The Story of Over the Mountain

This album is not about grief.

But it was out of the depths of loss that it found its way to the surface.

For those left behind after death, the throughline of life can feel severed, like there’s a before and after. “When Mama was alive…”

Taylor’s mama, called Big Ang by his dad, never heard the songs on Over the Mountain, save for two Taylor strummed at the side of her hospice bed (affectionately referred to as her Cadillac).

Then one day Big Ang rode her Cadillac to glory, leaving Taylor behind with a broken heart, but also, the imprint only a mama can make. He feels a nearness to his mom, not because he believes she is looking down on him, but because he considers himself a torch bearer of everything she taught him: humility, kindness, love.

Grief and will wrestled for a bit in the aftermath of Big Ang’s departure, but Taylor’s will won eventually. He picked his guitar back up, left his living room, and took his music back to a stage, which, it turns out, was just the place to honor his mama and carry on the torch.

And, it turns out, a bluegrass gig was just the place to meet Rhys Hester, a Clemson law professor and, arguably, the most vital person in this album’s cast of characters.

Later, over BBQ and margaritas, Rhys and Taylor talked about Doc and Merle Watson, western North Carolina mountain towns, and a love for stripped down sounds – just vocals and a guitar.

Then, Rhys asked Taylor to play as a duo on occasion. Except, for 30 years, Taylor has never partnered with anyone to make music because he wanted to bear the responsibility on his own.

But they just…meshed, both in music and in manners, with honesty and a willingness to talk and listen to each other. 

The vision for Over the Mountain began to materialize with absolutely no bells and whistles. Just a voice and two guitars, exactly how Taylor and Rhys, and Doc and Merle, like it. For three days in late October, they cut a record in a snug Pisgah Forest studio. The process wasn’t without a hard spell or two, but that’s why Taylor and Rhys are perfect for each other. With some humbleness and hot coffee, they listened, really listened, giving deference to one another, so that a record, a good record, could get made.

While Rhys might be the most crucial to making this album, it’s Big Ang that’s the star. Or rather, the other Big Ang, Taylor’s guitar, a gift his mama arranged before she died.

Taylor likes to think the conversation between his parents went something like this: “When I pass away, I want you to give money to Taylor, and tell him to get him a real, real good, real nice guitar, and, um, and tell him to not, like, shop a deal or save it. Tell him, freaking, you know, just really spend it, really get one.”

(Big Ang is a Martin HD-28.)

The summary of the album is best portrayed in the cover art, a ceramic relief of a man standing at a fence, looking over a mountain. This keepsake of his great-grandmother’s is one of the earliest objects that he can recall from the deep, deep, dusky part of his mind. It hung near the kitchen sink in three separate kitchens of hers, and now lives in Taylor’s own.

Even as a boy, Taylor was enamored with the man looking yonder, wondering what adventures and journeying awaited. Now, as he’s gotten older, he’s thinking about the time he spent over the mountain – his experiences, the people he met. Is he at peace? (He is.)

For every listener, whether the man in the relief has just returned or is about to head out is up to them.

Taylor would readily admit that he’s not the first or the last person to ever lose a mama. But his deep loss has altered the rest of his life, even as grief tempers itself. He will always carry her with him on the trail up and down the mountain.

That’s why Over the Mountain is for everyone, not just those who mourn. Like a mountain, life is full of beauty and darkness, peace and chaos, gentility and extremes. Every lyric on the album is intended to join the listener through it all, until, as Doc’s words in the last song bear witness to, “we shall all be reunited, in that land beyond the skies.”

Written by Jeanne Petrizzo Gomes