Woo didn't oversee every track on the CD. The last number, "Unsung Dance," featuring Taylor's father on guitar, was laid down in Sweet Baby James's Massachusetts living room, and "When We're Together," an irresistible samba, was overseen by Donald Fagen of Steely Dan (Fagen's longtime partner, Walter Becker, contributed as well). But these efforts fit snugly within the recording's overall scheme: spare, simple and ultra-respectful of the Seventies-era singer-songwriter tradition. The safeness of this approach, as well as Taylor's Carly-like voice, prevents her from truly stepping out of her parents' considerable shadows, and the unremarkable nature of "The Good Bye," "Happy Now" and "Alone" doesn't help unmix this particular bag, either. However, "The Complaint" is lovely, "Song 4 Jeremy" sashays with aplomb, and the title song has a lyric that invites comparison to John Prine--and that's fine company to keep. So while Tomboy Bride will certainly cheer listeners hoping to hear nothing more than a chip off the old block, it also suggests that Taylor has the potential to eventually stand on her own.
A&R weasels aren't waiting for this day: They started pounding on Taylor's door when she and Woo were in the early stages of recording (Taylor claims not to know how they found out about the sessions), and the arrival of Tomboy Bride has done nothing to quell their ardor. But Taylor isn't ready to consummate any deals. Unlike little brother Ben, who just inked a pact with the Work Group (a Sony imprint) and recently got the glamour treatment in an issue of Vanity Fair, she wants to wait until she's got more of a sense of her artistic footing. "I'm fortunate to be able to do that--and the reason I can is because I have some financial support," she acknowledges. "I don't need immediate money. I'm probably one of the few musicians who can say that. I don't feel the pressure of financial difficulties."
With time on her side, Taylor has been able to dabble in numerous areas of the music business with which she was unfamiliar. "I've never really known my parents' careers as solo gigs. From the time I was born, they've always had their success, and their careers were all lined up. So as an independent artist, I didn't know how to book a tour, I didn't know how to start a mailing list, and I didn't know how to set up a Web site [her Internet address is www.sallytaylor.com]. And by doing all these things, I've found out how much I'd pay not to do them. I was calling up radio stations and saying, 'Hey, I'd like to play,' and then I realized I couldn't do all this by myself, and I hired a publicist. And my boyfriend and I booked our last tour, and it was just too much work, so I hired someone to do that. And I'm getting ready to hire a kind of secretary or assistant who will pick up phone calls and do my mail orders while I'm on the road."
Taylor is currently branching out beyond Colorado; later this month, she and her band (guitarist Chris Soucy, bassist Kenny Castro and longtime Sherri Jackson drummer Brian McRae) kick off a series of West Coast shows, including a stop at Los Angeles's Troubador, where her mother was, to use a time-honored show-biz expression, "discovered." But while she's looking forward to visiting the City of Angels, where she performed once before, she expects that she'll soon be eager to return to Colorado. "If you're looking for money and recognition, you've got to be in L.A. But if you're looking to have music be something that's just about beauty and love and spirituality, then I think that it's probably easier to do it in Boulder and harder to do that there. At least I haven't found a way yet.
"It's not that I see Colorado as a buffer zone from all that," she continues. "But I do love how much support musicians give to each other here. It's so great that musician friends are always coming out to gigs and helping each other."
Boulderites shouldn't expect Taylor to hang around town forever. She is a big booster of the city--"I'm very inspired by the mountains," she declares--and she's enjoying the chance to make fans one by one rather than in batches of thousands or hundreds of thousands. But when she believes that she's reached a point musically where she knows what she wants to do and is strong enough to fend off hangers-on with other ideas, she'll probably step into the corporate breach. She's just not ready yet.
"I feel very clear about who I am as a person," she says. "But when it comes to me as a musician, I'm still trying to figure that out. And until I figure out who I am as a musician--and I'm not sure that everybody does; who's to say that's ever going to happen?--I'm not going to do anything that would hurt my integrity. I just have to be sure what 'making it' is for me."
The Tony Furtado Band, with the Sally Taylor Band and Greta Gaines. 9 p.m. Saturday, March 13, Boulder Theater, 2032 14th Street, $8, 303-786-7030.
