Cavalier King 'The Sun Revolutions' album

It has been said that everyone is a hero at birth. But in most, no sooner is the cord cut than this noble endowment goes the way of the human tail. Not so for the renegade known as the Cavalier King, the superhero-like alter ego of painter/musician Chris Taylor. Cavalier King’s music is hypnotic, poetic and defiant. The Sun Revolutions tells of an awakening in a fearful and ever-darkening world dominated by wrenching loss and worse, crushing tedium.

The songs of The Sun Revolutions are not merely stories, but epic expressions of chivalry, valor and the search for truth. Cavalier King’s very first words to us, “So it came out one day that I don’t pray to virgin mothers”, leave us no room for doubt. The song “Renegade” is his unequivocal repudiation of the conventional, the superstitious, and the supernatural ideologies that pervade the populace. Then, in the title track “Sun Revolution”, Cavalier King takes us into the epic battle against the nefarious Shadows of Industry, for only in the context of combat, facing imminent death, will we gain awareness of the Eternal. He sings: “two warm bodies lie terrified under the manhole cover ill, writing the new constitution fighting the Sun Revolution…But today we will reign, forever.”

Unfortunately, however, the Cavalier King’s cause dissolves into an insatiable fever wherein he confuses the unwitting masses for the enemy. In the self-titled song, “Cavalier King”, we witness the destruction of the known world at the hand of the once valiant and noble knight who, like Alexander the Great, has become the undisputed King. But as he stands triumphant at the end of his last battle, he realizes he is merely a king of corpses, for the vast carnage leaves him devastated, disillusioned and paralyzed by his own weakness for revenge. Now The Sun Revolutions are coming, and Cavalier King will carry out the business of saving the world. Or destroying it. Or both.

The Sun Revolutions emerged from Chris Taylor’s Manhattan bedroom in 2005, and was fortified on a former killing floor in Hadley, Massachusetts at Mark Alan Miller’s (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.) Slaughterhouse Studios.

Biography

At one point Chris Taylor found himself stretched out across the subway tracks waiting for the oncoming F train to release him from the enduring anguish.

Four Years Earlier

I first met Chris Taylor amid the red rocks of the Arizona desert. I was working at the local library and Chris emerged as our newest and most frequent visitor. He was obsessed with subjects such as the History of War, Existentialism, and Religion. Our first conversation was after his third or fourth visit when I asked why he read so many Buddhist-related books. Chris explained, without the slightest shred of piety or pretense, that he was “striving to discover Buddha’s original intent, since, as in Christianity, the original meaning of the founder was so radically corrupted by the followers…do you have anything in Sanskrit?” Our brief, but surprisingly spontaneous conversation, was the first of many during the summer of 2001. I eventually came to know Chris as one of the brightest and most interesting people I’d ever met.

Chris had been a nomad of sorts. He was raised in Northampton, Massachusetts, but as soon as he could, he left and began trekking from city to city, taking a variety of jobs, and most often working with flowers. He shrugged the flower gig off as something he’d fallen into during one of his small town visits, saying it was “the only vocation suitable for a poet and creative mind;” it paid the bills and afforded enough to buy painting supplies and guitar strings with what remained. When Chris wasn’t studying, painting or working with flowers, he was writing songs. His lyrics were peppered with tales of vindication for outlaws, victims of society and underdogs “severely underestimated”, as Chris described them. He’s nothing if not strong-willed, opinionated and dramatic. Yet at the same time, he’s mesmerizing and so innately artistic that his persona is larger than life -- you can’t help but become sucked in. His intense lyrical style compelled me to ask him about the paradoxical relationship between Buddhism and Revenge. That is when he told me about the Cavalier King. The Cavalier King is the Hyde to Chris’ Jekyll, or more fittingly, The Lizard King to his inner Jim Morrison. “To live outside the law, you must be honest,” Chris quipped. The Dylan quote was nearly a mission statement for Chris’ alter-ego. He said that Cavalier King “combats the Shadows of Industry, the Replicators of Mediocrity, and protects his True Love from the perils of Renegade life.” He went on to say that Cavalier King wasn’t Buddhist because he’d already walked the Buddhist path. He was post-Buddhist, a Warrior, unfettered and free to “strive for Victory”, as Chris exclaimed. I wondered what Dylan would think of Chris’ Cavalier King.

That September we all watched in horror the innocent lives lost in New York City. A few days later Chris went into the desert, burned his paintings, said good bye to our red rocks and set off for the City with a couple of books, his guitar and a change of clothes.

When he arrived he wrote to me often, detailing his pleasure at being a poet in Jack Kerouac’s City. He told me he was “writing copious amounts of music, loitering with the homeless, writing folk tunes with the witless and aspiring with other hungry Rock Stars.” He was performing at the Side Walk Café’s infamous open-mic night and exploring the East Village. Then he called one night and told me he had “found himself stretched out across the subway tracks waiting for the oncoming F train to release him from the enduring anguish.” It turned out he was struggling to survive the city, nearly starving at times. I believe it was then, during that near fatal event, that the Cavalier King and Chris Taylor truly became one in the same.

Do you also would like to share your opinion? If so, please register or login here.

Details

Popular Songs

New Songs

Tracklisting

Cavalier King - The Sun Revolutions