Joel Taylor: Difference between revisions
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Joel Taylor is an American drummer. He toured with Allan around year 2000, and appears on the DVD "Live At The Galaxy". | Joel Taylor is an American drummer. He toured with Allan around year 2000, and appears on the DVD "Live At The Galaxy". | ||
In Modern Drummer February 2020, he recounts how he got the gig with Allan: | |||
(capitalized words are italicized in the original) | |||
MD: Describe your Holdsworth Experience. | |||
Joel: That was an amazing experience. I played with Allan on and off for ten years. We recorded something about ten years ago; I don't if it's ever going to see the light of day. For that project Allan had two different rhythm sections play the same five tunes -- Jimmy Johnson and Gary Husband, then bassist Ernest Tibbs and me. It was maybe in 2006. Then Allan shelved it. He'd call me: "Man, you sound amazing on this. But I want to redo my guitar parts." He wanted to release a double album of both rhythm sections playing the same tunes. | |||
MD: Did he complete the project? | |||
Joel: Nobody knows if he ever replaced his guitar parts. I know his rhythm playing is on there. But then he passed away. The tapes are in probate. Nobody knows what's on them. So we've been talking to his daughter, and if there is finished product in there that we could put out, then great. But nobody really knows. | |||
MD: How did you get the gig? | |||
Joel: I was teaching at Musicians Institute in 1994 and playing in [bassist] Jeff Berlin's band. Jeff asked me to play a Holdsworth clinic. Jeff wrote out a couple of Allan's tunes. One was "Water on the Brain," which Chad Wackerman played on the original version of. It had a lot of odd meters. I sight-read the chart, and we just jammed for the rest of it. We went for a drink across the street on Hollywood Boulevard after, and Allan invited me to be in his rhythm section, as Chad was going out of the country. It was that quick. Then I got the Yanni gig, and that was on retainer so I couldn't pass it up. I did that for a couple of years. Then I rejoined Holdsworth, until 2007. | |||
MD: What demands did Allan place on the drummer? | |||
Joel: He was absolutely the nicest leader ever. He would never tell you what to play. The hardest thing was learning the tunes, because the forms were so difficult and they modulate all over the place. It's like a lot of his forms are through-composed. Often you don't solo on the same form as the head, in a traditional jazz sense. | |||
From my years playing trumpet, I can hear the basic notes in his harmonies and melodies. So I transcribed his music not from a drummer's perspective, but from a musical perspective, with the harmonies and the bass parts. I learned more from the chord structures and the forms of his compositions. I certainly can't hear all of those harmonies, but at least I could write down the bass parts and the harmonies I COULD hear. That really helped to understand the forms. | |||
If you're listening to Allan's music as a drummer, you can't tell that there are modulations everywhere. When I started learning the harmonies and especially the bass parts in his music, I realized, IT'S MODULATING HERE. AND THIS IS THE SAME SORT OF PROGRESSION, BUT IN A DIFFERENT KEY. So it really started to open doors for me, just looking inside his music. After that, I checked what all the different drummers had played originally. And then we talked it over. Allan said, "I want you to play like Joel Taylor." He helped me find my voice. That's the best any leader can do. | |||
=Quotes by Allan on Joel== | |||
==[[A Conversation With Allan Holdsworth (Abstract Logix 2005)]]== | ==[[A Conversation With Allan Holdsworth (Abstract Logix 2005)]]== | ||
