to be expressed and manifested.

I think a song can convey a feeling that maybe sometimes words have a harder time doing.

I think a song can convey a mood.

I think that a melody can... communicate something really nuanced that words um it's a little harder to find the words to communicate uh what it is and i think that a melody can really color the way the words are understood um Yeah, so, but it takes, you know, it's not...

it takes work on both sides, like both the person delivering the music and the person hearing it.

We have to like have this understanding that we're both going to take it seriously.

What was your first live concert that you went to that you felt that?

And I, as a band leader and I'm Mike, you may relate some of that getting back to Let's do what we do, you know? And

I feel that.

I think there are so many ways to follow this thing that they were chasing that anyone that has run a band or led a musical outfit at some point comes up against this idea that, what is it that I'm doing? What kind of music am I making? am I writing songs with choruses? How do I want to affect people? And like, how do I, how do I manifest that effect? Cause I've been in this place myself many times, hear them going like, let's, let's write songs.

Like it's not the coward's way to write a song with a chorus that is the elements of it, acoustic guitars, some drums, some electric guitar, the elements may be simple, but the product is like deeply complex.

It's very super, super human.

I mean, like in a way, far more complex than like Anthem of the Sun, which is like a lot of the studio being twisted into ways that people had never heard before.

But like, who gives a shit? Yeah.

But I'm curious what you guys think of it as a song about Altamont.

I feel like there are some similar themes at play.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, like I always say, I feel like I'm sort of writing chapters in a book as opposed to I'm not.

Thus far, I feel like there's still a lot for me to explore in the themes that have been consistent on my records.

Hope has been a big one.

Although it has felt incumbent on me lately because I've been talking in interviews about the idea of hope and how hope presents itself on my records.

I was surprised to learn this because I always think of musicians as extroverts, but you're a lone wolf kind of person?

MC Taylor and the current lineup of His Golden Messenger are here in our studio, and they'll start us off with this song called In the Middle of It.

One, two, one, two, three.

[singing] Even rocks were dreaming on the darkest of mornings.

Holy Rose, why she kept on running.

Run so true, I was a voice in the chorus.

Then the cornflower blue dropped me in the middle of it.

In the middle of it, oh, just a little while.

Let's hear their live performance of this song called Last Orders.

What are we gonna hear?

Um, shall we do Who You Gonna Run To? Yeah.

We'll do Who You Gonna Run To.

Yeah.

One, two, three, uh.

It's Tuesday night at the By and By.

And the fiddles and the sawdust.

[gentle music]

Fire on the mountain.

And I remember my brother coming back and just being sort of, like, shell-shocked, um, just at the, like, amount of grief he had witnessed.

Um, [clears throat] let's see, but I don't know.

Over time, like, I started listening to the Dead and, and just grew to really, really, really love them and, like, actually think that, um, you know, there are so many connections culturally that they have, like, with, with punk rock music and just outsider music and, uh, yeah, just, just being fucking punks, you know what I mean? [laughs]

I don't.

Joy Harjo was the, um-Poet Laureate of the United States.

She was appointed, like, just, just as COVID was starting, so, like, kind of a weird time to get that position.

But she is, um, she is Muscogee, so she's, um, native from Oklahoma, and I just think that she has...