Chip & Carrie, just back from a triumphant UK tour, head to Boulder, CO to tape the syndicated radio show etown on Sunday, March 14. For those of you in the area, the show will be at 7 PM at the Boulder Theatre and tickets are $13. Their appearance will be broadcast later this spring. To find out which station in your area carries the show as well as more information, go to www.etown.org.

In Chip Taylor's cluttered Midtown Manhattan apartment, there are pictures on the wall of Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell and Townes Van Zandt, four acoustic guitars and a yellowed copy of the Cash Box Top 100 from July 23, 1966, when the No. 1 song was the libidinous garage band classic "Wild Thing."

It's hard to know what seems less likely. That Mr. Taylor actually wrote "Wild Thing," not to mention the pop-country chestnut "Angel of the Morning," and various other hits for artists like Janis Joplin, Dusty Springfield and Frank Sinatra. That he then quit music for almost 15 years to make a living as a gambler. Or that four decades later, at the age of 63, he's making some of the most distinctive acoustic music around today, teamed with a classically trained Hispanic fiddler from Texas four decades younger than he is.

There's an unexpected twist in every bit of Chip Taylor's story, from his family (his brother is the actor Jon Voight), to his career path, which began with a country band playing gigs at Irish bars in Westchester County, to his giving up music to concentrate on ponies and blackjack tables and then giving that up and coming back to music.

But there's no mistaking the seductive, cross-generational appeal of Mr. Taylor's work with Carrie Rodriguez, the stunning 25-year-old fiddler turned twangy chanteuse, work that has left both of them baffled and delighted. "I've always done things by instinct," said Mr. Taylor, whose thick gray mane gives him the look of his brother Jon's Midnight Cowboy three decades down the road. "I'm a stream-of consciousness writer; I've always done things because they seemed right. And we both have such a reverence for what we're doing right now, there's no reason to think too much about it. We both figure, wherever it goes, it goes."

Mr. Taylor grew up in Yonkers, the son of a golf pro and a teacher. Brother Jon Voight you know. His other brother, Barry Voight, became a famous geologist and one of the world's leading experts on volcanoes.

Mr. Taylor, then James Wesley Voight, caught the music bug early, first finding himself transfixed as an 8-year-old sitting in the dark at the Broadway show "My Wild Irish Rose," then getting the same physical chill lying in bed in the dark listening to the Brown Family or the Louvin Brothers on a clear channel country station, WWVA from Wheeling, W. Va. In high school, he began playing country music at Irish bars in Mount Vernon in a three-piece band called the Town and Country Brothers. There was a recording deal, not much success, some songwriting, some college, some gambling and an internal tug of war about whether he wanted to become a musician or a golf pro. Music won out (along with the adoption of a more radio-friendly name, with the Chip coming from his short game at golf). Pretty soon he was making a decent living as a songwriter, coming up with hits for artists ranging from Bobby Bare to the Hollies.

His collision with rock immortality came when a producer he didn't know called him up and said he was looking for something very organic -- back then it didn't refer to food -- for an act he was recording called Jordan Christoper and the Wild Ones, headed by the hunky boyfriend of Richard Burton's ex-wife. The result was "Wild Thing," which even at this late date seems less a song anyone wrote than something wrenched whole from the collective id.

"I was so pleased that anyone wanted me to write a rock 'n' roll song," Mr. Taylor recalled. "Back then I was doing mostly country. But I just started playing and feeling something, and I remember the words coming out: 'Wild thing. You make my heart sing. You make everything groovy.' I didn't know exactly what I was going to say, but I felt I was talking directly to this person, and I knew the stop, the silence, was really important. I'm a Memphis fan. I love silence. When I recorded the demo, I was embarrassed by the intensity of it. I told the engineer to turn the lights out because I didn't want anyone looking at me."

Mr. Taylor wrote successfully for years, recorded but rarely toured and carved out a niche as a pre-altcountry, alt-country act (his 1973 album "Chip Taylor's Last Chance " is about a quarter century ahead of its time). And then, in the early 1980's, he packed it all in and decided to gamble full time, obsessively studying the horses the way scientists try to decode genomes. He became a regular with his pal Ernie Dahlman, one of the world's top horserace bettors, at an Off Track Betting office in Long Island or playing blackjack in Atlantic City before he was banned as a card counter.

"My approach is ridiculously rational," Mr. Dahlman said. "I'm looking for the obvious winner. He was more of an artist. He'd study everything about a horse looking for the 50-to-1 shot who could get second or third."

Mr. Taylor never completely quit playing music. He'd write songs for friends, for his children's birthdays or weddings, but gambling was his job. Returning to music came as naturally as quitting had been. When his mother, Barbara, was being treated in 1995 for the cancer that eventually killed her, he spent time playing songs for her and decided music was what he wanted to spend the rest of his life doing. There was a CD of his old songs called "Hit Man" (with an acoustic bongo-drum version of "Wild Thing"), the lowkey "The Living Room Tapes," an uneven mishmash called "The London Sessions," the novelistic "Seven Days in May" and a remarkable concept album called "Black and Blue America."

Sometimes his instincts are dead on, and sometimes he's a bit too oracular for his own good. But the best of it, like a tribute to his mom, "Grandma's White LeBaron," the lyrics of which are spoken over fingerpicked guitar, feels like Zen songwriting -- so impeccable and true it's like a midlife version of "Wild Thing."

Mr. Taylor has a deceptively intimate singing style that's as close to talking as singing. But admirers say that his ability to create resonant songs in different genres is his real gift.

"To me, music is more about an attitude than whether it has a waltz tempo or whether it's acoustic versus electric," said Lucinda Williams, who sings on several of Mr. Taylor's albums. "Chip has written great pop songs and rock songs and kind of country soul, but he really knows how to craft a song and make it sound like he wrote if for you while sitting in your living room."

Still, when Mr. Taylor came back, only a few hard-core fans noticed. And then, playing in Austin, Tex., in March 2001, he heard a beautiful young fiddler at the South by Southwest Festival. Before too long, they were a duet (just musically, they say, though their exuberant, sensual chemistry suggests otherwise), and the outcome last year was Let's Leave This Town, which, Yonkers pedigree or not, is about as Texas as Texas music gets. Ms. Rodriguez, who took up Suzuki violin at 5 and trained at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio and the Berklee College of Music in Boston, had never sung before, but she emerged as a dazzling singer.

It was a minor sensation in the dusty corners of alt-country and in Europe, where Mr. Taylor has a loyal following -- full of inspired picking, Ms. Rodriguez's spirited playing and sassy singing and some of Mr. Taylor's best songs. It hit No. 3 on the Americana record chart, not "Wild Thing," but not bad. Now there's a new one, "The Trouble With Humans," that's more rough-hewn, complex and dark, reflecting both the post 9/11 world and the complications of touring, and the chasm between Mr. Taylor and Ms. Rodriguez in years, backgrounds and expectations.

Mr. Taylor is clearly enjoying almost everything else in his life these days, from his James Bond-like regular drink ("Bombay martini, no vermouth, straight up, three olives, very cold") to pursuing music with the same manic intensity he brought to the horses in middle age or discovering music as a kid in Yonkers listening to the radio signals from West Virginia. (He and Ms. Rodriguez will perform at the Bottom Line on Jan. 7 and B. B. King's on Jan. 12.) "Chip really does feel bad if he doesn't feel he's given every drop, every ounce of effort to everything he does," Ms. Rodriguez said. "He's a truly gifted songwriter, but he wouldn't be the success he is if he didn't work his butt off at everything he does."

And her biggest adjustment once she became comfortable with singing?

"At first I hated doing 'Wild Thing,'" she said. "I thought, 'Can I sing this with my grandma in the audience? She's 80. Am I allowed?' But now I do it, and she comes to all our shows in Texas, and she loves it."

Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez
Trouble with Humans (Lone Star Records)

Like the relationship between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Sofia Coppola’s film, Lost In Translation, the intergenerational bonding of Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez works in a way that eludes easy analysis. The elder former hit song writer ("Wild Thing," "Angel Of The Morning")/professional gambler and the younger singer/fiddler harmonize telepathically, while their vocal timbres compliment each other, matching his Billy Joe Shaver gruffness with her Lucinda Williams attitudinal twang. The Trouble With Humans builds on the back-porch feeling of their debut record with improved sonics that increases the intimacy to a point where the tunes feel almost accidentally overheard. While it would be wrong to call it a concept record, there is a strong theme running throughout. Lines like "don’t say words I understand" ("Don’t Speak In English"), "don’t say a word" ("Memphis, Texas"), and "some words should hit the air like silence" ("Curves And Things") speak of the failure of language, ironically on a CD rife with well-crafted lyrics. But truly, for Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez, it is their unique musical kinship that speaks greater volumes.

The Trouble With Humans is this week’s #1 Most Added Album on the current Americana Radio Chart (published in Radio & Records), beating out such competition as the new releases from Robert Earl Keen and The Mavericks. The album also debuted at #27 in its first week on the Americana Radio Chart, with 22 stations adding the disc. Last week it was the #2 Most Added album on the Americana Chart with 13 stations jumping on the record a week before the official radio add date. The Americana radio break-out coincides with Chip and Carrie’s showcase performance at this week’s Americana Music Association Conference in Nashville.

Last year, Let’s Leave This Town came seemingly out of nowhere to become one of 2002’s sleeper hits, reaching #3 on the Americana Radio Chart, with two songs hitting the top spot on the European country charts

VINTAGE GUITAR MAGAZINE – DECEMBER 2003
Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez
The Trouble With Humans
Lone Star Records

Some famous musical duos originate in the womb, like The Louvin or Everly brothers. Others are created by love, like Ian and Silvia, Richard and Mimi Farina, and Buddy and Julie Miller. Finally there are musical combinations that seem to occur by lucky happenstance. Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez were born at least a generation apart, but together they create as intimate a musical combination as any I’ve heard.

The Trouble With Humans comes a little over a year after their first release Let’s Leave This Town. Like its predecessor, from the very first song The Trouble With Humans seduces with direct lyrics and infectious melodies. Populated only with original songs, most written by Chip Taylor who also wrote “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning,” three songs are collaborations between Taylor and Rodriguez. My favorite tune is the opening song “Don’t Speak in English” with its quirky lyrics, beautiful melody, and captivating vocal harmonies. The second song, “Memphis Texas,” one of their co-written tunes, is a tome to the panhandle Texas town of Carrie’s Grandmother. Their vocal harmonies during the chorus fit as perfectly as a twenty-year-old custom-made Stetson hat.

Taylor and Rodriguez roped together a first class posse of sidemen for The Trouble With Humans. Longtime sidekick John Platania on resonator guitar joins Dave Mattacks on drums, Redd Volkaert on guitar, Earl Poole Ball on piano, and Lloyd Maines on steel guitar. These seasoned old pros know how to make a song sound loose while still keeping it in their pocket. Recorded in Boston by the same engineer who recorded their first album, Huck Bennert, The Trouble With Humans shares a similar warmly intimate sonic signature and naturally relaxed ambience. The sound, just like the backup playing and musical arrangements, works to deliver the songs as effectively and directly as possible.

Some music is addictive in a bad way, the tunes that you desperately try to evict from your head once they take up residence. The cure? Next time a car ad or peanut butter commercial tries to take over your brain just put on The Trouble With Humans and these musical demons will vanish like cockroaches exposed to a bright kitchen light.

- Steven Stone