Tune in to today's episode of LaunchLeft, where Rain Phoenix is joined by MC Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger to launch Johanna Samuels. Rain and MC engage in conversations about the artistic process, exploring how the emotions and creativity of artists contribute to the final musical outcomes. They agree on the irreplaceable human element in music creation and songwriting, asserting that AI will never replicate this human touch. Johanna and MC recount their initial meeting, her new record, and the importance of a songwriters community. Listen to the end to hear Johanna's powerful song "Holy Mother."

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LaunchLeft Podcast hosted by Rain Phoenix is an intentional space for Art and Activism where famed creatives launch new artists. LaunchLeft is an alliance of left-of-center artists, a curated ecosystem that includes a podcast, label and NFT gallery.

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IN THIS EPISODE:

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  [02:OO] MC Taylor speaks about the inspiration for his music and his roots. 

  
  


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  [07:35 ] He discusses the passion and process of creating music. 

  
  


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  [10:27 ] MC Taylor talks about AI and its role in creativity.

  
  


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  [14:00 ] MC Taylor shares how he and Johanna met, and they all discuss playing in smaller local venues in the LA area.

  
  


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  [18:21 ] Johanna describes what her future schedule will be and discovers the “why” of what she is doing.

  
  


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  [21:52 ] MC Taylor talks about his current state of happiness, how that has affected his recent writing, and how he’s feeling now.

  
  


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  [33:15 ] Johanna describes her innermost feelings about music. 

  
  


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  [35:38 ]  Listen to Johanna as she sings Holy Mother.

  
  

KEY TAKEAWAYS: 

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  Artists are influenced by their emotions and world events. They want to be able to write from their heart and not by what they are directed to write.

  
  


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  MC Taylor would rather create his music, which fluctuates financially, than secure jobs he hates.

  
  


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  AI fails to enable the humanity of music creation due to the absence of emotion in the creative process.

  
  

BIOGRAPHIES: 

HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER
“I went looking for peace,” says songwriter M.C. Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger about his new album Quietly Blowing It, out June 25, 2021, on Merge Records. “It’s not exactly a record about the state of the world—or my world—in 2020, but more a retrospective of the past five years of my life, painted in sort of impressionistic hues. Maybe I had the presence of mind when I was writing Quietly Blowing It to know that this was the time to go as deep as I needed to in order to make a record like this. And I got the time required in order to do that.” He pauses and laughs ruefully. “I got way more time than I needed, actually.”
Quietly Blowing It was written and arranged by Taylor in his home studio—his 8’ × 10’ sanctuary packed floor to ceiling with books, records, and old guitars—as he watched the chaotic world spin outside his window. “Writing became a daily routine,” he explains, “and that was a ballast for me. Having spent so much time on the road over the past ten years, where writing consistently with any kind of flow can be tricky, it felt refreshing. And being in my studio, which is both isolated from and totally connected to the life of my family, felt appropriate for these songs.” Between March and June, Taylor wrote and recorded upwards of two dozen songs—in most cases playing all of the instruments himself— before winnowing the collection down and bringing them to the Hiss band. In July, the musicians, with Taylor in the production seat, went into Overdub Lane in Durham, NC, for a week, where they recorded Quietly Blowing It as an organic unit honed to a fine edge from their years together on the road. “We all needed to be making that music together,” he recalls. “We’ve all spent so many years traveling all over the world, but in that moment, it felt cathartic to be recording those particular songs with each other in our own small hometown.”
Throughout Quietly Blowing It, Taylor brings his keen eye to our “broken American moment”—as he first sang on Hiss Golden Messenger’s critically acclaimed, GRAMMY ® - nominated Terms of Surrender—in ways that feel devastatingly intimate and human. Beginning with the wanderer’s lament of “Way Back in the Way Back,” with its rallying cry of “Up with the mountains, down with the system,” Taylor carries the listener on a musical journey that continually returns to themes of growing up, loss, obligation, and labor with piercing clarity, and his musical influences—including classic Southern soul and gospel, renegade country, and spiritual jazz—have never felt more genuine. Indeed, Quietly Blowing It is a distillation of the rolling Hiss Golden Messenger groove, from the rollicking, Allman-esque “The Great Mystifier” to the chiming falsetto soul of “It Will If We Let It,” to the smoky, shuffling title track with its bittersweet guitar assist from Nashville legend Buddy Miller. The album ends with soulful lead single “Sanctuary,” a song about trying to reconcile tragedy and joy, with references to John Prine (“Handsome Johnny had to go, child...”), economic disparity, and the redemptive quality of hope. Indeed, when he sings, “Feeling bad, feeling blue, can’t get out of my own mind; but I know how to sing about it,” it feels like the album’s spiritual thesis. Throughout Quietly Blowing It, Taylor reckons with the tumultuous present in wholly personal terms, encouraging listeners to do the same. “These songs always circle back to the things that I feel like I have a handle on and the things that I’m not proud of about myself. When I think of the phrase ‘quietly blowing it,’ I think of all the ways that I’ve misstepped, misused my gifts, miscommunicated. ‘Born on the level, quietly blowing it.’ That’s what’s on my mind there. Always fuckin’ up in little ways.”
Surrounding himself with a trusted cast of collaborators that includes Miller, songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov, songwriter and Tony Award–winning playwright Anaïs Mitchell, multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaufman, Dawes’ brothers Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith, and his oldest musical confidant Scott Hirsch, Taylor has made his most audacious and hopeful work yet with Quietly Blowing It; it’s an album that speaks personal truth to this moment in which the old models of being feel broken and everything feels at stake. “I don’t know that the peace that I crave when I’m far from home exists, actually,” says Taylor. “It’s more complicated. I still don’t know what peace means for me because I can be sitting on the couch watching a movie with my family and be completely tangled up in my head. But if I keep on doing my own personal work on myself—writing records like Quietly Blowing It—I have to think that I’m getting closer.”

JOHANNA SAMUELS 

Johanna Samuels is broadening the confines of pop music. The New York and Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter’s work is lyrically and melodically driven, singing about the depths and dualities of life with her unique bell-like voice. With her deep understanding and reverence for the musical greats of the 1960s and 70s, Samuels has created a sound and musical place that is all her own - and invites you in. Her debut album “Excelsior!” (2021), produced by Sam Evian and released by Mamabird Recording Co., garnered praise for its lush beauty and complex explorations. NPR described Johanna’s music as "...so compulsively listenable, and so smart in the way she assesses space and communication, it's just brilliant...what a voice."

Johanna’s recent release EP "Scam Likely," produced by Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman, The National, Bob Weir and Hiss Golden Messenger...) with collaborations with Fruit Bats is just a taste of what's to come. Her forthcoming work, sophomore LP "Bystander,” also produced by Kaufman, will be released in June 2023.

Samuels has shared stages with artists such as Faye Webster, Madison Cunningham, The Hold Steady, Bonny Light Horseman, Lomelda, Courtney Marie Andrews, Tallest Man on Earth, Fruit Bats, Anaïs Mitchell, Cassandra Jenkins, Haley Heynderickx, Buck Meek, Sam Evian, Sean & Sara Watkins and more.

RESOURCE LINKS

Podcast - LaunchLeft

HISS GOLDEN