Hey Joe | Red Meat

Otis Taylor was born in Chicago in 1948 and was raised in Denver’s historic Five Points neighborhood. His father worked as a Pullman porter. Both parents were jazz fans. As a teenager, Taylor drew musical inspiration from the Denver Folklore Center, where he first heard blues artists like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. There he learned to play banjo, guitar, and harmonica and then formed a band called the Butterscotch Fire Department and later the Otis Taylor Blues Band. Taylor moved to Boulder when the 1960s counterculture movement was going strong. After a 20-year hiatus from performing to work at selling art and antiques, Taylor returned to music in 1995 and immediately began to garner attention as a unique voice in the blues genre. Press coverage in Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, NPR, CNN and other media validated him as an important songwriter and producer. He earned a fellowship to the Sundance Composers Laboratory in 2001 and followed up in 2002 with a Blues Music Award for Best New Artist Debut. Taylor helped raise awareness of the African roots of the banjo with his collaborative 2008 recording Recapturing the Banjo. With a total of 5 Downbeat critics awards among his many honors as well as his music featured in major motion pictures, perhaps his most rewarding recognition was being included in the inaugural exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016. Recently he was inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame. A resident of Boulder since 1967, Taylor gives back to the community with his annual Trance Blues Festival. While establishing his trademark Trance Blues style, Otis Taylor has become one of the few musicians in the world to address serious issues including racial injustice with a passionate and original voice.