Yeah, yeah, I know. This hiatus thing is only 24 hours old and here I am again. But when something just shows up in your email, someone doing all the hard work for you, you go with it. So here’s a couple of guys talking about cars, work, football and music. One of them’s in the business and seems to know what’s going down, so I think it fits here:

I pull up to the non-descript hotel near the Bradley Airport in Hartford, Connecticut and see Taylor and the band unloading their bags from two rented Dodge Caravans. The day before they had spent an hour on the side of the road somewhere in the Poconos changing a flat on the same van. Gone are the months of tooling from venue to venue in the relative luxury of the tour bus as the band plays a few final shows across the country. “Why”, I ask Taylor later that night, “don’t you just shut the thing down and be done with it? Why the few pick up shows every couple of weeks?” (NOTE: self directed humor intentional) Taylor’s answer is the same one I’ve heard from him consistently over the months and echoes the somewhat weary look on his face. “This is my job”, he tells me, “and my whole life I’ve never been the type of guy to turn down a gig. It’s a great job, don’t get me wrong, but it’s full time. It’s much more than just stepping up there on the stage and singing. The planning, the logistics, the travel, the sound checks . . . my body is weary, my brain is tired but I still love my job and I’ll do it every chance I get.”

Three hours earlier that evening it would have been difficult to see that apparent exhaustion as a clearly fired up performer stepped into his element. Taylor bounded on stage in Springfield, MA and played another stellar set in front of thousands of fans at the Big E fair. Before the show, however, things are a bit different. Taylor begins to get into a “quiet phase” about an hour before he hits the stage. The band and anyone else backstage tend to leave him alone. He watches a bit of the Alabama football game on a rigged up TV inside the set crew’s temporary shed. The band gathers by the stairs at the foot of the stage waiting for “Soul Finger” to queue their entrance. Taylor stands by himself about 100 feet away – gazing at the stars or simply ahead into the lights of the midway, deep in his own thoughts. When he hits the stage the other Taylor Hicks emerges – the Taylor Hicks who loves his job and won’t simply punch the clock for a performance.

We’re scheduled to spend some time talking after the show at the hotel. I leave the fairground early to try to avoidthe traffic and about thirty minutes later I sit down on the couch in Taylor’s room. First though Auburn! There are eight minutes left in what turns out to be a very exciting game. Quick, tense and down to the very last seconds. You know that left foot right foot hopping thing that Taylor does on stage? Let’s just say that it happens off stage as well when exciting things like college football are on. Auburn wins, “War Eagle” is shouted into the phone and I get major props for solving an Excel attachment issue before we settle down to talk.

What everyone seems to want to know is – “What’s next?” Taylor gives many of the answers he’s given before, he wants the next record to be more “acoustic and organic” he states a clear desire to return to the sound of a few of his touchstone records. “like Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks with that acoustic structure that gets built on instrumentally or Ray Montagne’s first record.” I quip, “but not quite as earnest as that one” and we both laugh at that. “Not quite,” Taylor agrees. “My current sound is ‘rich’ with instrumentation, rich and deep and I love the sound but there are other ’sounds’ I’d like to achieve as well.”

“I’ve got the structures of new songs in my head and on paper,” Taylor explains, “and I need to go open up that storage space in Birmingham and look for my old notebooks.” I mistakenly think this is metaphor for returning to his roots to gather his ideas and Taylor corrects me – “no, I mean literally, I have a rented storage space with old notebooks in it.” Hey, it’s late, excuse me for being a bit out of it. Realistically though, I’ve always seen Taylor as doing one thing at a time and trying to do it to the best of his ability. On the AI tour he wasn’t writing new material because it would detract him from his touring duties. On this tour he’s trying to put the best show on for every fan that sees him. “That’s what I want to do on stage, entertain them and make them want to come back and see me again”, he says. If that means not looking too far into the future then so be it. Taylor seems to envision his long term career but the steps to get there are constantly changing and evolving. It’s unfair to ask for a new “vision” when he’s just stepping away from the last one.

I force Taylor to watch a few Grace Potter videos on YouTube – he’s not swooning at the end so clearly his musical judgment is a little circumspect. I spin off a free associative riff about fan culture and its need to consume the details of a celebrity’s life as a way of assuaging my guilt for contributing to the frenzy. This hyper examination of what is and isn’t appropriate isn’t really making much sense I realize – Taylor keeps it simple for me, “If knowing about me makes people want to check out my music and come to my shows then that’s cool.” He sees it as a means to an end and is, thankfully for him, mostly free of the need to examine the process. We riff on the music business, websites, DRM, online selling of merchandise, barn renovations and UK basketball. It’s 1AM and I’ve got a two hour drive ahead of me – ouch.

“I turn 31 in a few days and my body is feeling it,” Taylor says. I tell him that I turn 45 a few days after his birthday so excuse me for not feeling too sympathetic about his aches and pains. This generates a laugh but Taylor misses the clear opportunity to follow up with “So what can I get you for your birthday?” Opportunity missed, we forge ahead. Acoustic mini-tour – check. Original songs as well as collaborations – check. Possible sit-ins – check. These are amorphous balls of musical and personal thoughts floating around in Taylor’s brain. It would be a mistake, I think, to assume that any of this is written in stone so don’t go booking your flights just yet. First comes a vacation and down time with friends and family. After that, it’s back to work.

- Gray Charles

This “back to work” theme seems a propos. But I’ll keep checking my email, if any of the rest of you have something I should see. Thanks, Gray.

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