The New Bye & Bye

The New Bye & Bye - The Best of Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez with Four Brand-New Songs.
Legendary Americana singer-songwriter Chip Taylor walked into an Austin club during 2002's SXSW festival and heard a young woman playing fiddle in a way that touched him deeply. Her name was Carrie Luz Rodriguez, daughter of a local musical family, conservatory trained as a violinist, who was biding her time after graduation as a frequent sitter-in with such local heroes as Don Walser and Heybale, with whom she was playing on this particular evening.

Thus started a partnership which was to get Chip Taylor back on the road and into the recording studio with a new partner and get Carrie Rodriguez to discover that not only could she play the fiddle, but that she could sing and write songs herself. The duo toured the U.S. and Europe, recorded three highly-praised studio albums and a live album, and in 2006, parted company so that Rodriguez could start her solo career and Taylor could concentrate on his reinvigorated songwriting, recording, and touring duties, as well as helping to build his label, Train Wreck Records.

Since dissolving the Taylor-Rodriguez duo, Chip has been busy making his own albums (the most recent of which is Yonkers, NY) and guiding the career of new protegée Kendel Carson, but the two have stayed in touch, so that when Taylor decided to compile the best of their work onto a single CD in 2010, it was no problem for him to ask Carrie back into the studio to record four new songs. 'Your Name Is On My Lips,' the opening track, shows the Taylor touch with a classic country sound, 'On an Island' is a slow waltz that shows that the old magic is still there. 'Play It Again, Sam' is a fond exploration of the past and 'The New Bye and Bye' is a classic argument song which is reminiscent of the Pogues 'Fairytale of New York,' albeit with a far different storyline. With these four tracks leading off the new compilation, it s off to a great start.
After that the record surveys the duet's career with favorites from their debut,

Let's Leave This Town ('Sweet Tequila Blues,' 'Him Who Saved Me,' and the title track), its follow-up The Trouble With Humans ('Don't Speak in English,' 'All the Rain,' 'Memphis, Texas,' and 'Laredo'), their final studio album Red Dog Tracks ('Keep Your Hat On, Jenny,' 'Must Be the Whiskey,' and 'Big Moon Shinin'') and wrapping up with the final two tracks from their magnificent Live at the Ruhr Triennale, 'Angel of the Morning' and 'Wild Thing,' two of Chip's best-known songs performed with Taylor & Rodriguez and an all-star band assembled especially for the Ruhr Triennale concert with Greg Leisz on steel guitar and genre-defying guitarist Bill Frisell on guitar and loops augmented by guitarist Buddy Miller on 'Wild Thing.'
Fans will want The New Bye & Bye - The Best of Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez for the new songs, and those who have only just become aware of them will have a convenient starting point to discover the magic that happened when an old hand hooked up with a brand-new talent and something astonishing ensued.