Mood maker

Tulsa musician mixes drinks, music behind the bar

I’ve heard plenty of people call Taylor Clark “Tulsa’s best DJ,” but he’s never tried to make anyone dance.

He doesn’t spin at Electric Circus, Legends, or any dance floor. He rarely spins at all, really. Instead, he bartends at Soundpony, on nights when there’s no band. Tall, thin, and baseball-capped, Clark’s hands float between pint glasses and his iPod behind the bar. He plays what those who drink to it call “good music.” His playlists are full of the kind of stuff that scratches you behind the ears — good music — subjective, yes, but nah, not really. 

From cumbia to harsh noise, and all manner of punk from proto through post, Clark’s sets betray an affection for the otherly. It’s that love of the hard-to-find, but rewarding once you do, that defines his Soundpony playlists.

“I was on a fifth-grade field trip when a friend showed me ‘Jimi Plays Monterey,’” he told me. “I had never heard guitar that noisy or chaotic and was instantly hooked on odd music.” Filing through thrift stores, those pre-internet record troves, Clark found Morricone soundtracks among his first crate grabs. Cassette trading was just as important to his development. A Butthole Surfers comp burned a hole in his tape deck. 

In his pre-shift hours he’ll put his archives on shuffle, slowly sculpting what will make it to the bar that night. “Sometimes there’s a theme and sequence to a mix of mine, but other times it just ends up as total chaos,” he said. Cavernous black metal will bump against forgotten French-pop while patrons drink along, feathers unruffled. Clark has a knack for deep-end weirdness, but he has a DJ’s ear and avoids agitation. “I know I have a responsibility to keep the bar cool,” he said, then added, “but sometimes I’ve gotta play that 16-minute Circle song.”

One night, when Clark’s playlist had my Shazam in overtime, I hit a song the database didn’t recognize. I asked him about it, and he bashfully responded, “Ah, you caught me red-handed. It’s Lava Children.” The psych-pop band is Clark and his longtime girlfriend, Sherri West. Psych-pop is a fair label, but their sound reflects every aspect of Clark and West’s tastes, which Clark says have complemented and mirrored each other for their 18 years together.

As otherly as the music is that Clark picks for Pony, Lava Children finds a home between sweet dream and night terror. Exotica rhythms from Clark and West’s record collections buttress stained-glass guitar work and West’s amoebic vocal approach. Her voice, in a state of perpetual melt, oscillates between aloof and high-priestess serious. “Psychedelic” as a buzzword may be losing meaning, but Lava Children embodies what real psych is. “Some people call anything with a wah-pedal ‘psychedlic,’”said Clark, but real psych “changes mind-space” and has a “trance-inducing, physical effect.” Clark loves to play real psych and weirdo music as loud as he can for strangers at Pony, almost as much as he loves writing and recording it with Lava Children. “You can see it affecting people while they listen to it,” he told me.

Lava Children’s self-titled album, released on Graveface Records in 2012, was praised on prominent music blogs and noted by NPR. Graveface, owned by Black Moth Super Rainbow’s Ryan Graveface, found Lava Children through its Myspace page before befriending and, ultimately, signing the band.

Clark and West are writing songs as a duo now, he told me. The pair is approaching new material with acts like TFUL 282 and Sun Ra as specific influences and hope to record a 7-inch soon. For now, it’s enough for Clark to write songs and make mixes for friends and strangers at Pony — so long as no one pushes too hard for requests.