Site News & Updates In 2013

Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil Kickstarter Is Live

November 25th, 2013: The Kickstarter campaign for the new Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil album is live, seeking to collect $40,000 in pledges by Christmas. A wide array of gifts for the various pledge levels are available, including digital downloads, CD and vinyl copies of the album, t-shirts and posters, custom-painted artwork by Jimmy Abegg, exclusive audio recordings, inclusion in the album credits, and private concert and party experiences. Click through for all the details!

You can also follow additional chatter about this campaign via Steve Taylor's personal Twitter and Facebook.

And I can't help but copy-pasting this tantalizing bit found at the end of Steve's letter:

"P.S. Some of you will want to know that the long-in-gestation Chagall Guevara live album is at the ready. My Guevarian bandmates felt it would be better to keep its release separate, so we hope to further press our luck by launching that campaign in January..."

More Bootleg DVD Videos Now On YouTube

November 13th, 2013: Sock Heaven friend and generally helpful guy Mint Shows has uploaded more of the bootleg DVD videos available from this site's BitTorrent tracker to YouTube. They can be watched in their entirety there, saving you considerable time over downloading the higher-quality, but much larger, DVDs. Thanks again, Mint!

Steve & Band's New Album May Be Funded Via Kickstarter

September 16th, 2013: Ben Newsum writes in to report a new interview with Steve in which he discusses his recent concert appearances with The Perfect Foil and the forthcoming new album. There is scant detail on the tone or style of the new album, except to say that whereas Squint was a solo album with the help of "fantastic musicians", the new album will be more of a group effort.

Steve also says that Kickstarter may be the means by which the album is finally finished and released:

"We may end up doing some kind of like a Kickstarter campaign in August or September just to be able to finish it up. I used to be pretty well off until my movie making habit started. Now I have trouble funding the occasional date night. But Kickstarter is also a good way to let people know that something's coming. We'll see about that."

Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil Nashville Video

September 10th, 2013: A video of Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil in concert two weeks ago at 3rd & Lindsley in Nashville has appeared on YouTube. In it, the band performs "The Finish Line".

Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil Performing In Nashville

August 25th, 2013: Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil will be the opening act for Jars of Clay this Thursday, August 29th, at 3rd And Lindsley in Nashville, TN. The event is Jars of Clay's album release party, tickets are $12, and the doors open at 6pm for the show at 8pm.

(P.S. If you can't make this one, then the rumor from a reliable source is that there will be, "God willing," more shows to come.)

(P.P.S. The same source says something about a Kickstarter event happening soon...)

Complete Cornerstone 1996 Concert On YouTube

August 1st, 2013: Longtime site supporter Mint Shows has uploaded the complete Cornerstone 1996 bootleg available from this site's BitTorrent tracker to YouTube. It can be watched in its entirety there, saving you considerable time over downloading the higher-quality, but much larger, DVD.

Three More Videos From Creation 2013

July 17th, 2013: Three more videos of Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil at Creation 2013 have turned up. The first, embedded below, is Ray McMillen's shot of "I Want To Be A Clone". Waylon Glunt has also posted two more videos to Facebook: "The Lament of Desmond R. G. Underwood-Frederick IV" and his angle of "I Want To Be A Clone".

"On The Fritz" At Creation 2013

July 5th, 2013: Another video of Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil at Creation 2013, shot by Ray McMillen. This time it's a clip of "On The Fritz".

Third Set Of Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil At Creation 2013

July 1st, 2013: Two more short clips of Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil at Creation 2013, courtesy of Troy Bassett (who, judging by proximity to the pink-shirt-around-head guy seen in their respective videos, may have been crowd-buddies with Bob Holly). This time we have a couple of the new songs we've been hearing about. Troy writes, "Steve said that these songs would hopefully be part of a new album available in the fall if everything goes according to plan."

The first song, possibly titled "Lift Up My Eyes" (Update: Oops! This is actually the Newsboys' "Sun and Shield".):

And the second, possibly titled "Building a Rocket":

More Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil At Creation 2013

June 30th, 2013: Another clip of Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil performing at Creation 2013 has appeared on YouTube. Courtesy of Bob Holly, here's a clip of "The Moshing Floor" and "Easy Listening".

Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil At Creation 2013

June 29th, 2013: Videos of the June 26th performance by Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil at Creation 2013 are starting to show up online. On YouTube, Waylon Glunt has posted a clip of "The Moshing Floor" (seen below), and WJTL 90.3 FM in Lancaster, PA posted a brief interview clip. Also, on Creation Fest's official FaceBook, there is a short clip of "I Want To Be A Clone". Hopefully there will be more to come.

Steve Taylor Interviewed On "N the Queue" Internet Radio

May 30th, 2013: Steve Taylor is featured in an hour-plus long interview with "N the Queue" on BlogTalkradio. Unfortunately those looking for information about the two concerts this summer or the new album this fall will be disappointed:

"Anybody who's followed my career knows to never believe a thing I say about new music coming because my predictions have been so woefully wrong in the past. At least in this case a lot of it's already recorded, and we have to play something live this summer. So that's probably all I should promise: that we'll be playing a set of mostly new material, and that material will show up in some form, Lord willing, this fall."

However, he offers a final resolution to the [quite certainly] dead and [almost totally] forgotten St. Gimp film project. This portion of the interview, with further discussion of how the experience led to The Second Chance and Blue Like Jazz, are at the 64 minute mark.

"St. Gimp was kind of a sad story. We worked probably two years on the screenplay, among doing other things, and then we did our table reading, where you sit actors around the table. You hear it back for the first time, and at the end of the table reading, I realized that this movie was unfilmable, and if it could be filmed, it would be unwatchable. I was wanting to make the movie, but it just wasn't going to be a good movie. Trust me, I did you a favor by not making that movie.

"It just wasn't a well-told story. If you go to the animator's web site, Jonathan Richter, [...] you can actually see some of the animation that was going to be in St. Gimp. He worked for months on some of the sequences, and it looks fantastic. If it all would have been short animated clips by Jonathan Richter, it would have been fine, but it also would have only been about five minutes long. It was the rest of the story that was the problem. It was one of those things [where] it was too ambitious for my skills at the time. My collaborators and I tried our best, but there's nothing like hearing it back by a group of actors. Until that point you really don't know anything."

Finally, at 90:40 Steve offers penetrating insight into the utter vanity and futility of stubbornly continuing to maintain a fan site for a musician that hasn't released an album in twenty years (as well as a nice acknowledgement--thanks!)

"I don't actually have my own web site, but there are a couple of web sites from people who are probably more interested in my past than I am. They're good, so if you Google my name you can come across some of those, and they're very well done and much appreciated. Sock Heaven is one of them."

Chagall Guevara Facebook Page

March 22nd, 2013: Norvin Coblentz has started a surprisingly active Chagall Guevara Facebook page. There you will find a set of Chagall Guevara concert photos from a performance in Birmingham, AL in June 1991. The photos are courtesy of Joe Posey. Thanks to Joe, and thanks to Norvin for the video shout-out to this site!

Steve Taylor New Band Name & Album Information... And Performing Live At Creation 2013?

February 5th, 2013: Honorary site intern Ben Newsum has once again provided updates regarding the ever-forthcoming new album by the band that is now called Steve Taylor and the Perfect Foil. Steve discusses the project in this April 2012 interview with Jeffrey Overstreet. An excerpt:

"I got so frustrated when I felt like Blue Like Jazz was failing, that out of creative frustration I ended up going into the studio with Peter Furler, and then John Painter (of Fleming and John), and then Jimmy Abegg, who's a longtime friend, guitarist, photographer and visual artist. And we just started recording. Peter had written some music ideas, and I love his melodies. We worked up the songs as a band, then I added lyrics. We were about a month away from having something finished when the Kickstarter campaign started, and it was like, "Oh, man ... we're making a movie." And it's just been on hold for the last 18 months, because finishing the movie has taken up all my time.

"That's one thing I'll do once things settle down--get back together with the guys and finish that project up."

Also reported by Josh Rude, Steve Taylor and the Perfect Foil have indeed released their first single, titled "A Life Preserved", as part of the Blue Like Jazz soundtrack. It's available for a measly buck on Amazon, iTunes, and probably a bazillion other places.

Ben Newsum further reports that there is an official remix of "A Life Preserved", available in Paste Magazine's mPlayer feature for Issue 75 (see the music player at the top of the screen). If you're not a subscriber, you can sign up for a free week trial, during which time a download of the remix will also be available for free.

Even more exciting is the appearance of Steve's name in the list of Main Stage performers at Creation 2013, happening the last week of June! This bodes well for a release of that new album in the next few months. Is Steve really pulling his music career out of mothballs? Will this new material have the same edge he honed throughout the 80's and 90's, culminating in Chagall Guevara and Squint? This long-suffering fan site maintainer hopes so...