He calls it trance blues. And Chicago-born bluesman Otis Taylor has honed his art into a razor-sharp, steely mojo machine, garnering critical acclaim for such albums as 1979’s When Negroes Walked the Earth, 2008’s haunting Recapturing the Banjo, and the recent Hey Joe Opus Red Meat.
Acoustic Guitar caught up with Taylor, along with fiddler Anne Harris, before a show at Biscuits & Blues in San Francisco’s rough-and-tumble Tenderloin District.
He was playing a Santa Cruz Guitar Co. Otis Taylor signature model (an H model) with flatwound strings.
Taylor and Harris performed “Rain So Hard” and “My Soul’s in Louisiana.”
For more, check out the Otis Taylor Trance Blues Festival, with workshops and concerts, to be held on Nov. 5, 2016, in his hometown of Boulder, Colorado.