{"id":146897,"date":"2025-02-05T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=146897"},"modified":"2025-01-29T16:16:25","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T00:16:25","slug":"the-folk-abstractions-of-hiss-golden-messenger-acoustic-guitar-sessions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/the-folk-abstractions-of-hiss-golden-messenger-acoustic-guitar-sessions\/","title":{"rendered":"The Folk Abstractions of Hiss Golden Messenger | Acoustic Guitar Sessions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Hiss Golden Messenger Plays Bad Debt and More Acoustic Americana Singer Songwriter Folk Abstractions\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zplKesAnDU0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>An outsider singer-songwriter, M.C. Taylor has been making music as Hiss Golden Messenger for nearly 20 years. Before that he was in the Court &amp; Spark, a rocking San Francisco alt-country group named after the 1974 Joni Mitchell album of the same name. The Hiss catalog is expansive, and can be somewhat hard to pin down; sure you could just call it Americana, but why simplify things with such a broad label? Some Hiss songs are imbued with a swampy funk feel, some have the urgency of early protest songs, some are celebrations of life and love, and some express spiritual angst, but they are always tied together with driving, rhythmic guitar work and poetic lyrics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For this AG Session, Taylor plays two tunes from Hiss Golden Messenger\u2019s 2010 album, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3CvgnAS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Bad Debt<\/a>:<\/em> \u201cCall Him Daylight\u201d and \u201cBalthazar\u2019s Song,\u201d plus a cover of Tim Hardin\u2019s \u201cShiloh Town.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAll three of these songs existed in my life around the time of the <em>Bad Debt<\/em> record,\u201d Taylor says, \u201cThey all feel connected. There\u2019s something about the melodic quality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fifteen years down the road, Taylor is having realizations about how the songs on <em>Bad Debt<\/em> have evolved thematically over time. \u201cThere\u2019s stuff in there existentially that never occurred to me that feels really obvious now,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the way I feel while I&#8217;m playing the songs is still the same.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After the performance, Taylor talks with us about his 12-fret Martin 000, how poetry impacts his songwriting, and why he likes strumming so close to the bridge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Singer-songwriter M.C. Taylor performs a trio of tunes and talks about rhythm guitar, songwriting, and his 12-fret Martin 000.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"Singer-songwriter M.C. Taylor performs a trio of tunes and talks about strumming, songwriting, and his 12-fret Martin 000.  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Joey has worked in every department at <em>Acoustic Guitar<\/em> in the past 10+ years: front desk, ad sales, editorial, sound guy, camera man, booth babe, email coder, podcast editor, photographer, book designer\u2026"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146897"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147128,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146897\/revisions\/147128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146897"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=146897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}