Guitarist Taz Taylor On The Fast Track With Caffeine Racer Debut

The need for speed cuts through on tracks “Top Gun” and “On The Edge” for this ex-Brit long-haul trucker turned guitarist.

Just a handful of years ago, Taz Taylor, remembers plugging in a portable amp while nestled in the cab of his eighteen wheeler, squeezing in practice sessions on his electric guitar at truck stops throughout the country. He enjoyed the solitude and lack of distractions that the trucking lifestyle afforded, but a bigger dream was slowly taking shape—to share his edgy instrumental rock with the world. Cut to 2005, which the British native affectionately dubs, “the year of Caffeine Racer,” the provocative title of his electrifying debut, recently released independently on No Hair Records.

Word of mouth around his adopted hometown of San Diego has ensured a wide slate of gigs for Taylor and his newly formed band at such hotspots as Brick By Brick, Dream Street and The Jumping Turtle. And the Warner Bros. Music logo on his CD cover is more than just a cool conversation piece. It represents his exclusive publishing deal with Warner affiliated DSM Producers, Inc., which specializes in placing music in TV shows. The execs there are currently shopping the fiery, rockin’ cuts from Caffeine Racer to sports and extreme sports shows.

Taylor is on the verge of breaking through, whether that growing stardom comes from being a top guitarist or being heard more obscurely in the background of someone else trying to go the distance. “That’s my own, low key version of fame, I suppose, having my music played quietly in the background on some cable TV show, where I can say, listen, it’s really me, really it is,” he laughs. “But more seriously, there’s an important parallel there, because I’ve been working on my musical career so long, determined to be the best I can be, and now I’m getting to share that with people. No matter what I was doing over the years, in my head, I saw myself as a musician first.”

From his years on the open road for various trucking companies to the aggressive nature of tunes like the title track and “On The Edge,” everything about Taz Taylor revolves around, in “Top Gun” parlance, “the need for speed.” Take the CD’s funky cover art, created by Taylor’s girlfriend Julie, which features a smiling but determined motorcyclist bearing down and kicking up wind as his momentum increases. A lifelong motorcycle enthusiast, Taylor enjoys recounting the days when he rode a Yamaha, Kawasaki or Honda, and laments that it’s been a few years since he’s owned one.

His early days growing up in a small town outside of Birmingham, England no doubt helped fuel his longtime fascination with a particular type of bike that Londoners affectionately called “café racers,” which inspired Taylor’s album title. “Besides music, biking is definitely my other lifelong passion,” he says. “The café racer is a style of motorcycle from the era of 1950’s London. People would take bikes like Triumph and Norton and convert them to have a solo seat with a seat cowl, clip on handlebars and rear set foot pegs and race them. Cafe patrons would put a coin in the juke box and then race to a given point and back, the idea being to get back before the record was over.”

“I knew I wanted to have an image of one of them on the cover of my CD,” he continues, “so I did an internet search and found a picture of a BSA Goldstar bike from the 60s. I told Julie to use that as a basic image for her illustration but add some café racer elements to it. I also wanted the basic image of cornering because I think the title track and songs like ‘Loose and Unscrewed’ reflect the whole racer mentality, the music making the listener wonder, is he gonna make it? Or will he crash?”

Although Taylor’s brand of blistering electric guitar and technical proficiency may remind fans at first of axe gods like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani—both of whom Taylor respects tremendously—the music on Caffeine Racer is more classic Rock than fusion oriented , which makes it a little less esoteric than the other instrumentalists. As Taylor sees it, he plays and writes more along the lines of Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads (from Ozzy Osbourne’s early solo ventures) and Taylor’s biggest influences, Michael Schenker and Ritchie Blackmore.

“This project is basically all about me going back to writing and performing the kind of music I grew up listening to, doing something that’s in tune with my heart and spirit, no matter the ultimate commercial potential,” he says. “My early idol was Michael Schenker, a German guitarist who played with the English band UFO. I liked that Euro rock guitar style, which is steeped in emotion and drama, more dark and moody, less major key, happy and bluesy than its American counterparts. I first got excited about the guitar when I was watching Top of the Pops and saw Ritchie Blackmore playing with Rainbow, his group after Deep Purple. I was mesmerized. It was like an epiphany. I went out and bought an electric guitar and was self-taught for years. Later I took some classical guitar lessons just to learn more technique. But for the most part, I’ve learned everything on my own.”

“Chilling Times” is a track that best typifies the kind of darker tones Taylor mentions. “When people see the title, they expect a relaxing, chillout tune, but I mean chill in a very different way,” he says. “I wrote it during the early days of the Afghanistan war, giving off a chilling feeling with a menacing guitar riff.” Taylor’s more heartfelt side comes across on the beautiful closing track “George’s Song,” which he wrote the day his father died. He dedicates the whole album to George Taylor, whose “ethics and integrity will stay with me forever.”

“The interesting part of how I write is that I never sit down and force myself to do it,” he says. “When I heard the news, I just grabbed my acoustic guitar and started playing. The whole song evolved in one sitting, and I made a demo. I flew to England for his funeral and actually played it at the service. Then I came back and decided to record it in the studio. But I didn’t want to lose the intimacy of what I had started with. So when I recorded it more formally, I lifted the lead guitar part from the original home demo and dropped it into the studio version, rather than re-record it. So when you listen to that song, you are actually hearing the raw emotion of that day."

While “George’s Song” is the only tune on Caffeine Racer in which he took this approach, Taylor—who plays all guitar, bass and keyboards--explains that the recording we’re hearing is very close to the sound of the rough demos he started with. “I wrote and arranged the songs at home on my eight track recorder,” he says. “When it came time to do them more formally, I rejected the idea of putting together a full band, because I knew myself exactly how I wanted the music to sound. Adding Calvin Lakin on drums really added a lot, however.

“Going out and doing gigs now has made it necessary to put together a live band,” he adds “and I have to say it’s exciting to see my songs come alive in a whole new way. The first time we rehearsed the material together was an amazing moment, and people who come see us start with moderate expectations and are really blown away. We’ve just got to keep that momentum going.”

While Taylor remains in the trucking business as he works on his musical career, he has a slightly different schedule from the days when he played music in his eighteen wheeler. After teaching at a truck driving school for a few years, he’s now back on the road but only between San Diego and the LAX airport. No matter what kind of commercial success he ever achieves in the music business, he doubts that his simple lifestyle will ever change that much.

“For me, making music will always be about sharing my heart and soul with people, and I keep that independent of whatever financial rewards may come,” he says. “When I got my first apartment in San Diego, I literally had no furniture for two years. Instead, I slept on the living room floor in the same sleeping bag I had when I was trucking across country. I’m just very comfortable with the basics. I live, breathe and sleep guitar. Everything else is secondary to this magnificent obsession.”

For more information please visit: taztaylor.com.