MC Taylor is a certified California boy, born and bred. After growing up in Southern California, he rocked the San Francisco scene for many years with his popular band The Court & Spark, and was long a seminal part of our fine city's musical fabric. Then, one day about two years ago, he packed it up and moved to North Carolina to study folklore at a local university. Taylor has since emerged with a new project, Hiss Golden Messenger, and a new album, Country Hai East Cotton, which has very recently been released. Here, Taylor chats about his new life in the South, where, aside from creating music, his time is taken up by barn stompers, tending to his garden, and, oh yes...obsessing about and being inspired by an ever-changing musical array.


Miss Ess: What is Hiss Golden Messenger?

MC Taylor: Hiss Golden Messenger is the name under which I make music, usually in collaboration with Scott Hirsch and many of our friends in California, Texas, North Carolina, and New York. HGM is not so much a band as a musical approach.

I think of golden messages—like sky songs—as tunes that appear out of the blue and hang around your head, waiting to be sung. Some singers of gospel music I have talked to refer to these as “gift songs” that come from above, but I believe the more skeptically inclined can receive and sing these songs too. For example, I get a lot of golden messages while I am singing my son to sleep; they’re usually silly and I forget most of them. But some I remember and I record them later.