There is no question that Willy Tea Taylor’s life as a singer/songwriter was predetermined - his role realized the moment he wrote his first song. With inspiration drawn from two separate wells. Living the life of a cattleman’s kid while experiencing true visionaries music Greg Brown, …, watching Guy Clark and friends sitting around the kitchen table loaded with ashtrays full of butts and half-smoked cigarettes, food, and booze on one Christmas Eve in 1975. Those guys, swapping songs without pretense, lit Willy Tea’s fire. And ever since, it’s led purpose with passion - finding a hang by curating relationships through musical friendships that get him closer to his own Clark style kitchen table.

 

From his early days co-fronting The Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit, to singing solo in countless cowboy bars, to pitching countless wiffle ball games, Willy Tea has never lost the vision. Now Willy Tea Taylor has taken his vision of the “hero hang” on the road. and his talented traveling band The Fellership is made up of his fantastically talented buds who play Willy’s songs with a brand of reckless abandon and utter humility that spits in the face of pretense. The way The Fellership plays Will’s songs is the way they demand to be played and, in their short time together, they have been aweing every audience lucky enough to see them. 

"The first 20 years is just to see if you like it or not," Jerry Lopez, an iconic surfer, joked about the sport and lifestyle of surfing. Joe Kaplow has always admired and glorified that type of Jedi-like dedication. After 20 years, Kaplow is pretty sure he likes making music. Up until now it was easy for California based songwriter Joe Kaplow to be pushed along. At eight he was getting screamed at by Uncle Jim for playing out of time. A few years later found him passing almost every single after school evening getting stoned and jamming with his band in Bondar's basement. Years later again he was studying music at college and having to sink or swim in the sea of talent crowding Boston streets and finally, for the past 5 years, plugging his amp into the outlet of American music heritage, driving around and playing shows in bars, clubs, and coffee shops while figuring out along the way that CDs are lame and that booking pitches should be concise. It was almost like there wasn't time to stop and think. Recently, it seems like all he does is think. When all the momentum, all the plans, all the validation, all the adventure, and all the money just stop; when the pushing stops, one may find themselves asking, "Why am I doing this?" An underdog without an over-dog is just a dog. Kaplow describes music as his "currency for life. We all have something, or a few things that we do, we work at, we commit to and that's how we pay for our time here. It's like life is a Ferris wheel at the county fair. You can't just ride all night. Every 4 times around you have to stop at the bottom and pay for another half hour or whatever." When faced with the question, "Why am I doing this?" Kaplow answered, "because this is how I feel best paying for my time." The title of his second full length album, Sending Money and Stems, is not just a reference to life currency, but also a description of how the album came to be. "Normally I would have flown up to Portland and sat in the room with Mike (Coykendall) as he mixed, but because of covid I had to email him stems (raw audio files) and we would go back and forth a few times until we got it right. When one song was done, I'd text him and be like 'Ok man, next song coming up; sending money and stems!'" The new album fills in the holes of Time Spent In Between. It's more band oriented, more groove based, more uptempo, more hifi, and more happy go lucky than his previous work. "Yeah, Time Spent In Between was a heavy record..." There's always new challenges for a working musician. For Joe and almost everyone else, the new challenge is promoting an album release without touring. Thank God for the internet? But Joe Kaplow will figure it out, just like he figured out figure-8 mic placement or how to use index pages on Squarespace. He'll keep figuring things out because that's how you keep going. He's pretty sure he likes making music. He wants to ride the Ferris wheel all night.

Much like the duo themselves, the songs range near and far. From the sticky humidity of North Carolina to the dusty cellars of the West, The Turkey Buzzards tell simplistic stories that unravel through gritty vocals and thoughtful harmonies. The carefully crafted guitar riffs set against a solid bone bass stretch out across an American landscape with enough depth to sink well beneath the skin.