Otis Taylor digs the past. Whether it's the songs he wrote a decade ago, or ancient civilizations that lived more than 10,000 years ago, he's drawn to stories from another time, and he's compelled to retell them in a way that's relevant in the modern day. On Clovis People, Vol. 3, Taylor writes his own history.

 

It's the ideal project for the architect of a sparse and hypnotic style that has come to be known as "trance blues." Taylor has spent his career crafting songs that are wide open to interpretation - thematically as well as structurally.

 

The album title is inspired by a recent scientific discovery very close to Taylor's home in Boulder, Colorado. Barely 100 yards from the edge of his property, archeologists dug up a cache of tools and other implements belonging to a civilization known as the Clovis people, who walked the earth briefly about 13,000 years ago and then mysteriously disappeared. "I just thought it was a cool title," says Taylor. "I went back to my musical past with these songs. That's why I called it Volume 3. There really is no Volume 1 or 2. My music only goes back about ten years, but there's something about reaching back to an earlier time and revisiting the stories of the past from a new perspective that I find compelling."

 

Helping to shape that new perspective is a crew of players who lend a variety of shades and voices to the mix. Among them is guitarist Gary Moore, a guest musician on two of Taylor's previous recordings, who moves in and out of the tracks with a hard riff here, a subtle accent there, and just the right atmospherics wherever he appears. Also on hand for nine of the twelve tracks is pedal steel guitarist Chuck Campbell - a member of the Campbell Brothers, the African-American gospel group that has developed a sound commonly known as "sacred steel." In addition, Clovis People, Vol. 3 features cornetist Ron Miles and bassist Cassie Taylor (Otis' 22-year-old daughter).