Blag'ard

Blag'ard is Joe Taylor, a '68 Fender Twin, a mid-eighties Marshall half-stack, and a '85 Fender Stratocaster he got brand new. It's a one-piece band. Not a "solo artist" or a "singer songwriter"...those titles don't encompass Blag'ard. Blag'ard plays and sings like a band, just with more standing room on stage. This is what is at the core of any band worthy of praise: songs presented simply yet with enough cunning and ballast to cut and swerve from start to finish. Blag'ard plays those songs and leaves the listener wondering why it sounded so familiar.

This is what is at the core of any band worthy of praise: songs presented simply yet with enough cunning and ballast to cut and swerve from start to finish. Blag'ard plays those songs and leaves the listener wondering why it sounded so familiar. His musical influences are refined and reinterpreted until only The Shadow knows who they are. And those influences are in turn mere shadows falling across Blag'ard's new creative design, unique in its own right.

These compositions are presented stripped down and naked. The only effects are factory. The foot pedal selection consists of one tuner, a device Blag'ard refused to purchase for the first decade he played guitar, preferring instead a tuning fork.

Blag'ard has recorded an EP, Blank Faced Clocks, with the help of drummer Bill Buckley. Bill struck just the right tone with his drumming on the EP, playing with a natural honesty and sense of rocking forthrightness that other drummers spend a lifetime trying to counterfeit. This EP is being released by Blag'ard's own label, Pig Zen's Pace.

Pig Zen's Pace also released three Capsize 7 seven inches, back in the day. Capsize 7 being Joe Taylor's former band, which went on to play Lollapalooza '96 and release a full-length on Caroline Records.