“I can make it, I think.”

M.C. Taylor (Hiss Golden Messenger) shared those words in the lead-up to releasing Quietly Blowing It, written in his journals near the edge of disaster in England.

It’s a quietly prescient and subversive statement, one that betrays more about what it means to exist than we’d think.
I can make it.

— — —

A few months ago, Doug Hacker – the man largely responsible for the Billsville House concerts and a scion of the house show scene – sent me a message that Hiss Golden Messenger was coming back to Vermont for a show. We’d made in-person acquaintances at Solid Sound, connecting through our mutual affection for house shows (I wore my Club 603 shirt), followed each other on socials, and he knew Hiss’s songs buzz in my marrow.

We committed immediately, regardless of when, if only because we had to.

— — —

Hiss Golden Messenger released Quietly Blowing It in June, a dynamic album exploring themes relevant to nearly all times, but especially resonant in the last few years; it’s not a pandemic album, but to call it uninfluenced by the pandemic seems wrong. Taylor sings about class, working, inequity; he sings about self-loathing (which has come up throughout his work this last decade), alienation and isolation, and even maybe the specter of climate change. Taylor also sings about the importance of hope and the constant value of family (whatever that word means to you). He sings about the glory of having and granting sanctuary.

At their core, these are songs exploring the metaphysics of being human. And still, the truest theme of Quietly Blowing It – and maybe all of Hiss’s music – is that it’s better to hope and act for goodness’s sake.

— — —

We left Baltimore well before the sun’s setting on Friday, stopping halfway to Vermont to visit friends. Leaving early in the morning, we grabbed bagels and coffee (NJ bagels still the best of all), and drove north with the sun on our shoulders.

Billsville is a place you cannot comprehend until you’ve been there. It is, in every way, a destination venue. Doug and Caroline have cultivated a space that welcomes audiences and musicians alike, their house and yard an easy embrace.
For Hiss, the show took place in their backyard, a natural amphitheater in Manchester Center, Vermont, a slightly sloped hill ending at a small stage under the trees, a canopied merch table next to it. Doug greeted every single person who entered the yard, checking for vaccine cards (an obvious and appropriate requirement for participating in society) all while sharing half-jokes and smiles.

The first set of the day started early, under the mid-afternoon sun, the leaves dappling the light. Taylor walked to the stage – adorned with two stools, a mic, and a three-guitar stand – and got right to work, singing a perfect first line, “Yeah, when Saturday comes, I’m gonna lose myself.” “Saturday’s Song” acted as a kind of beginning benediction, carrying a hope for something good and maybe a touch of the divine.

Most often, Hiss Golden Messenger is a touring band instead of a solo act, focused as much on the deeper grooves they find together as on Taylor’s lyrics; solo, the focus is very much the song, the voice, and the dialogues in between. Taylor told stories throughout (as much as I want to tell them, they are his to tell; if you see him, though, ask about his Gretsch), and engaged with the audience as directly as I’ve ever seen.

He joked about playing “sad folk music in Vermont in the summer.” He talked about the short story “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner” by Alan Sillitoe before singing “Glory Strums”, a song as interested in social alienation as maintaining as much control over our lives as we can. When he learned Jess and I had come from Baltimore, he asked after the city (doing mostly okay, for what it’s worth) and talked about the formative hardcore scene of the 90s (Taylor himself was briefly part of the hardcore scene in California).

Again, though, I must emphasize that the songs were the centerpiece. His voice rang clear through the woods (the sound was exquisite, thanks to both Billsville and Luc, the sound man and copilot for Taylor on this solo tour). The wind blew throughout this first set, leaves swirling around the stage all afternoon, and the sun moved a little lower, a little warmer. The air felt almost chilly, all while the songs held us in thrall and kept us warm.

Taylor pulled from much of his oeuvre, playing fifteen songs, with five new ones from Quietly Blowing It. I was surprised by “Balthazar’s Song” and “Drum”, two of the first Hiss songs I ever held close to my chest. He closed the afternoon with a stirring rendition of “Southern Grammar” on his autumnal Gretsch, a song I’d never imagined without the band around him, and now I find myself thinking on and wanting to hear it again, just like that.

Taylor graciously greeted everyone after the show, making small and big talk alike, depending on the direction of the conversation.

This first set would have been enough.

— — —

The world started singing long before I learned how to listen for rock and roll. Those things, those noises it holds, the sounds and strains of life passing by, always held sway; the radio, my mother’s voice singing along, or my father’s half-forgotten record player in the basement; Nintendo’s bit symphonies; the way the air rushed into my hearing aids and wind sounded like a roar.

I think I spend my listening life in pursuit of that roar, half-knowing my half-broken perspective colors it; in the quiet, the lowbuzz silence of my deafness, I read, and then I started holding words in my brain while I listened for the noises that made them sing.

This is how I came to love the music I love: something almost-incongruous that merges into something else my brain pushes into beauty, and maybe yours does, too.

Hiss Golden Messenger might make the music that feels closest to what is perfect.

— — —

After sneaking away to grab food and to change into slightly warmer clothes (expecting the setting sun and steady breeze to chill us), we came back to Billsville. Doug presided over and prepared the amphitheater for the late show, lighting torches around the perimeter, prepping the firepit, and generally ensuring everything would run smoothly.
Our Baltimore friends, Scott and Jean Vieth – from Club 603 – had also made the trip up north to visit Billsville, meet Doug, and catch Hiss Golden Messenger. We caught up with them, learning of their travels on the way (and upcoming plans), and eventually moved our chairs next to theirs so we could enjoy the set together.

The sun stood lower in the sky, masked by the trees, and the breeze had slowed to an occasional flutter. Taylor came back to the stage to a (mostly) new and larger crowd, immediately joking that a double set is problematic because he can’t repeat songs. He said he’d do it anyway because there are a few songs it’s important to play.

This set opened hard, with “Mahogany Dread”, followed by a different rendition of “Heart Like a Levee” than I’d yet heard: most of the audience did not sing the refrain, though a casual glance around showed that some of us lipped along. It rendered the song almost-bare, and it hit a little differently.

Another surprise followed with “A Workingman Can’t Make It No Way”, a tune I find myself needing to sing on Sundays more often than not. There’s something there – maybe it’s the once-sacred nature of the day, a relic of years spent on my knees asking for help and love and protection – so every Sunday, I sit with a certain kind of song, a certain kind of hope, of faith, driving my fingers or my hands. I pair it frequently with “What Shall Be (Shall Be Enough)” from Haw, but the little refrain of “Heaven is the cruelest of them all” is one long etched into my bones.

The rest of the set featured nearly every song I could’ve wanted, with only a few repeats (appropriate in each case). It bears repeating that “I Need a Teacher” – co-opted to become a rallying cry for public schools – is an important one in our household. Taylor’s continued championing of public education is a kindness and one well-appreciated by us (my wife is a third grade public school teacher). The timeless and revelatory “Call Him Daylight” ripping through the woods as daylight faded is a memory I’ll hold onto until I go back to the stars. Or the heartbreaking “Cracked Windshied”, which inspired a brief discussion on Jason Molina and the time Taylor toured with Electric Magnolia Co.

The night’s music ended with “Highland Grace”, one of the few songs to feature in both sets, a special request of Caroline’s. Standing in a pair of spotlights, he sang,

And if you can’t buy it
You can stand and deny it

And if you can’t see it
Will you refuse to believe it?

And if you can’t count it
Oh you can’t help but doubt it

But loving her was easy
The easiest thing in the world

Oh loving her was easy
The easiest thing in the world

Oh loving her was easy
The easiest thing in the world

And maybe there’s nothing truer in the world than the ease of loving.

I think we can make it.