Moore lends a hot hand

Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News

Published March 10, 2007 at midnight

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It was easier than you might think for Otis Taylor to get legends Charlie Musselwhite and Gary Moore to play on his new album.

Blues-harp player Musselwhite is an old friend who was happy to lend a hand. Moore, an in-demand British blues-guitar legend since his days with Thin Lizzy, read about Taylor's trance blues "and that kind of intrigued me," the guitarist said from his home in Brighton, England, where he caught a Taylor show a couple of years back.

"The music was kind of hypnotic and really drew you in. I'd never seen anyone do that sort of thing," said Moore, who hung out afterward to talk.

"I'm so dumb," Taylor said. "I'd stopped music for 19 years. He came over and said: 'I'm Gary Moore. I play blues guitar.' I didn't know who he was."

As Moore was leaving, someone noticed him and yelled, "Oh my God, it's Gary Moore!" Taylor said. "Then the owner comes out: 'Gary Moore? It's Gary Moore!' "

Taylor later asked him to play on his album.

"I said, 'Yeah, that'd be great.' So then he asked me to arrange everything for him - find a studio, find an engineer, show up and do everything for him. Suddenly I became his tour manager," Moore recalled with a laugh.

Something in Your Back Pocket needed "a wild sound," Moore said. Using a whammy bar and some effects, "it's almost the Hendrix sort of approach, with the guitar in the background," he said. "It's got a bit of a psychedelic vibe."

Taylor will open a dozen dates for Moore in Europe in May and June, playing 3,000- seat halls, much larger than he usually plays. "I'll play in front of 25,000 or 30,000 people in two weeks, easy. That's real good exposure for me," Taylor said.

"He's a very well-educated man, a man you can learn a lot from," Moore said. "Since I met Otis, he's taught me a few things. So if there's anything I can do to get him across to more people, I feel I should do it.

"It's just really nice to meet someone like that. He's helped me improve my new record just by the way we talked about it. I've dug deeper into the blues and it has helped me as a musician. It's not often you meet people like that. Quite a rare thing, really."

Otis on disc

Find them at amazon.com:

• Blue Eyed Monster (1997)

• When Negroes Walked the Earth (2000)

• White African (2001)

• Respect the Dead (2002)

• Truth Is Not Fiction (2003)

• Double V (2004)

• Below the Fold (2005)

• Definition of a Circle (2007)

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