Tar & Flowers is Taylor Hungerford. Taylor was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley. At a young age, his parents relocated to Chatsworth, a small equestrian town on the outer rim of the valley. Chatsworth’s rich western history would affect Taylor in ways he was unaware of.
Taylor’s interest in classic rock would lead him to different types of roots music. The delta blues fingerstylings of Skip James, the more modern fingerstyle of Leo Kottke, and nuanced slide of Ry Cooder would all help to craft Taylor’s style of acoustic folk picking.
Trips down to the local honky-tonk, The Cowboy Palace, would introduce Taylor to different types of country, rock and Americana music.
Summer trips to his cousin’s ranch in Colorado, as well as the outskirts of New Mexico showed Taylor the romance and bounty of the west. Here, Taylor was also introduced the poetry of William Blake and Richard Wilbur - poetry that would influence Taylor’s lyric content and writing structure.
Western Symphony has emerged as Taylor's musical interpretation of the west. Going from the more spaghetti western influence of Ennio Morricone, to old medieval ballads, Western Symphony is just as the title suggests: a symphony of Western music both new and old as well as a love letter to the myth and grandeur of the west.
Tar & Flowers is currently based in The San Fernando Valley and can be heard wherever there is a call to the open bounty of the west.
