A long, long time ago, around the middle of 2005, a pair of creative, musically-inclined young gents in Redlands, California wondered how they were going to pass the summer. Taylor Jordan and Mike Wilkerson had been in various bands and musical projects, but they wanted to do something a bit different for them, sort of an indie-rock experiment that would draw listeners to the past, an America of traveling medicine shows, frontier gospel tent meetings and the old carnivals with bearded women and snake charmers. For the band’s moniker they chose "The Young Brothers revival", a tip of the hat to both the distant Past and the current indie scene devoted to Roots Music - folk, country, blues.
They began recording in Taylor’s home studio, sometimes working up tunes as they just played along into the recording machine. One of the first tunes was "Are You", a rollicking Acid Rock blues in the vein of the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the glory days of the Fillmore West. Also "Saint and Sinner", a Wilkerson composition that Taylor reworked using the "Tobacco Road"- beat. "Dancing with the Dead", one of Jordan’s songs about meeting El Diablo himself, took on a Cowboy music feel. As the sessions rolled on, fate took a cruel twist and Mike died suddenly one lonely night. His shocked family buried him back in Texas, his native soil, leaving Taylor to ponder the situation and grieve.
Another hurting friend of Mike’s, Gary Kjorvestad, had heard the music and gave Taylor a sheaf of lyrics. Using them, Taylor composed "Till the Day That I Die", a rocker about materialism gone insane, "Fallen Angel", a Country song about a mixed up small town girl, and "Stuck in a Bottle", a jangling bar room piano tune about love gone wrong. Taylor uncovered a traditional folk song, "All Night, All Day", and gave it a reverential stillness. Using a page of Mike’s unused lyrics he found in a notebook, Taylor wrote "My Enemy in Red". As a tribute to Mike, Taylor penned two songs, "Michael’s Song", a dramatic rocker about Mike’s death, and "Pretty", an experimental track describing their relationship. Gary brought Taylor a simple three chord blues song he’d come up with and Taylor transformed it into a multiple guitar ode to human foolishness, "Fruit of the Tree". Strangely enough, a song Mike had recorded alone based on Gary’s lyrics, "Give Me Another Shot", speaking of Jesus’ sorrows, fit in with the collection.
Once the name of the CD was chosen, "Hymns from the Gutter", Taylor wrote a mournful title track and the list was complete. "Hymns from the Gutter" - pain and loss, the thick and thin of life, tears and memories and ghosts.
