M (Moderator): Terry Taylor of... one of the

T (Terry): Don't say it.

M: Ok, it's Terry Taylor, he knows that, he doesn't need any introduction.
So we'll just start.  Just raise your hand and you can ask questions, if
you guys want to repeat the questions into the phones you can so every one
can hear them, if you don't you don't have too.  Terry Taylor, go ahead
start asking questions.

Ed: We would like to make a statement at this time, Mr. Taylor wishes to
apologize for being late, we ran into a train in Bushnell we had to wait a
while.  What we'd like to do today is refrain from rhetorical questions, Mr
Taylor will be fielding all of his questions through me, and we'd like to
keep the questions to "yes" and "no".  Thank you for coming, who would like
to be first?

Q (question): [are you disappointed about never winning a dove?]

[Terry and Ed converse]

Ed: No comment. Next. You right there.

Q:[will Daniel Amos or D.A. or Da be doing another new album?]

[Terry and Ed converse]

Ed: Don't be a smart-Alec but yes. Next.

Q: [will Greg Flesh be able to be on the next Da album?]

[Terry and Ed converse]

Ed: Mr Taylor says that he's never liked Greg but we're sure he'll be on
the next record if we pay him enough. Next.

[Terry and Ed converse]

Ed: Mr Taylor says "Thank You and good afternoon".

T: Ah... Whatever, this has gone too far.

Q:[about CD releases]

T: Will we get Horrendous Disc out into the market place? If you want to
say it brother just say it.

Q: [continued about CD releases, legal & illegal ]

T: The question, well Ed can repeat the question.

Ed: The question is disqualified.

T: The Question is how do I feel about the fact that Horrendous Disc, Mark 
Heard's thing and all the others aren't with you guys.  I'd love to see
them out there, I'm at peace with whatever happens. On behalf of the Fans
I'd like to see all of it out there but we have nothing to do with it.
[????]put it out.

Q: [between albums and video games what's the difference in the song
writing process?] 

T: Well in writing the game music, I don't know how many of you here are
familiar with, I've been doing some game music for Dreamworks with a
company called the Neverhood and it's Dreamworks first interactive game
which is called the Neverhood, The second game is on Sony Playstation thing
called Skullmonkeys, and I'm doing a third one there pretty quick.  The
difference was, for me, that the people who hired me to do the music
defiantly had some ideas about the kind of thing they wanted, because both
games are claymation basically they wanted something that was pretty earthy
you know and sounded like clay and was funky and [wordless] and that sort
of thing.  And so it was real different kind of a challenge for me as a
writer because I've never done anything like it before and I didn't want to
listen to too much stuff that was out there that might be sort of similar
to it, I just wanted, I think I listened to some old cartoon music
basically like some of the old Warner Brothers stuff, [weren't?] anything
else, and listened to just a little bit of it to just try to get at least a
basic idea, hoping that when I finally got the stuff together that it would
have something that was somewhat innovative  and had a different thing too
it, and so just the form, the genre of music for that particular medium was
much different from anything I'd ever done, and I had that little moment of
"I don't know if I can do this" and then of course some of it is wound up
in terms of timing you know you see this sequence or this independent film
that I'm currently scoring, there's times when you have to watch the film
and sort of make the music work to that. . Sometimes it's the other way
around but usually its.... so that's another thing that you have to search
, some of the constraints that go along with it, and what was good about
the game music is that it was real music and I was really happy about it,
that I didn't have to do it with some kind of keyboard, midi, bad thing
that you always here on most of these games, it was real music and it of
itself was something that I thought people can enjoy.

Q: [Was it similar to working on the constraints that you had on Zoom Daddy 
when you had the titles for the songs before writing the lyrics?]

T: Right, what we basically did is Tim, Dave Raven and I went into the
studio and just made up songs and then we wrote titles down and it was my
job to take those songs and those titles and actually write a song.  And I
like those little miracles sometimes because it's just a chance to
challenge yourself and see what happens and create some song, you know it
takes on a life of it's own and creates some other kind of thing so for
that particular record we did that, I'd like to do it again in the future
but I think it actually turned out quite well, I think that's one of my
favorite albums. Just cause I think I've kept in mind the way it worked and
it was such an odd thing that something came out of that, it's something
that's still fun to listen too.

Q: [Mothman question]

T: Mothman is the film I'm doing. Well it's sort of a horror film and it's
sort of a comedy and it's got a, it's a strange thing so I thought "well,
it'll obviously need some strange music to go with it" and so I don't know,
I just through everything in a pot, you know I didn't want to do the
standard, I didn't want to re-create Tubular Bells which is sort
of something that "Halloween" and a lot of these other films were sort of
just doing that same thing " [Tubelier???] Bells" was sort of a real
[rip/rib?] to the core of film music, I don't think many of you remember
that but so it's use in Halloween has been done a thousand times sort of
like "Psycho" and the shower scene, you see one in every horror film.  So I
didn't want to just do that.  So I think what I did is what I usually do
with the stuff I write which is kind of draw on everything that I've heard
in the past and maybe some things that are sub-conscience or whatever and
try to bring those to the table and create something that's a little bit
frightening or maybe it has a little humour to it or whatever, but you kind
of have to know the song to appreciate that.  I think that, actually at one
point when I was recording the song Gene stuck his head in the door and
says "how's it going?" and I said "Well right now I'm scaring myself, so I
think I did my job here."

Q: [what's the release date and distribution like for Mothman?]

T: I don't know what the release date is and, I think they're going to
Sundance and from there, I don't know where it's going to go.

Q: [Why did you change from country?]

T: Well I think we were finding our musical legs and a part of it was that
we were just a band starting out, we had a few little songs with three
cords in them and we, there was a great demand on us to play a lot of
places so we had to come up with a lot of material fast and the easier
thins were the sort of the country [r??y] kind of things and we kind of got
stuck in that right, but I think from the very beginning I envisioned the
band being able to use a various number of styles and create different
things and it was just that when we went in to do our first record we
didn't even have a drummer, Ed wasn't in the band then, so that's how young
the band was musically when we went in the studio, so I think we started to
stretch our wings with the second release Shotgun Angel it sort of
indicated a whole new, all of the different places we wanted to go
creatively, it's got a good cross section of different kind of styles on it.

Q: [ about re-releases -- Alarma] 

T: We're talking right now with KMG about doing some re-releasing it in a
box set which they seriously want to do, I know there's been talk about
that for a long time, I've always felt that whatever we get we're gonna do
it right because I think the fans, the supporters are special people and
they want to see ... they enjoy a lot of information, they enjoy a lot of
pictures, they enjoy good packaging.  I remember with the guy that bought
Refuge, Ray [??], I don't know how many people know about that but Ray
re-released Vox Humona, at first he wanted to save some money by putting
Vox Humona and Knowledge and Innocence on the same CD and then the thing
comes out and it's got like one page with no information and we were
chagrined about that and we talked him out of putting Knowledge and
Innocense on the same thing, thank goodness, when he was going to release
Knowledge and Innocense we called him and said "Look, we'll pay for it,
we'll pay for the packaging but we want to do it right."  And I think it
turned out great.  So I think, in doing the box set we don't want to just
do some cheep thing to just make some money, we don't usually make money in
this anyway so it doesn't make any difference, but it does make a
difference to the fans and they have something that really means something
to them, and I think with the body of work that we've all been involved in,
we think they need this, to make it any less then something that's
extremely appealing would be [bad?, mean?]

Q:[grs.2 question]

T: Green Room Serenade is sort of in limbo, I talked to a few people about
this, Lost Dogs will record again, hopefully we'll do it in the summertime
at some point, but our discussion has been because we recorded so many of
the tracks during Green Room Serenade part 1 it kind of came off with a
similar vibe and we didn't feel like we necessarily wanted to sort of have
that dictate to us what kind of a record we were going to do the next time.
 So the talk is right now perhaps keep the tracks for Serenade for an
eventual box set of some sort or something that can come out in a different
form and then we could actually create an all together new record when we
got together, just so we can get certain, develop where we want to go with
it, rather than having something we've already done and having to build on
that, not having the freedom [to create something new]

Q: [on the first dogs it seemed like you were just playing support for each
other why was that?]

T: Well it was a new thing for us, when we were going to do the first
record all we were going to do is cover old gospel hymns in sort of a
country style that was the you know, just sort of [larf], let's get
together and do a project and just throw this out there and go on and do
what we do, but, ya know, one guy started writing a song and then another
guy started writing a song and everybody started writing songs to greater
or lesser degrees, so by the time we got to the studio for the first record
we had a whole bunch of original songs and so we thought "oh, hey that's
what we'll do" and we did kind of cover a couple standard hymn type things.
 And I think it's just that with each record that we're still finding as a
band finding out who we are and what we do and there was a little, to me I
think the first couple albums kind of lacked Derri's input more than
anybody else in terms of vocals and things like that and what we finally
decided to do is instead of the guys that wrote the song singing the song
we sort of tried different things, and we didn't get to that until  the
third record, so now that we're gone with that, that's probably what we'll
do in the future. 

Q:[what's your favorite record?]

T: Of all the records I've done? 

[Terry and Ed converse]

Ed: I'm sorry, Mr Taylor Cannot answer that question on the grounds that he
might incriminate himself.

T: Actually, it probably changes, you know, at any one time.  I think, I've
said this before, probably boring a lot of people but I think that when you
tell somebody what your favorite record is then usually it's not there
favorite record at all it's like one that they don't like that much, but
for me, as a band I think that Daniel Amos probably hit it's musical strive
with Darn Floor and that it was something that I think is timeless as I
listen back to it in that I don't think there's anything quite like it and
I always like that aspect of it, same with Zoom Daddy with Lost Dogs, not
Lost Dogs, Swirling Eddies, I'm getting confused, I'm old, I'm senile, 

[Terry and Ed converse]

Ed: I would like to apologize for the senility of Mr Taylor.

Q: [any old stuff you're embarrassed about?]

T: Yes, I'm embarrassed and chagrined over a song called "Skeptics Song",
which was a huge success by the way, it really was, it was like one of our
most popular songs, and it was one of those "they and us" things, you know,
and there's a line in it that says "Oh my you'll fry as we wave goodbye to
you" and I think that over the years I've, I understand God's grace and
mercy in my life so the least I can do is extend it to those that I'm
speaking to through my music, so I don't believe I would write a song like
that today.  But there was an innocence about all that, that I still love
and go back to and appreciate, you know those were the first baby steps so
I like a lot of it.

Q: [any artists that you'd like to work with who you haven't?]

T: Oh, that's a good question.

[Terry and Ed converse]

Ed: I'm sorry, Mr Taylor refuses to answer that question on the grounds
that, again, it might incriminate him.

T: No, actually, I've had people suggest things over the years, one
suggestion was that all the Taylors should work together.  Terry Taylor,
Joe Taylor and Steve Taylor should do a record together.  I don't know.
Ya, I mean, there isn't anybody that comes to mind, I mean I admire a lot
of people in this industry, and I've had the chance to work with a few
people that I didn't expect to be working with, I'm always open to new
things, I like the challenge in new ideas and new situations.  I think the
last, most satisfying effort of just real collaboration was the Wonderama
record with Randy, and to me that was a wonderful, team effort in song
writing, because we hadn't written back then, I don't if we'd written
together before then, so that was great, I like the idea of writing,
especially writing with other people, it's excellent.

Q: [ you had a lot of projects going recently, how do you balance that out?]

T: Well with John Wayne, of course I started that record like two years ago
or something or has it been longer, I don't know, what happened there was
that the record was started at BAI, which folded and so it just sat in
limbo and I've just been taking it out, but I had to take it out in the
time frame when I was into doing Surfonics which was probably the single
most challenging thing that I've ever had to do in that it wasn't just me
doing it with a band or something but it involved however many, 17 bands or
whatever it turned out to be so it was a massive undertaking and all of the
artists I have to say made it extremely, as easy as it could be made, you
know with all of the record companies and management involved and all that
everyone was incredibly generous in giving their time and there effort, but
it was the thing with me flying around going to Nashville getting ADAT's
in, you know recording these things, so it was a brutal process but I tend
to be able to shift gears fairly well mentally when I'm looking at a
project, that's just something I think I can do, so it helps to sort of
keep the clay standing on little sticks.

M: One more question and then we can close it up. [long pause] Anybody got
one good question out there? [long pause] Well alright, is there some
future hope for Daniel Amos and the Swirling Eddies? 

T: We'll record again, we're talking about doing a project in the not too
distant future.

Ed: Mr Taylor would like to thank you all for coming and that is the end of
this conference.  

Back