LINKS

Listen to Flyte's self-titled album on streaming services or better yet order a copy.

And you'll obviously want to buy tickets to their tour.

TRANSCRIPT

Courtney: Today, we're joined by Will Taylor from Flyte. He is kind of a genius since he started playing at 11. Sounds like quite the childhood there, Will. Very relaxed, extremely chill.

Will Taylor: Yeah, well, oh my god, straight into 11 years old. That's what we're doing, are we? Okay. 

Melissa: Tell us about your childhood. What's your relationship like with your mother? 

Courtney: What would Freud say? 

Will Taylor: Don't talk to my father anymore. 

Courtney: Oh, same. 

Will Taylor: Yes. And to be honest, I had quite a theatrical family. I mean, no one was sort of professionally validated in any way. They just had the confidence. My parents were both English teachers at a couple of different schools in the city I grew up in. And they ran all the am-dram, and my dad would take these quite brilliant sort of Shakespeare productions down to this Cornish theatre called the Minack Theatre. And everyone was just a bit of a performer in my family. So, I kind of carved out music as a solution to that because I couldn't act. I wanted to act. I couldn't. I fundamentally am a bad actor and I learned that at 10 years old. I just knew. 

Courtney: So you're telling us you were the black sheep? 

Will Taylor: That's what I'm telling you. I was the middle child, prodigal son, black sheep, all of that.

Courtney: Long and short of it. On this podcast, we do not mess around. We get right to the point, and Will, we would love for you to start by telling us about a song that an ex ruined  for you.

Will Taylor: My choice is “Late for the Sky” by Jackson Brown. I'm just going to say this now that I have exes. I have some exes.

Courtney: You're a musician, we get it. 

Will Taylor: Everyone has exes. Well, apart from Nick, the second half of Flyte, who has no exes. He just has the one person he's been with for 18 years. So, that's why he's literally not on this podcast right now. He's like, that’s got nothing to do with me, you do you. 

Courtney: That's a well-adjusted podcast. 

Will Taylor: That's a different podcast. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Not for the three of us. I will say that I don't think I've had any particular song ruined by an ex because I think that what that implies to me at least is that they've been an awful shit to me and that it's sort of taking a song off the table. Really, I'm choosing this Jackson Browne song because it's the song I just, by default, will just play to myself once a relationship is over. Like, ah, Jackson Browne, “Late for the Sky,” it's going back on again. 

Melissa Aw, so you kind of ruin it for yourself. 

Will Taylor: I ruin it for myself.

Courtney: Yeah, that is a theme that comes up in these stories. Not everybody has a shitty ex. Sometimes, it's something you play into the ground that attaches to a relationship, and you do it to yourself.

Will Taylor: It's like a Pavlovian song for me where now at this point, if I go through another breakup, I'm not putting that song on again. Well, maybe I will, but fundamentally, if I hear it whilst in a relationship, it kind of gives me the shudders, you know? 

Melissa: So, where did it start? 

Courtney: How did you discover this song? 

Melissa: Where did Jackson Brown impact on your mental health? 

Will Taylor: God, you guys do cut to the chase. I like it. I'm going to say that I probably first heard that song when I was 14 years old, and it was a girl I really fancied called Charlotte Bell. She was at my school. She was in the same year as me. And we briefly had a moment and then it just didn't happen. And then I listened to that song. And the kind of brilliant grandeur that you give yourself as a mid-teen, when anything doesn't go right romantically for yourself, the weight that you place on how important your life is and your romantic exploits are, It really gave that song a jumpstart.

Courtney: So I feel like you've described the entire meaning of the fandom of the Smiths. It's all hinging on the fuel of teenage angst.

Will Taylor: Oh, I was listening to The Queen is Dead at that age, too. Yeah, well said.

Melissa: Teenage angst is just so important to keeping so many artists in paying their mortgages or whatever.

Will Taylor:  That's so true.

Melissa: Man, there are so many bands that just tap into that sweet, sad sorrow that teenage angst, particularly relationships that never happened. Those ones are extra bittersweet. And they're also my specialty. 

Will Taylor: When we write our songs, we kind of put such a strict emphasis on truth when we write. And I don't mean that to sound overly integrity-based or pretentious. It's more that it's like for us as a practicality, if the song doesn't mean precisely what it means to us, we kind of veered off into the realm of artistic license, then we actually kind of go off the boil with the song. We actually have to stick very to the letter of the truth with our own stuff. So, when we put the songs out, in our head we're thinking, well the people who have had these exact experiences, they will be the ones that will lock in the most. And that'll be how we succeed with this music — beyond the initial success of having written something that has truth to us, which is really ultimately our only success we're looking for. But when you realize how many people are listening and they're actually just projecting an idea of what a breakup or a long term relationship might mean to them. And I remember that too, when I was a teenager, that's what I did. I just learned how to feel through these grownups writing these songs. And as a songwriter at the time, 14, I was writing songs and I was pretending to be a grownup then. And it's such relief when you get into your actual adulthood and what you've been pretending to do for so many years just suddenly becomes the real thing. And then I think that's when, as an artist, things become so much easier. 

Melissa: Yeah, I don't think there's anything worse than teenage poetry. I feel like teenage poetry exists just to make you feel better about yourself as an adult. You can look back and be like, Oh, well, at least I'm not crying into a notebook while writing terrible verse.

Will Taylor: Oh yeah, absolutely. There is one song on my second record that I did write when I was 14, around that time. That's the last song on the record. It's called “Never Get to Heaven.” And that survived that test.And people who know that fact kind of go, oh my god, you were really good then. It's like, no, I'm really not that was like an extraordinary anomaly. There are literally hundreds of songs, a lot of them recorded properly, that are absolutely horrible, and people say that you've got to write, get all your bad songs out of the way before we can write something that resembles good. And I think I wrote like two lifetimes worth of bad songs to get to like a half-decent one. So, I fully relate. And it's setting your low bar at the beginning. It's really, like you said, it's great. It's what we use as a benchmark to make ourselves feel better as grownups. 

Courtney: That is also exactly what I was going to ask you because Jackson Brown is perceived as such an adult contemporary artist, even that for you to attach onto one of his songs at 14 is interesting, but not unfamiliar to me. My little Jackson Brown story is my mom likes to tell me that when I was a little kid, little in the sense of — I pronounced his name, Jack-on Brown, I would demand to hear “Running on Empty,” on repeat. Why? I don't know. It's a song about being middle-aged and tired, but it resonated somehow.

Will Taylor: Well, it's got a great energy, that song, you know. I can see it being kind of kid-friendly. I mean, you were pronouncing it that way because you were seven? 

Courtney: Oh, younger than that. No, probably like three or four.

Will Taylor: That was actually last week. 

Melissa: Look, I'd only seen the board written. I had no idea.

Courtney: Wow, I've said that a lot. 

Will Taylor: It's like Hermione in Harry Potter. Everyone used to say Hermione. Hermione. 

Courtney: And they’re like oh, Hermione, right. 

Melissa: I met somebody this weekend, and they were like, Oh, you should go meet this person. And then I realized I could go meet that person, but I had absolutely no idea how to actually pronounce their name. And I really didn't know how to go introduce myself and be like, Are you…? Nope, no idea how to pronounce your name. If you see it only written…

Will Taylor: Just go up to them and be like, Hey, man.

Melissa: Hey, I hear you're cool. Wanna hang? Yeah, it wasn't gonna work out. 

Will Taylor: Overcompensate and just go in straight for a hug. Like a really big, familial hug.

Courtney: Yeah, I was gonna say, that's not gonna be Melissa's move. Ever. 

Melissa: I once wrote an entire article for Time magazine about why hugging is evil. 

Will Taylor: Oh, wow. Can you send me a link to that? I wanna read that. 

Melissa: Yeah, I interviewed a professional cuddler whose job is just to cuddle people. But no, I'm not a hugger. Although I've slowly been worn down, and I swear the more time I spend in Los Angeles, the more I'm like, okay, fine, hug me. I give up. You just got to give up at some point. 

Will Taylor: They’re are hug is out there, aren't they? 

Melissa: They  are. They're like, they, they hug you and say that you're best friend. They're going to hang out with you all the time. And none of that is true. 

Will Taylor: They tell you that they love you within days. 

Melissa: Yes, they're huggers and they're liars. 

Courtney: You're just describing the entertainment industry. Come on now.  

Will Taylor: Oh dear. 

Melissa: Okay, but so going back to Jackson Brown for a second, what was it about that song resonated? Was it like a particular lyric? Was it just a vibe? What do you think it was when you're 14 just being like, this girl doesn't love me. Here's some Jackson Brown to make me feel better. 

Will Taylor: The way I heard the song was from, I think there's like an excerpt of it in Taxi Driver. And I was like, what is that song? Cause it's the section that comes after the solo where he's just sings in this soaring way, says, how long have I been sleeping? And I just remember thinking like, that's the, I think that was the line that got me because the idea of something in you laying dormant and becoming awake for the first time is sort of falling in love, isn't it? Or it is romance or it's heartbreak or it's just any kind of revelation. Your teens are just a series of revelations. And when you have those revelations at that age, you think you're the first person to have ever had that revelation, and you're the only one that can carry that information. And so the kind of, yeah, the power of hearing someone else say that back to you. And I didn't know who Jackson Brown was at the time, I didn't realize his kind of historical significance. I was just like, this is just some guy, and this is someone who I've found out about via a very obscure film called Taxi Driver, which no one else has ever seen. And, you know, I was a teenage boy who wrote poetry. 

Melissa: Yeah, I wonder if that Bobby De Niro ever made anything of himself?

Will Taylor: Exactly, yeah. These poor souls. And I think that's maybe a lot to do with the teenage industry, making them seem like it's counterculture and it's completely unearthed stuff and the only ones that can. And that's why it's so impassioned when you see queues of teenagers lining around the corner for certain things, and you see the reaction of the audience to someone walking on stage. When it's a teenage audience, it's crazy. We don't have that. We have university students and older. I've walked on stage and sung on songs of friends of mine who are more pop people and have that teenage audience. And it's extraordinary. Like the sensation of walking onto a stage when it's just teenagers in the audience, you feel kind of God-like or something. . 

Melissa: You’re like, oh my God, the teenagers think I'm cool. 

Will Taylor: Yeah, well, first of all, that — which is like, that's never happened and never will happen. But you know, that feeling is coming from them because they own you. They think that no one else does and it's just this brand new feeling you're giving them. And anyway, for me, that was Jackson Brown and Taxi Driver. 

Courtney: Okay, three things. The first, forgive me, but I have to give you a little bit of shit here. Our listeners know we rarely invite white men on this podcast because they have so many places to talk. And you have really just like checked a box by being a white man mentioning Taxi Driver. 

Will Taylor: Yeah, totally. I'm not ashamed to say it. I'm giving myself up on a plate here.  

Melissa: Could you explain the plot of it to me?

Courtney: No, we will let it slide because you were 14. So okay, cool. Fine. That's acceptable.

Will Taylor: Yeah, let's turn the mirror around at you guys at 14. Let's see what happens then.  

Courtney: I mean, John Hughes, 24/7, wall to wall, all the time.

Will Taylor: Okay. Well, that's actually quite lovely. 

Courtney: Well, the material has not aged that well, let's be honest. There's some problematic moments, yeah.

Will Taylor: No, it really hasn’t. 

Courtney: The music has been great, though. The music remains pristine. 

Melissa: Yeah, but man, Sixteen Candles cannot be watched these days. 

Will Taylor: Sixteen Candles is an abomination. I tried to watch that again the other day. 

Melissa: Yeah, it’s like look at all the rape. Cool. Date rape and racism, yay. 

Courtney: Not that Ferris Bueller is that much better, honestly. It's really not. It's all pretty bad. 

Melissa: Breakfast Club is good. 

Courtney: Breakfast Club is still pretty good. There are moments that are not, but you know. Okay. Number two, I'm just happy it wasn't Woody Allen. That's great. It's much better. 

Melissa:  That's true. 

Courtney: And then number three, I've had this experience too, and what you were describing made me think about — in the 2000s, I was working at MTV, and it was the era of TRL, and there would be just thousands of teenagers standing in Times Square screaming about people that they could just see through a window. And I think there's also something to the, like, gang mentality of it that has existed since the Beatles and Elvis, this sort of losing your mind together thing that is a definition of teenage culture. And I think the passion is so fun to watch, even if you're not part of it, even if you're more of a passive observer, not a recipient of it or not in the thick of it. It's really cool, and I really love, and I've read a lot of people that write about the pieces of how teenage girls tend to be the ones driving a lot of that culture, teenage culture, and they don't get their fair acknowledgment as fans because people write off the interest of teenage girls, but That's who's generating the excitement. That's who's screaming and who's really vibrantly showing their emotions. So, do you notice at your shows when you have younger people, if it skews more male or female? 

Will Taylor: It's more female, our audience. I'd say it's probably about 60/40. But I think that we probably divide off Into two categories in terms of why people might like us. we're very emotion-focused and we do try and explore emotion in it and as clear and as, and as real and as responsible a way as possible, we put that first and foremost, I'd say. So, I think that I can see why that might speak to maybe more of a feminine energy. I also then think that our predominant audience is other musicians, other musicians seem to like us the most.  And there can be sort of guys doing that chin scratchy thing about certain chord shifts and stuff like that, that I must say actually doesn't interest me all that much, to be honest, but it's nice to see that kind of appreciation comes in from there. And then there also seems to be a slightly higher kind of rate of LGBT and sort of nonbinary people as well, I think just because it's sort of, again, just so focused on, on kind of personal growth effectively. But I will say that it's like herding cats, our audience. I wish in a way we had teenage girls or teenage boys, because I think the reason people cover the teenage girls as an audience so much, it's such an important market is because they have all the power. Even at school, I remember that teenage girls, they ruled the roost, you know. If you weren't in on side with them, that would be game over. And I think it's the same with the music industry, isn't it? Our audience is just people who I think consider themselves to be individuals, and so they're very hard to advertise to or to organize or get into the same room. And I personally am not someone who, if I was a fan of something, would necessarily then search for them on social media and start following them. I would be a fan of theirs because I listened to their music, and that would probably be the end of it. 

Melissa: Did you read the lyrics when you were a kid? Were you someone who sat down and read all the song lyrics?

Will Taylor: Definitely. That was 100 percent who I was. To this day I still do that. Lyrics are the important thing for me. 

Melissa: Was there a Jackson Browne lyric that spoke to you? 

Will Taylor: Yeah, I think that line, “How long have I been sleeping? How long have I been drifting alone through the night? The words had all been spoken, and somehow the feeling still wasn't right.” It's quite plain language that he uses, which I also am a fan of. I like when people don't get too over poetic. I think that can, again, be another sort of adolescent foible. 

Melissa: Have you ever texted song lyrics to a person you were interested in?

Will Taylor: I think, I think I'm in the safe zone there. I think I haven't done that. I mean, I've written, I think I've written a song for someone. 

Melissa: Yeah, did you break up? 

Will Taylor: Inevitably, yes. 

Courtney: Inevitably! Yes.

Melissa: Can you still play that song, or do you end up thinking about that person when you play it? 

Will Taylor: You're talking to someone whose entire discography so far has been based entirely around relationships that are now over. So yeah, I have to keep playing them. The second one is especially that. 

Melissa: That’s brutal to yourself.

Will Taylor:  It's not, yeah, it's not ideal, but you know, it's how it goes.

Courtney: Let's talk about “Tough Love.” I'm a little bit obsessed with this song. It's really beautiful. All of your music kind of makes me think of Kings of Convenience because it's intimate and introspective and the guitar work is so lovely and like drives things. But this song is so great, and I'd love to hear about how you ended up recording with Laura Marling and then recording with Florence later on.

Will Taylor: Well, that's very nice of you to say. Kings of Convenience, I love. So that's great. 

Melissa: Oh, that's good. Because there's a real good chance you were like, what the fuck? I hate Kings of Convenience.

Courtney: Come on. No, I knew, I knew he would know who they are. Of course he would. 

Will Taylor: Yeah, no, absolutely. I do. And they're certainly similar in the sense that currently as Nick and I are touring around America as a duo right now, it's definitely that thing where we have to kind of overcompensate for the fact that we don't have more instruments on stage with us. So, we have to try and make the guitars work extra hard. And that's something that I think that Kings of Convenience are really good at doing. But yeah, so, “Tough Love” was a song that Nick and I had written, like we'd written the entire new album. We'd done it without demoing or doing any production or thinking about the sounds or the style in any way, really. It was actually kind of a bit of an experiment where we just said to ourselves, we'll write a song entirely on the guitars or doesn't even need to be on the guitars really. It could be just in the air. The song just needs to be sung into the air and it just feel like it works. And so that's the ground zero for the song. It has to hold up in that way. And when we go into the studio, we'll just wait and see, we'll just find out what happens to that song. I think we had just about 10 days in the studio to record the whole record, which is less than a day a song. And so we didn't have the luxury of overthinking anything, anyway. So “Tough Love,” we had, we really didn't have a plan for it. I hadn't thought about Laura singing on it. I hadn't considered it to be a duet. Neither of us considered it to be a duet. That one just had a certain, it sort of implied internally that it needed to be a bit of a production compared to maybe some of the other songs on the record. There was a decision we made in the morning, Nick and I, where we were like, what if we sang the vocal when we get to that last chorus? Why don't we sing it the whole octave up? So it would be like really straining to sing it. And then once we did that, we were like, what if we can reflect that vocal, bolster that vocal by like adding every single instrument that's in the room at the time? We just layered everything. We'd done that. And then we were still like, something is just missing from this. There's just something that feels like a color that's missing. we were just sort of deliberating over whether or not Billie, who's my partner, she's a fantastic, extraordinary artist and singer. And we'd already had a song scheduled to do with her. So we were like, we can't play that card twice. And I think we wrote the words out on a whiteboard. And it was just like, it does kind of sound like something's in dialogue here. And we've been skirting around the idea of, are we men singing a song from a female perspective? That was kind of how, as we were writing, how we were trying to think about it. And we certainly knew we were writing about codependency and trying to untangle from bad habits. So, yeah, just gradually we got to that point where like, well, we actually, we just, that would make it so much clearer what we're trying to do here if we actually did have a female voice. And Laura lives around the corner from me and Billie and the studio is just up the road from where we all live in Hackney. And we just kind of shot our shot. We hadn't really spent much time together, but she'd been very lovely about our previous records. So we thought, well, why don't let's just ask? And assumed she'd say no, because she's very mysterious as an artist, Laura. She just showed up. She showed up at about an hour after asking her, and she came in, and we taught her the part, and she sang it in about half an hour, and then we had a cigarette outside and a cup of tea and then she went home again. It was really quite straightforward in the end.  

Courtney: I love Laura Marling so much. I feel like I would be really intimidated by her voice just because she can do so much, but maybe that's the wrong way to look at it. Perhaps she's so good at her craft that it makes it easier for her to be someone to sing with because she's so good at harmonizing. I mean, there's all that stuff with Noah and the Whale, right, that shows that she can do that.

Will Taylor: Well, Laura's just a great musician. I think that's the thing. That's our criteria. We work with, I think we're very lucky to work with just fantastic musicians. I think that's why we could write. Make the records so quickly.

Melissa: You didn't ever want to try working with mediocre musicians? just to let yourselves shine a little brighter? 

Courtney: I'll give you Smashmouth’s number if you need it. 

Will Taylor: That would be great. There's one song on the record called “Speech Bubble,” and that we asked Katie, who's our photographer, and we asked if she and my friend, Lily, who's an actor, who's a great singer, buts he's not like a professional singer, and Andrew Sarlow, who's the producer who'd come over from LA, who's very sensitive, lovely, intelligent man. And a brilliant musician in so many ways, but again, not a professional piano player. He hadn't tracked any piano on a recording before. And he plays the piano on that, and Katie and Lily sing the backing vocals on it. Katie, who can't sing in tune, she's not a singer, she'd be the first person to say. And, but that was, I guess, more intentional where it was like, when we asked the string players to play on harmonics, slightly out of their range by the end. But the idea with that one is that song is asking someone to start a relationship, and there's a vulnerability and an innocence and a sort of early formative feeling that we wanted to try and create. But with, yeah, with Tough Love, you can just rely on her to imbue it with her own emotional intelligence, and I will say with Billie and Jess from The Staves, who's also singing on the record, and Matt Field, who's on Defender, you can just sit back and relax because you just know that they are just emotionally intelligent players and singers, and you just don't have to worry.

Courtney: Have you felt like you've been able to sit back and relax during this podcast because you're with emotionally intelligent players? 

Will Taylor: Absolutely. It extends to podcasts 100%. 

Melissa: I have one question though. So, over the episodes that we have recorded, some songs have been ruined for people when a song is sent to them by someone who is dumping them. What song, out of your many songs you've written, what would be the worst song for someone to receive? 

Will Taylor: Ooh, dear. That's a good question. I think probably “Easy Tiger.” 

Melissa: Okay, tell us about the song. 

Will Taylor: Well, “Easy Tiger” is the first song on our last record, on our second record, which is a breakup record. Record is a breakup record in a way that is, obviously we saw a gap in the market. No one had made one before, so we just thought we should try and give people at least one breakup record.

Courtney: Amazing Jackson Brown never got around to it.

Will Taylor: He never quite did, did he? But we're just finishing his good work.

Melissa: Fleetwood Mac really should have tried that. 

Courtney: They could have gone somewhere. 

Will Taylor: Yeah, I emailed Adele and said, if you don't want to try this, we will. She didn't get back to me. 

Courtney: Wow, rude 

Will Taylor: Very rude. But with this particular breakup record, it's chronological. So, it was every song that was written in the wake of this breakup is in sequence on the record. 

Courtney: There is therapy out there, Will, like…

Will Taylor: Oh, I get that too. But no, the whole idea is that…

Melissa: Is it not covered by NHS? 

Will Taylor: I wish. I wish therapy was covered by NHS. I think it is, but it's like a year-long wait.

Melissa: That and like dental work, right? 

Will Taylor: Yeah, yeah, you've got to fend for yourself in terms of your teeth and your brain. Everything else is fine apparently. No, so it sounds kind of heftier than it is. The first half is very much in a dark place, but then the second half slowly, you build up out of it. And it's kind of posted by them. It's like a positive sort of question mark at the end. And the idea of this new record is that this is now a response to that. So it's like carrying on the story. And so it's also in chronological order. 

Courtney: Wow.  I love that. Wait, I don't think I understand what the chronological order of the most recent record is then.

Will Taylor: It's my relationship with Billie. It's like written in order. 

Courtney: So it's like it starts from meeting her until the present. 

Will Taylor: Yeah, it starts by asking. The first song is asking to start a relationship, and then it kind of just goes in, goes through it, throughout it. And then you get this sort of dark tussle, kind of halfway through with “Tough Love” and then “Bad Days.” And then by the end you have “Better Than Blue” and “Bedtime Reminder” that are very soothing and very like kind of happy and settled. 

Melissa: Yeah, if she ever sends you “Easy Tiger,” you know, you're in trouble. 

Will Taylor: Game over. Yeah. That was her favorite song actually w when we were getting together.

Courtney: There has to be some sort of litmus test there. I don't know what it is.

Will Taylor: No, I'm not sure either. I don't think I want to explore. 

Courtney: Best to not, yeah. Best to stay on the surface of things, sometimes. Well, also with “Tough Love,” you've recorded a second version that is getting a lot of attention on social media with Florence Pugh. So tell me about that. 

Will Taylor: I was very impressed with Florence when she came for many reasons one was that she'd been at the Oppenheimer premiere the night before and Came at 10 in the morning. We had 10 till 12 with the film crew to make this thing So she's a kind of a tall order, and also we had to teach her the thing and we actually were working it out whilst the cameras were rolling. But she's an A-list actor/celebrity, so I'm sure she's used to nailing it under pressure. But it's funny, I think I get the impression with Florence that, well, first of all, she, I will say that she's an extraordinarily down-to-earth person, more than most people I know, and very sweet and accommodating and easy to talk to and everything. But I think that when, when she was pre-fame, I think it was maybe when she was getting into Flyte, and into Billie, and into Laura. So I think there may be, I think there's a certain degree to which you're like, why are you so excited to be here? Like, why are you fangirling over this? You're so famous and amazing. And we're like this mid-level UK band. And I think it's because of that. I think cause it maybe just reverts her back to being a kind of 16-year-old music fan. That was lovely. And she showed up with no entourage, no assistant, no nothing. She just Ubered up to my flat.

Courtney: I was going to say, was that your kitchen or I don't, I think I've seen hers on TikTok.

Will Taylor: No, that was mine and Billie's flat. Just our little window table.

Melissa: So, um, do you mind asking if she wants to be on a podcast?

Courtney: No. 

Will Taylor: Sure, I think I'm seeing her in a few. I'm seeing her next week, so I'll put in a good word. 

Melissa: Fantastic. I bet she has a song an ex ruined, because everyone does. 

Will Taylor: She totally will. 

Melissa: Except for your bandmate.

Will Taylor: Except for him. Except for the freaks of nature.

Courtney: I'm curious if you have a favorite Billie Marten song? 

Will Taylor: God. Well, it's so funny because she's had such a long career already. And she's still in her 20s, and she's got four beautiful records out. Even the first one that she made when she was 15 or something, is just fantastic. I remember the first one I heard of hers was “Bird,” which is just a really profoundly good song. I always try and encourage her to play it live. She never does. I'd say probably live  — this might be because a lot of the time I'll play with her too on stage if she doesn't want to go out with a band, I'll just come along with her with an extra guitar and we'll do a little duo thing. And there's one song she does, if I'm playing with her, that I don't play on. So I go out into the audience and get to watch her. And that's, and she plays “Vanilla Baby” on her own. I think it was probably her best, but I mean, I love the new record. It has songs about me. 

Courtney: I wouldn't love that. 

Will Taylor: It's so funny cause both of us really had our heads down when we were making these records, and we knew we were making these records for each other. And so that was like a lovely thing, but we're also working on our craft and making these records and stuff.

Melissa: Were you like sitting across from each other at Cafe Nero, writing lyrics about each other, like covering your paper, like, don't see what I'm writing.

Will Taylor: Yes, but with berets. Don't forget the berets. No, it's infuriating actually with Billie cause, cause Nick and I will have practically have shirts and ties on and meet Monday to Friday and sit, and we write. It's like we go to the office to write. We take it in our stride and everything but we have to work for it. Billie, on the other hand, she just sort of disappears like a cat into a kind of corner for about two hours and then just emerges and has a whole record.

Courtney: Oh, that must drive you nuts.

Will Taylor: It’s absolutely infuriating. I don't think we can keep up with her, in that respect. But it was nice because there was a London show that she did this year that I went along to, and I was like, I don't want to go on stage for this either. I just want to stand on the balcony and watch the show. And that was when it dawned on me. I was like, when listening to her play these songs live and people were singing along and stuff, and I just wanted to be like, “That's about me. Everyone, look at me.” 

Melissa: The spotlight turns on you.

Courtney: That's really adorable, though. There's something very sweet about that, I think.

Will Taylor: It's nice. But it's a funny one though, because I have obviously by nature of how it works, written songs for people. And so I know what it's like to give a song to someone and say, I wrote this for you. And it's a lovely thing to be able to do, but I've never had it the other way around. And it's like when someone starts complimenting you after you've been complimenting them and you go, no, I don't like this. I don't know how to feel. 

Melissa: Well, I, for one, cannot wait to hear the song you write about two podcasters. 

Courtney: Oh, wow, Please don’t.

Will Taylor: I've got the afternoon free. Soundcheck's not till three so…

Courtney: Please, I'll give you anything if you don't. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. It's my goal in life to make sure no man ever writes songs about me, so…I do it through might or fright. 

Will Taylor: Would women writing you songs, would that work? 

Courtney: No, I prefer to write my own stories, thank you so much.

Will Taylor: Okay, so you just fundamentally don’t want anyone to project onto you? 

Courtney: Absolutely not, thank you. Thank you so much. 

Will Taylor: Okay, fair enough. 

Melissa: I'm open to everything. Except hugs. 

Courtney: Except hugs.

Will Taylor: Got it. No hugs, but songs, fine. 

Melissa: Totally fine. There's no touching involved. 

Courtney: It's remote enough that it's fine. So, Will, Flyte is going to continue touring a headlining tour through November. Tell us a little bit about how it's gone so far — you've already been on tour through October. And what you're looking forward to for the rest of this tour.

Will Taylor: Well, we started in Europe about a month ago, and we were opening for a band called Half Moon Run. And that was three weeks in Europe, and there were lovely theatres and everything and it was great, but after a while it's like, I want to play to our own audience. It's a great thing to open because your job is to walk out on stage and convince a thousand people that they should pay attention to you, and afterwards they should continue to pay attention to you. And now we're currently in a car driving around America, opening for someone called Rayland Baxter. And that would have been a three-week run, and that's kind of a little bit more fun rock and roll and that's been great. So it's, it feels like the enjoyment level has increased and n when we start in Chicago, we'll have our own band, and we'll be playing to our own audience, And then when we get to the UK, we'll be playing with a big six-piece band, and there'll be a harp, and there'll be a string section in London, and there'll be really big rooms. And so it's nice that we've kind of, it's been 52 shows in a row that we will have done, but it'll just keep getting more and more enjoyable as the tour continues.

Courtney: I just want to bring it back to Jackson Brown and ask you in all earnestness: Did your fandom of Jackson Brown lead you to a fandom with Nico? Or did you come to her eventually through the Velvet Underground? Because I'm positive you eventually found her. 

Will Taylor: I was definitely listening to Velvet Underground and Nico. that's a kind of prescribed record at that age if you're getting into music.

Courtney: Yes, absolutely. Yes, 

Will Taylor: And I didn't actually realize the link of her singing “These Days” Until a little later. 

Courtney: So it was really Velvet Underground that led you to Nico, and then eventually, you gained a new respect for Jackson Brown when you realized his connection to coolness?

Will Taylor: Exactly. Was that the correct answer? 

Courtney: That was the correct answer. Yes. You win. You win an episode of a podcast with us. 

Will Taylor: Okay. God, I'm honored. Well, look, thank you so much for having me. 

Courtney: Thank you. It was such a pleasure to meet you. We really appreciate it.

Will Taylor: Yeah, I can't wait to meet you eventually, Melissa, and not hug you.

Melissa: Oh, anytime. Anytime. If you're touring through Portland, or actually maybe in LA when you're there. So many options to not hug.

Will Taylor: Brilliant. And every day for the rest of my life I will not be hugging you. 

Melissa: I'm touched. Thank you.