Scuffletown, like Resurrect (both were produced by Taylor), has a production aesthetic wholly unto itself. It doesn’t sound like other albums. Taylor’s guitar is at the center of many of the mixes, with Gilmer’s percussion seemingly breathing between the strings. Organs wheeze, and Taylor’s bass lines rise and fall like sleepy trombones.
“The whole backup is mainly for texture and breath,” said Franke, for whom Taylor has produced two albums. “And he’ll go for the scratch more than the beautifully phrased, on-pitch line, because it’s got skin. It’s got a fingerprint.”
More than anything, the instrumental settings accentuate the longing and loneliness that finds a way into most everything Taylor writes or records. Mike Sumler’s piano on “All The Way To Heaven” is designed to evoke Charlie Rich, but it also evokes the same emotion Don Helms’ steel parts offered Hank Williams’ listeners, the same plaintive craving Lightnin’s moans summoned during Houston club gigs.
“Loneliness is something that runs through me and always has,” Taylor said. “I think there’s always been some stream of it all the way through me.”
Scuffletown ends with “Nothin'”, the second of two Van Zandt covers (the other being “Where I Lead Me”). “Brothers our troubles are/Locked in each other’s arms/And you better pray, you better pray, that they never find you/’Cause your back ain’t strong enough/For burdens doublefold.”
And that’s torment, or it’s not.
“That’s a beautiful song,” Taylor said, “And that’s the verse that epitomizes his wish for people. Regardless of your loneliness, if you don’t remember that we are connected to one another, that your problems are my problems, that we share the same hurt…those are lines about friendship in the world, no matter what your struggles.
“At least that’s my mind and my way of thinking…which is troublesome to say the least.”
A South Carolina native, Peter Cooper writes about music for the Tennessean in Nashville. He wishes to note that four of Lyle Lovett’s premier “Texas” musical influences – Eric Taylor, Walter Hyatt, David Ball and Champ Hood – grew up in the Spartanburg-Greenville area.
