Arts & Culture: Gustafer Yellowgold's Wide Wild World - An alternative to children's entertainment
By Aaron Epple
Morgan Taylor was an illustrator and songwriter long before he ever thought to combine the two, and even then he wasn’t entirely sure who he was creating his musical stories for.
“It was extremely satisfying creatively because I could do everything and (in the beginning) I was just doing it for myself,” Taylor said, speaking recently by telephone from his NYC home. “But I think the way it turned out, it’s definitely for kids.”
The 35-year-old Kettering native has been living in New York for six years working as a sound engineer, though he’s been involved in drawing and creating music since the early 1990s.
“Most of the songs I’ve had for awhile but they weren’t a part of my normal bands because they were more quirky and had more humor,” he said. “I always felt something was missing so I added illustrations to fit the songs.”
The result is a DVD called Gustafer Yellowgold’s Wide Wild World, a series of animated shorts set to music that, when viewed collectively, tells the story of a yellow, legume-shaped creature who dwells on the sun with a bevy of eccentric friends.
“Gustafer was a character I had back even when I was working at Gem City Records,” Taylor said. “I would draw him on the marker board, placing him in various scenes according to what album was coming out that week.”
As a younger man in Dayton, Taylor was active in the local music scene, performing in several of what he describes as “Anglo-pop” bands. One tour took him to New York and he fell in love almost immediately.
“I wanted to move here. The rest of the band planned on coming up but they didn’t. Just one of those things that was meant to be…or not to be,” Taylor chuckled.
Indeed, Taylor’s life proceeded much more smoothly than what we’re accustomed to seeing when Midwesterners take a crack at a major elitist center.
“Lots of people struggle here but I was lucky to get a job as a sound engineer on my second day,” he said. “I met everyone I play with now, including my wife, within the first six months.”
Taylor still works nights as a sound engineer at such well-known clubs as The Living Room for acts such as Norah Jones.
“I do enjoy it but I don’t want to be a sound engineer forever,” he said. “We just started (performing Gustafer) in early July, and people (have been coming) back (to) buy the DVDs (after live showings). Word-of-mouth has really worked, the press has been real responsive, and turnout has been good considering New York is typically empty in the summer.”
Taylor feels Gustafer addresses issues not commonly found in children’s entertainment.
“It gets into mortality and death, acknowledging that it’s there and this is what it will look like ‘but not yet!’ and also what it really means to lose a friend,” he said. “I think a lot of other children’s companies are real pandering, dumbed down. When I was four years old, I was listening to the Beatles and ELO, not Barney.”
Taylor claims this approach brings out diverse reactions in the audience.
“I’m always surprised how much the parents are into it,” he said. “I see them getting teary-eyed, a twist of childhood regression, I guess. Infants are at the show and bouncing gleefully. They don’t know what it is, of course, but they’re connecting on some level. It’s always unpredictable what the 4- and 5-year-olds will say. It’s a really cool experience.”
It was on a recent return trip to Dayton that Taylor and his wife (and business partner) decided to bring Gustafer to his home city. He found the venue he was looking for in the Mathile Theatre in the Schuster Center. The live show will consist of the animated scenes being projected onto a large screen while Taylor and his band perform the songs live to accompany the action. The band, incidentally, is comprised of members of Taylor’s ex-Dayton outfit, Mink.
“Mathile has a special deal for independents. It’s not like they were blown away by it; they just said, ‘We have this space available if you want it,’” Taylor laughed. “We have a lot of friends (in Dayton) and we didn’t want to do it in a bar.”
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