Nobody Poor At Poor David’s Pub Thanks To James Michael Taylor

Fort Worth’s James Michael Taylor handed out $100 bills — six of them — last night at Poor David’s Pub in Dallas.

Taylor earned $1,000 by winning the 27th Annual BW Stevenson Memorial Singer Songwriter Competition. After club owner David Card handed him 10 $100 bills on stage, Taylor gave a $100 bill to each of the other finalists.

“I didn’t enter the competition for the money,” he said later. “It seemed like the right thing to do. It’s a sting if you get to the finals and lose. There was such a sense of support from everybody for everybody that I wouldn’t have felt right walking out with everything.”

Other finalists included Caroline Murphy, Raquel Wynne, and Jake Glenn.

“One of the best finals ever,” Card wrote on the club’s Facebook page.

The finalists sang three songs each. Taylor closed with “Help,” a song he wrote after witnessing a near drowning at a music festival.

Winning the Poor David’s contest earns Taylor a slot at upcoming Larry Joe Taylor and Tommy Alverson music festivals.

Taylor, at 71, was the oldest of the contestants by far. He’s been cranking out original songs for decades and has recorded close to 50 albums in Fort Worth, but he’s rarely entered songwriting contests because he doesn’t like contests. But he’s not crazy about obscurity either.

“Apparently nobody gives a shit about you unless you win contests,” he said. “I need to get on the map. Now they’ll say ‘the winner of the BW Stevenson thing’ and people will say, ‘Oh, this guy must be good.’  I’ve been singing ‘Help’ for seven years. I’ve been doing it just as good all those years.”

If you want to see what all the fuss is about, you can see Taylor on Friday night at the New Discovery Showcase, the first of a new quarterly series that presents up-and-coming local artists in the Uncle Calvin’s listening room in Dallas.

Closer to home, Taylor will perform at 5 pm Sunday at Concerts in the Attic, along with Jacob Furr. Concerts in the Attic is a not-for-profit house concert series hosted by Steve Long and Ed and Sarah Rogers that’s held in the attic of a 100-year old house in Fort Worth’s historic Fairmount neighborhood.

[Full disclosure: I write, record, and perform live music with Taylor on occasion, but did not participate in last night’s event or co-write any of the songs.]