I stopped making New Year’s resolutions a couple of decades ago because I always picked the wrong ones and I always failed. This time, though, as 2010 rolled into 2011, I decided I was going to pick the right one and follow through no matter what. Regrettably, I never got to see Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash or Buck Owens play live, so for me following through meant getting to see the rest of my honky tonk heroes play live and hopefully getting to meet them. I was not, however, going to accomplish that by waiting and hoping for them to come to play in California where I live so in mid-April I got on a plane and headed for Texas.
If you’re looking for a wild honky tonk ride that is part Jennings, part Cash, part Jones and part Social Distortion that hits you square in the face then Jackson Taylor and his band The Sinners aren’t just your cup of tea, they’re your bottle of Jack.
Jackson has lived damn near everywhere in America but make no mistake, this is a Texas band through and through. He’s one of those guys who does exactly what he wants with no apologies even though sometimes it can come with a steep price. All of it makes for great material from which to write authentic songs. Whether they’re about women, whiskey, cocaine, politics or the music business, when Jackson Taylor sings it, you believe it because you know he’s been there and lived it.
I went to see his show at a dancehall in Fort Worth called The Horseman. We had been trading emails about doing this interview and just when it looked like the timing might not work out, I ran into him after his sound check and he invited me up to his hotel room to chat before the show. So among several of his friends and band members who were hanging out shooting the shit and having a few laughs he offered me up a shot of Jack Daniels and the interview was off and running.
VinnySmith–What were you after when you lived in New York and L.A.?
JacksonTaylor–Drugs and pussy to be honest with you. I drank a lot, did a lot of dope, chased a lot of chicks.
VS–So you went to play music then?
JT–No, when I went to New York, I went there to be a poet. I was going to go there and drink a lot and write poetry. I was going to be the east coast Charles Bukowski. I’m too good-looking to be Bukowski, though. You have to be a certain kind of ugly. Do you read Bukowski at all?
VS–No.
JT–Aw man, he’s a California guy like you. He’s THE west coast poet.
VS–That’s what’s great about interviewing people, they throw out names and then I can go check out what they’re talking about and maybe
learn some new things.
JT–Charles Bukowski is amazing.
VS–So what were you doing in L.A.?
JT–I went out there to play music. I was killing myself in New York, so I moved out to L.A. but it was about the same thing, I was drinking and partying hard. A lot of people dump on California, but I really like it. I really liked Los Angeles.
VS–Any chance you’ll move back there?
JT–No, I wouldn’t move back unless I made enough money where I could move to Northern California and have a vineyard, eat cheese and drink wine all day. I’d like to move to Lake Shasta and live on a boat like Merle Haggard.
VS–What about the Nashville years?
JT–I had a couple of publishing deals in Nashville. I wrote for Dewayne Blackwell (Garth Brooks, The Dance) and Rich Fagan and Tom Oteri at Of Music (Hank Jr., George Jones) from 1997 to 1999 but I never had any cuts. I liked Nashville a lot. People get the wrong idea because of my song, “Country Song,”
This ain’t no country song/about your fucking pickup trucks and your grandpappy’s farm/This ain’t no Nashville scene/I ain’t no spikey-haired, half-assed pop star wannabe
but it’s really that I never cared for manufactured music of any kind. That’s why I like punk music so much because punk music for the most part, in it’s rawest form, is honest, even if it’s bad, at least it’s honest. That’s the way country music used to be. Now it’s fucking teenage girl music.
VS–How do your record sales do?
JT–Compared to what?
VS–Are they satisfactory to your record label?
JT–I’m able to keep making records.
VS–About one a year it seems like.
JT–Yeah, yeah. It’s never been about being rich and famous, it’s been about going into the studio and making something that I want to make and then going out to play. Sure I’d like to have more money like anybody would but that’s not what I got into the game for. Anything over making a living is gravy.
VS–I noticed that there’s a link for Great American Country (GAC) on your website. Have they ever played any of your videos?
JT–They played Outlaw Women. I don’t watch so I never saw it but people told me they saw it.
VS–You’ve had the same guy, Kyle Harbaugh, make your last three videos. How did you get hooked up with him?
JT–I was living in Kansas City and he‘s in Kansas City. He’d done a video for a buddy of mine. The price was right and he does really good stuff.
VS–You never had steel guitar in your music until recently. What made you add steel to the mix?
JT–We did a show with Jamey Johnson and his steel player, Cowboy Eddie Long, used to play for Hank Jr. so I was real excited about meeting him. He came up to us and told us how much he really loved our show and how different we were and how he thought the steel would really compliment it. I never cared that much for steel. I liked old steel like Ralph Mooney and Buck Owens stuff but steel guitar has become such a fucking bitch background like organ music. But then I met Dan (Johnson) and decided to try it. It made such a huge difference. I can’t believe I hadn’t had it the whole time.
VS–Well if there’s a guy to have playing for you, he’s the one. He does shit with that thing that I’ve never seen done.
JT–He’s the coolest steel player I know.
VS–At the end of “Country Song” the line goes, “What the fuck is a honky tonk badonkadonk anyway?” which happens to be a song written by Jamey Johnson. What does he think of that line?
JT–No idea. He didn’t come out and talk to us at either show we did with him.
VS–For the most part you get pretty good reviews from critics.
JT–Yeah, people, I think, who are really into music and take the time to listen to the words seem to get us. We’re just not big with the teenage girl crowd, you know.
VS–You have a deeper message too. It seems like a lot of your music is pro-America but anti-government. Is that about right?
JT–Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what it is. I’m very pro-America, what it was founded on, what it stood for, what America values–I’ve always been–but I hate government.
VS–What kind of response do you get to that message?
JT–It goes both ways. There are a lot of people that hate what I say, especially the liberal crowd and the fucking communists. They don’t get it at all, they find everything I say offensive. I’m very critical of Barack Hussein Obama, you know, I can’t stand that guy. I think he’s the most detrimental thing to our country. He’s four times worse than George Bush, but there are so many blind people.
VS–So on the political spectrum you fall more conservative.
JT–Well, socially, I’m liberal. I’m okay with gay marriage. It’s not so much that I’m for it but I think gay people have as much right to be miserable as married people. I’m pro-death penalty but I’m pro-life when it comes to abortion. I don’t think the government should be funding abortions and shit like that. I never understood how people who are pro-choice could be anti-death penalty. It’s okay to kill babies but not a guy who rapes babies?
VS–I never really thought about it that way, but it’s true.
JT–So I’m extremely socially liberal but politically I’m very conservative. I think the government should have no say where privacy is concerned. I think they should be there only for the military and to protect the borders. State policy should be state policy and the federal government should stay out of it.
VS–I think that’s one of the reasons I identify so much with your music is because I have very similar beliefs.
JT–It’s just me and you, just the two of us.
VS–Tell me about your time in the military.
JT–I loved being in the military, all I ever wanted to be was an Army Ranger. I loved the military but I was kicked out. I was one of those guys where I was deployed and came back and my wife had split with my kid. I came back to Fort Bragg in North Carolina and everything was gone.
VS–No shit?
JT–I went nuts, man, because my little boy was everything to me, they’re still everything to me. So I went fucking insane, very violent, very drunk, very out of my fucking mind and that kind of lasted until about six weeks ago.
VS–Wow, really?
JT–Yeah, but I was very proud to be in the military. I hate that I was kicked out.
VS–Where were you deployed to?
JT–You name it. All over South America, all over the place.
VS–So you live in Colorado now?
JT–Actually I live in Oklahoma City but my wife and son live in Colorado. We’re trying to work things out so I’ll be moving back to Colorado
pretty quick.
VS–You named one of your kids Waylon?
JT–I have a son named Waylon but my youngest boy with her is named Gattlon Gun.
VS–Gattlon Gun?
JT–Gattlon Gun Diego Taylor.
VS–No shit? That’s cool.
JT–He’s a little something else. I want to have another son and name him Machine Gun but my wife is not into that.
VS–Does your music carry any weight with the kids?
JT–(Laughs) I don’t think it carries much weight. My oldest son, Jack, I think he thinks it’s kind of cool now, he watches our videos and he says his friends like it. My middle son doesn’t talk too much about it. It’s not like we’re Toby Keith famous, we’re a pretty underground, niche kind of band.
VS–I think that’s about it. Anything else you want to throw out there?
A Band Member interjects:
BM–Yeah, I’d like to say a few words. Next time he comes out can you put “the return of Satan” on there?
JT–(Laughs) We went to Italy and I went buck wild. We go there and they had these big posters that said, “The Outlaw Is Coming.” I went buck fucking wild crazy so when we went back some magazine printed “The Devil Returns.” It was like El degenerate-tay alcoholic-ay, like all these fucking words that were bad…
BM–El Satanica.
JT–So we went and got these Satanic shirts made, the Hell Follows shirts. They sold out so quick. It’s got a pentagram with a goat’s head with two fucking horns and a 666 and upside down crosses everywhere and it says “Los Sinners Hell Follows.” They’re badass, they’re my favorite shirts.
VS–I need to get one of those. Anything else?
JT–Yeah, God bless Waylon Jennings and fuck Barack Hussein Obama.
For more info: www.jacksontaylorband.com/index.html
