Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriquez

The duo of Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez is one of the hottest new acts on the Americana scene, if you can call an act with a 63-year-old songwriting legend new. Taylor, who wrote most of the songs on their latest album, The Trouble With Humans, has recorded hundreds of tunes over the years, including the ’60s hits “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning,” more recently a chart-topper for dance hall star Shaggy. Everyone from Frank Sinatra to Jimi Hendrix has cut songs by Taylor. “Despite the hits, I always struggled with the record companies,” Taylor says over the phone from Nashville, another stop on the duo’s current tour. “I like hard-core country and rock’n’roll, but they wanted me to be pop, so I quit making records in the late ’70s.” Taylor, who’d always been extremely lucky, left music and took up gambling full time. He was so good he was banned from casinos in New Jersey and Las Vegas. Years later, when his mother fell ill in 1995, Taylor started singing to her and, gradually, he returned to the music business. “The royalties make it easier to tour,” Taylor says. “It’s still a grind, but I do it because I love it.” Taylor hooked up with Rodriguez two years ago, impressed with her fiddling and vocal talents. Since then, he’s encouraged her to write songs. “I didn’t think I could write,” Rodriguez says, “but one day Chip told me to bring him a melody by the end of the week, I pushed myself and did it and he started spitting out words, and organically, the song came.” “Carrie’s just being modest,” Taylor adds. “She grew up with bluegrass music, and brings in grooves and variations I never could have come up with. She takes the music in directions I never would have thought of on my own.”