Folk band Hiss Golden Messenger — helmed by MC Taylor — has been cranking out music that taps into not only folk but also country, jazz, R&B, soul, gospel, blues, and rock since 2008 with their debut album, Country Hai East Cotton. Nearly 10 years on, in 2017 Taylor and crew released their latest project, Hallelujah Anyhow.
We sat down with Taylor at Newport Folk Festival to find out how his 2017 album, Hallelujah Anyhow, came together in only four or five days as a collection that captured the importance of relationships.
"That collection of songs is a snapshot of myself and my friends and family," Taylor tells us. "It's an important chapter in my life but I didn't want it to feel precious. I wanted it to feel loose. That's a quality a lot of my favorite records share regardless of genre, is there's a sort of loose camaraderie that I really like that values the relationships between the people on the record over technique."
<iframe allow="autoplay *; encrypted-media *;" frameborder="0" height="450" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" src="https://embed.music.apple.com/us/album/hallelujah-anyhow/1261031523?app=music" width="660"></iframe>
And though the music certainly still speaks to him, it's being a dad that truly transformed Taylor's life in new and unexpected ways, which makes his celebration of relationships on Hallelujah Anyhow make complete sense.
"My whole world was changed in a really profound way when I had kids," says Taylor, whose children are 5 and 9 years old. "When I'm home I like to be with my family. I'm definitely not going out."
