Ben Taylor, son of folk rockers James Taylor and Carly Simon, is making a tour stop Friday night at High Dive in downtown Gainesville. The Alligator caught up with him before he played in Decatur, Ga., and had a quick phone interview.
Here’s what Taylor had to say:
A lot of college kids in Gainesville know about your parents’ music, but not necessarily yours. How would you describe your sound?
Somewhere between Cat Stevens and Skrillex.
So you’re really into audience interaction, it seems like.
I mean, I just like playing music. I like it when people come to see music being played, I like listening to music, so yeah, I can’t believe I get to do this for a living.
Awesome. Do you enjoy being on tour?
Very much.
What’s your favorite thing about it?
Other than the fact that I can’t believe this passes for a job, because it’s me barrelling along the highway with my best friends. I can’t belive it actually passes as a career. But I would have to say it’s either the little sort of micro-tastings of different communities and places and people you catch as you fly through the world or it’s the sense of camraderie that you get from being a small vehicle with members of a band who have a unified [goal].
Have you ever been to Gainesville before?
No. First time.
Are you a Gators fan?
I like Gatorade, that’s about as far as I go. Nothing against the Gators in particular, I just don’t like sports very much.
Let’s say that people coming to your show tonight need to have like a Ben Taylor crash course before they show up. What do you recommend they listen to?
No matter what it is they do to prepare themselves, they’re not going to be able to find anything like what they’re going to hear at the concert.
You think your live performances are much different from your recorded versions?
1,000 percent different. The arrangements are absolutely different, and we’re apt to do songs we’ve never recorded before. We like to do new songs on stage alot of times because we don’t know how they go yet.
So people should just show up and be ready to have a good time?
Yeah. . . I would expect a fairly high energy set. . . I think that as a performing artist, you need to know how to play the room you go into. If you go into a loud club environment playing introspective, acoustic music, you’re screwed. And if you go into a theater environment playing dubstep electronica, you’re kinda screwed. So thankfully I’ve been doing music long enough that I pretty much know how to play any room, so we’ll play it by ear based upon how we go there. If there are people seated, I’ll sit down and if there are people standing, I’ll stand up.
Cool. Well there won’t be anybody seated at the High Dive, because there aren’t many chairs.
Oh, good. Then we’re going to make it a f***ing dance party.
It’s graduation week at UF, which is in Gainesville. What advice on adulthood do you have for graduates who might nervous about what’s coming next?
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment [a quote by the Persian philosopher Rumi].
