Eric Taylor (September 25, 1949 – March 9, 2020) was an American singer-songwriter from Texas, known for his storytelling style, combining spoken word with anecdotal songs to create a theater-style performance. In addition to Taylor's nine solo releases, his songs have been recorded by Nanci Griffith,

Lyle Lovett Lyle Pearce Lovett (born November 1, 1957) Lyle Lovett Pageat Allmusic – Lovett's Genre and Styles. Retrieved February 2, 2007 is an American singer, songwriter, actor and record producer. Active since 1980, he has recorded 13 albums and relea ...

, Peter Cooper, and others.

Early life

Taylor was born in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

, Georgia. He began playing guitar as a child and performed in a racially-integrated

soul music Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the African American community throughout the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It has its roots in African-American gospel music and rhythm and blues. Soul music became po ...

band in high school. He briefly attended

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

before dropping out and moving to Houston to pursue a career in music.

Career

Taylor toured extensively in the United States and Europe, playing notable venues such as

Club Passim Club Passim is an American folk music club in the Harvard Square area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was opened by Joyce Kalina (now Chopra) and Paula Kelley in 1958, when it was known as Club 47 (based on its then address, 47 Mount Auburn Str ...

, The Bottom Line,

Caffe Lena Caffe may refer to: * Caffè, the Italian word for coffee, used as an alternative spelling of café * Caffe (software) Caffe (Convolutional Architecture for Fast Feature Embedding) is a deep learning framework, originally developed at Universit ...

Bluebird Café The Bluebird Café is a 90-seat music club in Nashville, Tennessee that opened in 1982. The club features acoustic music performed by both established singer-songwriters, and cover artists. The Bluebird receives over 70,000 visitors annually. T ...

, Red Clay Theatre, Bridger Folk, The Ark, CSPS,

The Freight and Salvage The Freight and Salvage (known as "The Freight") is a nonprofit musical performance venue in Berkeley, California that primarily hosts Americana music and world music acts. History The Freight was founded in 1968 and derived its name from the ...

, Paradiso (Amsterdam), Theatre Kikker (

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city and a List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, pro ...

), Berlin Guitars (

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

), The Real Music Club (

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...

), DC Music Club (

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

), Hotel du Nord (

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

) and The Bein Inn (

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...

). Festival appearances include

Kerrville Folk Festival The Kerrville Folk Festival is a music festival held for 18 consecutive days in the late spring/early summer at Quiet Valley Ranch near Kerrville, Texas. The Kerrville Folk Festival was founded in 1972 by the husband-wife team of Rod Kennedy an ...

, Newport Folk Festival, Glasgow Americana Festival (Scotland), Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, 1st Americana Fest (Austria), Take Root Festival (The Netherlands), and Roots of Heaven Festival (The Netherlands). He taught at the

Kerrville Kerrville is a city in, and the county seat of, Kerr County, Texas, United States. The population of Kerrville was 24,278 at the 2020 census. Kerrville is named after James Kerr, a major in the Texas Revolution, and friend of settler- ...

Song School, and conducted songwriting workshops throughout the United States and in Europe. Taylor was married to singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith from 1976 to 1982. In 2009, Lovett released ''Natural Forces'', his second album of covered songs, and again included a Taylor song. This time it was "Whooping Crane," from Taylor's 1995 self-titled album.Arthur Wood
Eric Taylor
''Folkwax'' (link requires free subscription) Lovett's 2012 ''Release Me'' album, also has one of Taylor's songs "Understand You." Taylor's last release was ''Studio 10'' in 2013, recorded at the Red Shack Studio in Houston and features nine original songs and a cover of Tim Grimm's "Cover These Bones." In 2016, Taylor was nominated for an

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

for Musical Composition for songs he wrote for the Storyworks television documentary, ''Road Kid to Writer: The Tracks of Jim Tully.'' Taylor died on March 9, 2020, at the age of 70 from liver disease.

Discography

* ''Through The Dark Nightly'' (1976) – air Retail Records, compilation with other Houston songwriters: Bill Cade, Stephen Jarrard, Lynn Langman, Don Sanders* ''Shameless Love'' (1981, Featherbed; reissued 2004, Blue Ruby Music) * ''Eric Taylor'' (1995, Watermelon) * ''Resurrect'' (1998, E1 Music) * ''Scuffletown'' (2001, Eminent Records) * ''The Kerrville Tapes'' (2003, Silverwolf) * ''The Great Divide'' (2005, Blue Ruby Music) * ''Hollywood Pocketknife'' (2007, Blue Ruby Music) * ''Live at the Red Shack'' (2011, Blue Ruby Music) * ''Studio 10'' (2013, Blue Ruby Music)

References

External links

Blue Ruby Music: Official website for Eric Taylor
{{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Eric 1949 births 2020 deaths American folk singers American male singer-songwriters Singer-songwriters from Texas Musicians from Atlanta 20th-century American singers 20th-century American male singers 21st-century American singers Singer-songwriters from Georgia (U.S. state) Lyle Lovett and His Large Band members