interview by Justin Brooke
Picaflor proudly invites Taylor Hollingsworth on June 5 to our studio as part of The Southeastern Songwriter Showcase.

Taylor Hollingsworth is a singer, songwriter and guitar-slayer. I
recently spoke to him via telephone. I think he was grocery shopping.
I warned him that I’d never interviewed anyone before. Then we bonded
over the Dexateens (who rule).

JB: Your latest album, Life with a Slow Ear is definitely a much more
acoustic record than its predecessor, Bad Little Kitty. Less of a
garage rock affair. Did you consciously want to distance yourself from
the ‘garage rock’ label?

TH: Yeah, I did. I still really love Bad Little Kitty, but y’know
everything today is: ‘What are you?’ You have to fit into some kind of
genre. But if you keep making the same type thing, it becomes: ‘Oh,
this is what you are’. I just didn’t want to be stuck into that, even
though I still really love that kind of music.

JB: I love your acoustic guitar-playing on the song ‘I Didn‘t Know it
was the Devil.’ Reminds me of a cross between Skip James and Paul
Simon. Do you dig on Skip James?

TH: Yeah, I do. That’s part of what made me want to make this record
– so I could play shows completely solo like Skip James or Mance
Lipscomb did. That was one of the things I didn’t feel I could do
before. I grew this appreciation for somebody who could stand up there
by himself and not sound like he’s missing something. It really made
me want to be able to do that. That’s what led me to the
fingerpicking-style guitar. In some ways it’s more limiting, but in
some ways it’s the opposite. You can do whatever you want if you’re by
yourself.

JB: Do you play the song ‘Assassinate the President’ anymore?

TH: No, not really.

JB: I assume it’s about George W. Bush.

TH: (Laughs). Yeah, you got it. I get a little scared now for some
reason. Like I don’t want to be added to some no-fly list. In some
ways I look at that song as slightly… immature. But really, I just
thought of it one day. I heard Neil Young’s ‘Impeach the President‘,
and I thought, somebody needs to write just fuckin’ straight-up
‘Assassinate the President’. Then I was like, wait… I write songs. I
guess I should be the one to do this.

JB: I like that song.

TH: I like it, too. It’s just sort of blunt. I don’t want people to
get the wrong idea, like I’m gonna go out and kill anybody. But fuck,
that dude seriously is responsible for so many deaths. It pisses me
off. I just hope people don’t take it the wrong way. I don’t want it
to influence killers or anything. But it’s freedom of speech, y’know?
Anybody should be able to make a bold statement, so I decided to go
ahead and take the plunge.

JB: Here’s a really good question: Do you have any nicknames?

TH: Somehow I acquired “Paper”. I don’t really know how that came
about. I think it was a Conor Oberst-coined name, but I never
understood what it meant or where it came from. We used to tell people
it was because I was always on acid, but it’s not true. I haven’t done
acid since I was a teenager.

Watch Taylor Hollingsworth’s video here: