Taber Maine

SD: And how are they receiving you in Austin? Do you see any differences between the audiences of the south and the mid west?

TM: It’s going alright. I think there’s a progression starting to form. Ha, I hope so. The audiences are similar and different. Neither one seems to ever be paying attention to me but It’s for different reasons. In Austin everybody just comes out to dance and in the mid-west everybody just comes out to drink.

SD: There’s a solid amount of political/socioeconomic topics brought up in your music. What is the message you are conveying to us?

TM: I don’t feel like there’s too too much of that. I just think it’s stuff that not a lot of people know about. I stay pretty specific to where I’m at when I write it so it’s reporting in a way but it’s story telling too obviously.
SD: And who is your audience?

TM: Right now, mostly my friends.

SD: Word has it that you’ve got a new album. Tell us about it…

TM: I’ve recorded a ton of songs but I think I’m going to go back in in a few weeks and get a few more out. I’m hoping to have money up and design and everything done to put the thing out by February.

SD: The sound is awesome… Where did you record?

TM: Hey thanks. I recorded the electric stuff with my friend Jon Parfitt in his house and then the acoustic stuff was all recorded at my buddy Brian Hummel’s place. Those guys both mixed em as well. Really really great guys.

SD: How can we obtain it?

TM: Unless you know me it’s probably hard. I think I’m going to change a whole lot from what I sent you so “it” is still kind of far from existing. Track: Chestnutt’s Lament


Taber Maine is Corey Baum. Originally from Ohio, he now lives and performs in Austin. His new album, El Nudo se Deshace, should be out this winter. His first album, The Ballad of Holt LaHoya, is a down and dirty gem worth finding too, if you are up to the challenge. (Though it’s entirely possible you may fail, sadly.) With luck, we will bring you more news about him as events progress. Until then, more of his music and photos are available here. - High Contrast Review

"At their best, in such songs as 'The Death of Folk' and 'Drinking On Home', Taber Maine’s lyrics lean forward (in a pose that combines controlled playfulness, unpretentiousness, and brooding contemplation) toward the listener, as if the man himself leaned forward on a stool toward one final double shot of rye, elbows against the elbow worn bar, and, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, confided in a stage whisper, hoarsely, succinctly, with a wink and a nod, the contents of one living heart and mind. This is strong stuff, very strong, with the promise of stronger still to come.”
- The Sentimental Trombone

Taber Maine can sing a joke as well as some people can tell one with their speaking voices. When he's selling a line that's funny -- and mordant wit is a major feature of his songs -- his voice and his eyes give it away. Gallows humor is one of the elements of the folk tradition that gets lost when modern-day interpreters retrace the structures of the music rather than examining its soul, its guts. There's more than enough earnest acoustic slingers in Central Texas to fill all the coffeehouses between here and San Antonio every night. Very few of them have a spark like Taber Maine.

Although in terms of content and general sound Maine isn't trying to reinvent the wheel, he's one of the few solo songwriters I've yet seen in Texas who quite clearly is operating from his own creative space, not channeling someone else's. You can hear his influences plainly but he's the rare folksinger who can mount a revival of a Dylan tune ("Mama, You Been on My Mind") and actually put his own stamp on it. Maine fingerpicks exquisitely on a not-entirely-reliable nylon-string guitar. Because he develops his own distinct picking pattern for each song he writes and each one he covers, it's his own style rather than any other's that dominates his performances.

This originality, which is pretty easy to pick out if you listen to much if any solo-folk music, allows Maine to inhabit a character that's not a new one at all for a disheveled troubadour -- part Tom Waits, part Rimbaud -- and pull off the usual laments over whiskey and women. When Maine sings of distant cities, you feel as if he's been to them, not merely marking off names on a map like a Promise Ring song. Even when he's inventing, the emotions seem his own, and in music that's the only real truth.

He may need to get a band behind him to work up anything resembling a buzz in overpopulated Austin. I hope my enthusiasm for his music may help in some small way for him to do so. I don't know why all the good country singers around here are refugees from the former industrial midwest. Maybe some of our native Texas songwriters need to go spend a year in Detroit so they can really sing the blues. - Big Western Flavor