It sounds like a fictional story line. An acclaimed singer-songwriter quits the biz to become a professional gambler -- there's a twist, he's a successful one. He hangs out at casinos and racetracks for more than a decade before getting the itch to perform again. A community of Americana-based songwriters welcome the something of a middle-aged prodigal son back, as do a handful of listeners who remember the good old days. He releases albums, and he opens for artists weaned on his songs. He meets a talented (and gorgeous) fiddler, with whom he does a few gigs, and when a band member can't make a show in Sweden, he invites her to join for the entirety of the tour.

The next wrinkle is the best: She doesn't sing. OK, occasionally back-up. But no matter, she's been hired to fiddle. After much urging, she tackles a duet in Holland and unleashes a big, beautiful twanging voice. The fiddler becomes a singing partner, a record is waxed, and the songwriter is washed in the most attention he's garnered in decades.

If the story seems unlikely, it's just the latest wrinkle in the career of Chip Taylor, whose career is a series of odd folds and turns. After all, he's likely the only country music/Americana totem from Yonkers, New York, and one who tried his hand at professional golf to boot.

Taylor's musical career neatly halves into the periods before and after the gambling stint. Before lies much of the financial security, after the artistic satisfaction. Not that the two are mutually exclusive. After giving up golf, he took to writing songs and in the mid-Sixties. He was a hidden hit machine, writing charting tunes for the Hollies ("I Can't Let Go," later revived by Linda Ronstadt), Merilee Rush and the Turnabouts ("Angel of the Morning," later revived by Juice Newton), and Janis Joplin's "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" (revived but never redefined). And, of course, there's "Wild Thing," the ubiquitous garage rock tune that still pays the bills.

"It's handled very well," he says of the song today. "I'm very fortunate with my songs. It's on EMI, and they have this division that's solely there to get songs into commercials. So I'm taken care of, and they treat me great. You hear stories about some people in the early days who never got paid by publishing companies . . ."

The hits, only a few of which are listed above, should've put Taylor in sterling company during the day. As it turns out, he never lucked out with his own Tapestry (though the breadth and quality of his songs were as good as the Brill kids), and as such, was relegated to the anonymity of standing behind a curtain.

In the early Nineties, he picked up the guitar once again and started playing. By 1993, he'd dusted off his backlog for Hit Man. Four records of newer material followed in the next five years, all drawing acclaim and the return of much of his Seventies constituency. But at Austin, Texas' South by Southwest Music Conference last March he met Carrie Rodriguez, and something different transpired.

Rodriguez's route isn't quite as circuitous, but then she's only twenty-four years old. The daughter of Texas singer-songwriter David Rodriguez, she saw Itzhak Perlman when she was five and was immediately entranced with the violin. "There was no question in my mind, that's what I wanted to do the rest of my life," she says.

Despite sneaking off to Austin's club scenes, she continued "down the classical path," which lead to the Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio for a year. She hooked up with Lyle Lovett for a gig in Boston, at which point her violin began to saw with the dance-floor abandon of a fiddle. "I thought this stuff is where my heart is," she says. "Not playing these older [classical] pieces. They're absolutely beautiful, and that music was still close to my heart, but it's not so much creating something new, as re-creating the old."

Her next stop was the prestigious Berklee Academy of Music in Boston (where she graduated magna cum laude), after which she headed back to Texas, where she began playing regularly with local artist, Hayseed. It was there that she caught Taylor at SXSW and the two were introduced and, soon afterwards Taylor hired her.

"All along, I asked her if she sang," Taylor says, "and she insisted she didn't. But she sounded so great singing background, that I twisted her arm a little bit. We started a show in Holland and did about four songs and I started putting the microphone down a little bit. She just kind of wandered over to the microphone and just sang and the audience just went nuts -- to where you couldn't even continue."

Taylor's shows on that European tour were quickly recalibrated to include Rodriguez. A first set would feature Taylor and band, followed by a second set of duets. Despite the big, assured voice on their record, Rodriguez insists it wasn't false modesty that kept her from singing. "I kind of lied to myself," she says. I'd sung some background vocals for a country band, but I sang so quiet you couldn't hear it, because I thought I sounded so bad. But the people didn't boo me off the stage, so that made it easier to keep doing it. But it was scary at the beginning. Every night I'd spend an hour-and-a-half sweating and nervous, thinking, 'Oh my god, it's coming.' It was always nice to get that first song over with."

On the flight back to the States, the two took pen and napkin and began laying out the beginnings of what would become Let's Leave This Town. A handful of traditional tracks are paired with a set of new Taylor originals, penned specifically with a duet format in mind. Without sounding overly retro-fussy, the songs on the album do attain a vintage feel, from the first notes of the train-tinged shuffle of "Sweet Tequila Blues." Some of the songs swing ("Extra"), and some are more contemplative and confessional ("Him Who Saved Me"). The whole set capture Taylor's terrific range, but they feel dressed differently. Perhaps it's the freshness of the male/female duet album, a genre that flourished in country music for decades but was largely ushered out after the Seventies. "There hasn't been an album with that kind of sound in awhile," Taylor says, "those sounds that seem to be as special as you remember them. And I hope we've found a little of that." Adds Rodriguez, "We just kind of sat around and played. The vibe just evolved out of that. It wasn't like we wanted it to have a specific sound. We just kept it very simple."

But the results have struck a chord. The domestic Americana scene, which a decade ago roasted the fatted calf for the returned Taylor, has rallied around the record and pushed it towards the ears of a broader audience. And Taylor and Rodriguez landed a number of big European television and radio shows including the U.K.'s Top of the Pops, a show that, save Alison Krauss, hasn't served up such a wood-and-wire act in five years. They played before a sold-out crowd of several hundred people in Nottingham, England, late last year. Taylor's previous visit to the same venue drew twenty-four. And despite a vast catalog of distinguished songs, he relishes a public definition that isn't based on a hit or two recorded by another artist.

"Very few people come to see you because you write hit songs," he says. "You put up a sign, 'The guy who wrote "Wild Thing" is gonna be here tonight.' I remember a rock & roll venue did that about five years ago. Three people bought tickets. I said, 'Do you want me to use a microphone?' One said, 'Yeah, would you?'"

And the pair is just starting to investigate the possibilities of the partnership. More performances are lined up this year, and they also hope to record another album of duets (they both live in New York City, which affords them plenty of time to work together), though Let's Leave This Town is still showing legs and will walk its course before another is issued. And they've also begun to plot a course for a possible solo career for Rodriguez, who, barring a detour -- say, professional gambling -- should have a long road of making music to follow.

It's been a roundabout route to contentment, but Taylor has no regrets about any of the stops on his way. "That was a great period of time, back in the Sixties," he says. "Looking back, I felt so inspired every day to be doing something. And I feel that way now. Because, in the back of my mind, I always wanted to perform. Gambling got in the way of that, because I didn't want to leave town. You have to stay close to the racetrack if you want to make a profit. But I was addicted to it and loved the hell out of it. Now I'm addicted to this. This is the best period of my life without question. I can't wait to get up every day and fool around with a song."

ANDREW DANSBY
(January 31, 2003)