What I love most about my old school mate Travis Taylor, is his blind, dogged determination to be a blues artist…He has devoted his life to the craft. Several albums, endless live shows, a couple of recording trips to the United States later, he IS a bluesman and there’s life in the Old Dog yet…His two latest albums with band One More Mile (OMM) are absolute bangers…buy them, put them on, crank up the volume and get grooving.
We met at the Prince Alfred College boarding house in Adelaide, South Australia, in the early 1980s, he from Mt Gambier in the SE of the state and me, a farm boy from Kangaroo Island. Travis was the biggest schoolboy I’d ever encountered, a fully developed chap in stark contrast to myself…a squeaky voiced adolescent with hair on my head, but nowhere else. Despite our physical differences, we developed an immediate kinship and have remained good friends for almost 50 years.
Travis excelled on the football field, playing for the First XVIII, but a knee injury put paid to his sporting aspirations and, while convalescing from a knee reconstruction operation in hospital, he began pondering his future. Now that a sporting career was off the agenda, he began wondering how he should spend his life. “I heard Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee playing on the hospital PA system and I thought, “That’s what I’ll do, I’ll learn to play the harmonica,”” he said.
On the occasion of his 21st birthday, a lovely lass, whom Travis was smitten with, Eleanor “Elle” Dark, gave him a present that launched his musical career. “She gave me a harmonica…and then she gave me the blues,” said Travis, for Ms Dark had sadly fallen for another, and Travis has been singing about “Woman Trouble” ever since.
“I started trying to play harmonica like Sonny Terry, which is close to impossible, because he’s blind and plays upside down and back-to-front as far as the harmonica goes, and he’s just a genius,” Travis said.
John Mayall and Sonny Boy Williamson were also influential in developing his ear for the blues genre, but when his fellow musician friend, Andrew Hall, introduced him to “Hoodoo Man Blues” by Junior Wells and Buddy Guy, his blues wheels really started spinning.
While living in the snowfields with friend “Fish” Thompson, a very patient fellow, Travis practiced the harmonica incessantly and his pursuit of harp mastery continued until he got his dog “Phantom,” who either wasn’t as patient as “Fish” or was attempting to accompany Travis on the mouth organ as he’d start howling as soon as he began to play…this meant he was unable to practice at home for several years.
Travis developed a love for New Orleans-style piano blues listening to Professor Longhair, Alan Toussaint and Fats Domino. He said, “When I was in London, I saw Dr John playing in Camden Town, This inspired me to start writing my own music.” Not having a piano handy, he said, “I decided to teach myself the guitar as I couldn’t write songs on the harmonica.” This was a great leap forward as Travis now started becoming an artist in his own right rather than performing covers of his blues idols.
He started listening to the likes of Freddy, Albert and BB King, ZZ Top, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Stevie Ray and Jimmy Vaughan. Organ also piqued his broad musical interest, and he tuned into Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff and Smith. Fellow muso Brian Morrison gave him an album titled “Wild Bill Davis Live at Count Basie’s Lounge,” and Davis’ swingin’ sounds also had a big influence on his blues style.
“The first band I was in was the “MaliBlues” with some fellas from Pembroke College, and we played gigs at the Marryatville Hotel in Adelaide. I then joined “Cookin’with Chilli” and played at the Ko Club every Friday night, ahead of “Blind Dog and the Guides,” who took over and played well into the night. “Blind Dog Wally” was their lead singer, and when Wally had to spend a bit of time in jail at her Majesty’s pleasure, I filled in for him and assumed the “Blind Dog” handle and “Blind Dog Taylor” I became.”
“Greg Baker (the harmonica player from Smokestack Lightning Adelaide Blues Band) was a mentor of mine, and he used to encourage me to listen to music that helped to focus my musicianship,” Travis said. “He turned me on to “Hooker ‘n’ Heat” a collaboration between John Lee Hooker and Alan Wilson from “Canned Heat.” The album achieves a live music sound in a studio recording and helped shape Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor’s stage personality and presence.
In 2016, Travis reluctantly agreed to attend a religious gathering in Sydney of 16,000 African devotees to the somewhat controversial Malawian Prophet Shepherd Bushiri at the insistence of his devout born-again Christian partner, Ugandan-Australian Esther Poni. At the event, Travis was approached by an event official who asked to interview him. Travis said, “Nah, Man, you don’t want to interview me, I really don’t even want to be here.” The man insisted he had “presence,” and encouraged him to agree to the interview. Esther’s son Simon said, smiling, “You know what “presence” means, right? It means you are the only white guy here!” Looking around, Travis realised the boy was right, he stood out like an Allen’s Kool Mint in a huge bowl of Maltesers!
Later, Travis was selected from the crowd and taken to the stage where the good Shepherd Bushiri asked Travis who “Nick” was…”One of the guys in my band,” said Travis. “Stick with Nick and everything will be alright,” the mystic mysteriously stated. Bushiri, who is much smaller than Travis, then apparently knocked him flat on his back with some kind of African mojo power surge. Travis was completely shocked, and Bushiri informed him that he had cleared a “blockage” from his body that was “preventing him from attaining his full potential.”
Malawian Prophet Shepherd BushiriEsther Poni
While The Shepherd may have cleared one blockage, it seemed Blind Dog had another, and on his return to Adelaide from the evangelical revival in Sydney, he suffered a stroke and was knocked down again.
While recovering from his health scare at Esther’s home, Travis, perhaps from the powerfully compelling influence of Shepherd Bushiri’s religious revelations or, more likely, gratitude for not being dead, Travis began listening to Gospel music. When he found a tune that resonated with him, he’d post it on his FaceBook page. This caught the attention of other blues/gospel lovers worldwide, and he received a friend request from Al Blake, fellow harmonica aficionado and one of the original members of the legendary “Hollywood Fats Band” from Los Angeles.
Their online rapport led to a real friendship and a musical collaboration after Blind Dog Taylor and his band One More Mile won the chance to travel to Memphis, Tennessee, in the United States to play at the Memphis International Blues Challenge in 2019.
Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor (Left) and band One More Mile win the 2018 competition to represent Adelaide in the Memphis Blues Challenge.
When one of the OMM guitarists Sav Palaktsoglou was unable to travel to the United States with the band due to family commitments, Travis urged the other OMM axeman, Nick Kipridis, to join them on the trip. Nick agreed, as did the other members. So Travis and the band boarded a plane and flew to the United States to test their talents and blues mastery against all contenders.
Travis was able to realise the prophecy from Shepherd Bushiri’s gathering to “Stick with Nick “and, while the festival turned out to be what Travis referred to as the “Memphis debacle,” the band won the blues challenge. While in the United States, Travis was able to meet Al Blake in person, and they decided to collaborate on a recording. Al introduced him and the band to another member of The Hollywood Fats Band, Fred Kaplan, a recording studio and music mixing genius, and they recorded about 60 songs over two days at Kaplan’s Full Contact Recording Studios in Camarillo, California. The collaboration resulted in two superbly crafted albums featuring a couple of musical industry legends with bona fide blues chops. These albums (Vol 1: The Hollywood Connection and Vol 2: The Camarillo Connection) include new material, old songs and some well-rendered interpretations of blues classics and have elevated Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor and OMM to star class. “Al and Fred gave our sound an authenticity we didn’t have without them,” said Travis.
Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor and One More Mile live at The Wheatsheaf Hotel in Adelaide, South Australia.
His many years playing live gigs in Adelaide and elsewhere in the world enabled Travis to handle the recording sessions with ease, and he quickly developed a professional rapport with the Hollywood Fats chaps. “There’s no substitute for playing live,” he said, “If someone falls off the rigging onto the stage, you’ve just gotta plough on through and keep playing.” “You can practice as much as you like in your room–and you should– to get yourself to a level that you can work with other musicians and understand what’s going on.”
Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor and One More Mile Live at the Semaphore Workers Club on Aug 22, 2018
Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor modestly describes himself as a “recording artist/engineer with 30+ years experience,” but he is a genuinely talented artist and performer and has lived the blues in a deliberate and dedicated fashion ever since his hospital-bed revelation in the 1980s. He made the blues his life’s focus since that day, and he’s been diligent and successful in the pursuit of his objective.
Few men at the dusk of their careers can gaze in retrospect at tangible evidence of their life’s work…Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor has an oeuvre of original songs and recordings that showcase his dedication to blues music and his many decades of effort to master the craft.
Travis “Blind Dog”Taylor: Aussie BluesMan
Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor is an award-winning blues singer, guitarist, and harmonica player based in Adelaide, South Australia. He has recorded under names including Blind Dog Taylor & The Healers, Blind Dog Taylor & The Heat and Blind Dog Taylor & One More Mile. His recordings and videos are available on Bandcamp and YouTube.
All of Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor’s recordings with his bands “The Healers,” “The Heat” and “One More Mile,” and collaborations with other artists like JJ Hackett are available for download on BandCamp.
Paul Murray is the founder of the LivinginPeace Project.
www.livinginpeace.com
Paul originally from Australia, but have been living in New Zealand for 14 years. Before that he was in Japan for a decade working as a journalist. He met his wife Sanae in Japan and they married in 2008.
The Rongolian Star 
Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor Wags his Tail Feather
Off the Top of My Head
By Paul Murray
What I love most about my old school mate Travis Taylor, is his blind, dogged determination to be a blues artist…He has devoted his life to the craft. Several albums, endless live shows, a couple of recording trips to the United States later, he IS a bluesman and there’s life in the Old Dog yet…His two latest albums with band One More Mile (OMM) are absolute bangers…buy them, put them on, crank up the volume and get grooving.
We met at the Prince Alfred College boarding house in Adelaide, South Australia, in the early 1980s, he from Mt Gambier in the SE of the state and me, a farm boy from Kangaroo Island. Travis was the biggest schoolboy I’d ever encountered, a fully developed chap in stark contrast to myself…a squeaky voiced adolescent with hair on my head, but nowhere else. Despite our physical differences, we developed an immediate kinship and have remained good friends for almost 50 years.
Travis excelled on the football field, playing for the First XVIII, but a knee injury put paid to his sporting aspirations and, while convalescing from a knee reconstruction operation in hospital, he began pondering his future. Now that a sporting career was off the agenda, he began wondering how he should spend his life. “I heard Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee playing on the hospital PA system and I thought, “That’s what I’ll do, I’ll learn to play the harmonica,”” he said.
On the occasion of his 21st birthday, a lovely lass, whom Travis was smitten with, Eleanor “Elle” Dark, gave him a present that launched his musical career. “She gave me a harmonica…and then she gave me the blues,” said Travis, for Ms Dark had sadly fallen for another, and Travis has been singing about “Woman Trouble” ever since.
“I started trying to play harmonica like Sonny Terry, which is close to impossible, because he’s blind and plays upside down and back-to-front as far as the harmonica goes, and he’s just a genius,” Travis said.
John Mayall and Sonny Boy Williamson were also influential in developing his ear for the blues genre, but when his fellow musician friend, Andrew Hall, introduced him to “Hoodoo Man Blues” by Junior Wells and Buddy Guy, his blues wheels really started spinning.
While living in the snowfields with friend “Fish” Thompson, a very patient fellow, Travis practiced the harmonica incessantly and his pursuit of harp mastery continued until he got his dog “Phantom,” who either wasn’t as patient as “Fish” or was attempting to accompany Travis on the mouth organ as he’d start howling as soon as he began to play…this meant he was unable to practice at home for several years.
Travis developed a love for New Orleans-style piano blues listening to Professor Longhair, Alan Toussaint and Fats Domino. He said, “When I was in London, I saw Dr John playing in Camden Town, This inspired me to start writing my own music.” Not having a piano handy, he said, “I decided to teach myself the guitar as I couldn’t write songs on the harmonica.” This was a great leap forward as Travis now started becoming an artist in his own right rather than performing covers of his blues idols.
He started listening to the likes of Freddy, Albert and BB King, ZZ Top, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Stevie Ray and Jimmy Vaughan. Organ also piqued his broad musical interest, and he tuned into Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff and Smith. Fellow muso Brian Morrison gave him an album titled “Wild Bill Davis Live at Count Basie’s Lounge,” and Davis’ swingin’ sounds also had a big influence on his blues style.
“The first band I was in was the “MaliBlues” with some fellas from Pembroke College, and we played gigs at the Marryatville Hotel in Adelaide. I then joined “Cookin’with Chilli” and played at the Ko Club every Friday night, ahead of “Blind Dog and the Guides,” who took over and played well into the night. “Blind Dog Wally” was their lead singer, and when Wally had to spend a bit of time in jail at her Majesty’s pleasure, I filled in for him and assumed the “Blind Dog” handle and “Blind Dog Taylor” I became.”
“Greg Baker (the harmonica player from Smokestack Lightning Adelaide Blues Band) was a mentor of mine, and he used to encourage me to listen to music that helped to focus my musicianship,” Travis said. “He turned me on to “Hooker ‘n’ Heat” a collaboration between John Lee Hooker and Alan Wilson from “Canned Heat.” The album achieves a live music sound in a studio recording and helped shape Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor’s stage personality and presence.
In 2016, Travis reluctantly agreed to attend a religious gathering in Sydney of 16,000 African devotees to the somewhat controversial Malawian Prophet Shepherd Bushiri at the insistence of his devout born-again Christian partner, Ugandan-Australian Esther Poni. At the event, Travis was approached by an event official who asked to interview him. Travis said, “Nah, Man, you don’t want to interview me, I really don’t even want to be here.” The man insisted he had “presence,” and encouraged him to agree to the interview. Esther’s son Simon said, smiling, “You know what “presence” means, right? It means you are the only white guy here!” Looking around, Travis realised the boy was right, he stood out like an Allen’s Kool Mint in a huge bowl of Maltesers!
Later, Travis was selected from the crowd and taken to the stage where the good Shepherd Bushiri asked Travis who “Nick” was…”One of the guys in my band,” said Travis. “Stick with Nick and everything will be alright,” the mystic mysteriously stated. Bushiri, who is much smaller than Travis, then apparently knocked him flat on his back with some kind of African mojo power surge. Travis was completely shocked, and Bushiri informed him that he had cleared a “blockage” from his body that was “preventing him from attaining his full potential.”
While The Shepherd may have cleared one blockage, it seemed Blind Dog had another, and on his return to Adelaide from the evangelical revival in Sydney, he suffered a stroke and was knocked down again.
While recovering from his health scare at Esther’s home, Travis, perhaps from the powerfully compelling influence of Shepherd Bushiri’s religious revelations or, more likely, gratitude for not being dead, Travis began listening to Gospel music. When he found a tune that resonated with him, he’d post it on his FaceBook page. This caught the attention of other blues/gospel lovers worldwide, and he received a friend request from Al Blake, fellow harmonica aficionado and one of the original members of the legendary “Hollywood Fats Band” from Los Angeles.
Their online rapport led to a real friendship and a musical collaboration after Blind Dog Taylor and his band One More Mile won the chance to travel to Memphis, Tennessee, in the United States to play at the Memphis International Blues Challenge in 2019.
When one of the OMM guitarists Sav Palaktsoglou was unable to travel to the United States with the band due to family commitments, Travis urged the other OMM axeman, Nick Kipridis, to join them on the trip. Nick agreed, as did the other members. So Travis and the band boarded a plane and flew to the United States to test their talents and blues mastery against all contenders.
Travis was able to realise the prophecy from Shepherd Bushiri’s gathering to “Stick with Nick “and, while the festival turned out to be what Travis referred to as the “Memphis debacle,” the band won the blues challenge. While in the United States, Travis was able to meet Al Blake in person, and they decided to collaborate on a recording. Al introduced him and the band to another member of The Hollywood Fats Band, Fred Kaplan, a recording studio and music mixing genius, and they recorded about 60 songs over two days at Kaplan’s Full Contact Recording Studios in Camarillo, California. The collaboration resulted in two superbly crafted albums featuring a couple of musical industry legends with bona fide blues chops. These albums (Vol 1: The Hollywood Connection and Vol 2: The Camarillo Connection) include new material, old songs and some well-rendered interpretations of blues classics and have elevated Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor and OMM to star class. “Al and Fred gave our sound an authenticity we didn’t have without them,” said Travis.
His many years playing live gigs in Adelaide and elsewhere in the world enabled Travis to handle the recording sessions with ease, and he quickly developed a professional rapport with the Hollywood Fats chaps. “There’s no substitute for playing live,” he said, “If someone falls off the rigging onto the stage, you’ve just gotta plough on through and keep playing.” “You can practice as much as you like in your room–and you should– to get yourself to a level that you can work with other musicians and understand what’s going on.”
Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor modestly describes himself as a “recording artist/engineer with 30+ years experience,” but he is a genuinely talented artist and performer and has lived the blues in a deliberate and dedicated fashion ever since his hospital-bed revelation in the 1980s. He made the blues his life’s focus since that day, and he’s been diligent and successful in the pursuit of his objective.
Few men at the dusk of their careers can gaze in retrospect at tangible evidence of their life’s work…Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor has an oeuvre of original songs and recordings that showcase his dedication to blues music and his many decades of effort to master the craft.
Travis “Blind Dog”Taylor: Aussie BluesMan
Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor is an award-winning blues singer, guitarist, and harmonica player based in Adelaide, South Australia. He has recorded under names including Blind Dog Taylor & The Healers, Blind Dog Taylor & The Heat and Blind Dog Taylor & One More Mile. His recordings and videos are available on Bandcamp and YouTube.
All of Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor’s recordings with his bands “The Healers,” “The Heat” and “One More Mile,” and collaborations with other artists like JJ Hackett are available for download on BandCamp.
https://travistaylor1.bandcamp.com/
Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor Discography
1996: Heavy Sugar by Blind Dog Taylor & The Healers
1998: Cash To Splash by Blind Dog Taylor & The Healers
1999: After Hours Inferno by Bind Dog Taylor & The Heat
2000: One Bite At The Cherry by Blind Dog Taylor & The Heat
2011: Blue In The Face by Travis “Blind Dog” Taylor
2018: Secrets Of Kangaroo Island by Travis Taylor & JJ Hackett
2019: Are We There Yet? By Travis Taylor and ONE MORE MILE
2021: Forbidden Fruit: by Travis Taylor and ONE MORE MILE
2025: Volume 1 THE HOLLYWOOD CONNECTION by Travis Taylor’s ONE MORE MILE with Al Blake and Fred Kaplan
2025: Volume 2 THE CAMARILLO CONNECTION by Travis Taylor’s ONE MORE MILE with Al Blake and Fred Kaplan
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About LivinginPeaceProject
Paul Murray is the founder of the LivinginPeace Project. www.livinginpeace.com Paul originally from Australia, but have been living in New Zealand for 14 years. Before that he was in Japan for a decade working as a journalist. He met his wife Sanae in Japan and they married in 2008.