Ben Taylor believes simplicity is the most important artistic aim of all.

When your parents are famous musicians and you end up following in their footsteps, usually one of two paths are charted. Either the offspring follows closely in the familial shadow or stays as far away from the family tree as possible in the efforts to create their own musical vision. One look at Ben Taylor and you’d think the latter was the course, but it’s not for the reasons you might think.

Simply put, the son of James Taylor and Carly Simon is as notoriously disorganized and poor at communication as his own father. Ben Taylor insists there’s no real reason why this spring features the first ever father and son tour except to say that both of them just haven’t done the work to even get together and discuss it. However, for fans of both (or either), the next couple of months offer a chance to see both artists performing each others work in an intimate arrangement.

In this interview, Ben Taylor discusses the upcoming tour along with his own music and why he’s convinced that simplicity is the most important thing an artist can aim for.

SSv: It’s rare to find a musician up so early. [Laughs]

Ben Taylor: [Laughs] Well, I try to take advantage of the time that nobody else is awake to pass time by myself.

SSv: Is that a tranquil space to create or just administrative getting some things done?

Ben: It can be a lot of different things. It can be creative or it can just be time for me to take for myself to do whatever it is that I wouldn’t do for the sake of the community once they all wake up.

SSv: I know this is the first time you’re touring with your father, so what makes this the right time?

Ben: It’s hard for my father and I because we’re both notoriously difficult to get in touch with. We’re both so notoriously irresponsible on the phone, that even for this my managers had to remind me last night five times and three texts this morning saying, ‘Please, please don’t forget about this.’ My father is even worse than I am, so we’re vying for least responsible telephonic human beings. For us to even try to get together, I just have to take the 45-minute boat ride and three-and-a-half hour drive up to his place so we can sit and listen together and figure out what to play.

SSv: How much of the material do you already have worked out?

Ben: We don’t have any of it worked out yet. It’s completely random, but I have some ideas. I know what songs we’re considering playing. I have both of our long lists. I have 15 of each of our songs, but we’ll only end up playing 10 of each. These are songs that I’ve always known, so that’s the good part. My ear works pretty well, but I really have to know a song before I’m able to learn it and these are songs I’ve known all of my life, so it’s easier to play.

SSv: What’s the set-up on songs? Aren’t you playing each others?

Ben: He’s going to be playing some of my songs and I will be playing some of his. He’s been amazingly generous with the set list and material. We haven’t really had a chance to rehearse yet. We have five days of rehearsal coming up in Tulsa and I’m headed up this weekend to rehearse as well. So I don’t know what the arrangements will be yet, but I’m really excited to play.

SSv: As for your own music, you’ve been at this for a decade now. In that time, have you figured out some things that are important to you now that maybe weren’t so much in the beginning?

Ben: Simplicity has gotten to be one of the highest priorities, where I wasn’t even thinking of that much at all in the beginning. Now I think about playing the holes more than I think about playing the notes.

SSv: What does that mean?

Ben: It’s not about the notes that you play, it’s about the notes that you don’t play. It’s about exercising your taste. Even though your vocabulary might be large, and my vocabulary has grown larger over time musically, you don’t need to use every option you have.

SSv: For a lot of artists, they’ll say editing is the problem. Is that a big struggle for you?

Ben: It depends on what the trajectory of the song is, I think. I wrote a song yesterday really, really quickly. I started a guitar that I hadn’t played in a while and it inspired me to go on and play and this song just happened to be there. I wasn’t really trying at all. It all came together very, very quickly. I need to spend another 10 minutes or so editing it at some point and then it should be done. With that, I didn’t have to really get in the way of it at all. Nothing can get at it.

Sometimes the song just happens quickly and then it just stops and you don’t have anything anymore. Then you have to take a longer time to evolve, and in that process, it becomes more vulnerable to one thing or another distraction-wise.

SSv: With that last song you were describing, is that the fastest a song has come together?

Ben: No, sometimes they come together really quick and easy. Those are my favorite ones, because they’re so obvious. Some of my favorite ones not only to write but after the fact to sing, with respect to simplicity… I think a lot of the time, I end up playing music and coming up with a melody or a vague melodic concept and then I try to fit some lyrics to it. So there’s a thing that you just sing randomly over a melody when you have the idea in your head of what you want the song to be about.

You usually catch it on a tape recorder and you can’t believe you said those things because you never would have thought to say those things if you would have had a pen in your hand. That’s really cool stuff a lot of the time. That’s the random subconscious poetry. I love that stuff. Whenever I can remember to have the tape rolling, I do — although reviewing it is not my favorite thing to do. So ideally, it’s the good stuff I remember.

SSv: Do the songs come faster over time?

Ben: Not necessarily. I find I do have a more historical and relevant content, but again right now it’s the priority of my craftsmanship to try to keep things really simple.

SSv: What’s the hindrance to that? What gets in the way of that?

Ben: I think the enemy of simplicity is time. The more time that you have with something… having a deadline is the Lieutenant of simplicity. They enforce the end of something. When I’m in the studio, the most important guy is the one saying, ‘You’ve had enough.[Laughs] You’re done now. Stop adding to it.’

SSv: So someone outside of yourself is key to that editing process?

Ben: In the studio, I need someone else, whether it’s a producer or someone else who knows me and says, ‘Okay, Ben’s fried.’

SSv: So where are you at in terms of your own recording? Is there a release planned for this year?

Ben: Yeah, there is. I mean, I’m taking my time with it. I guess I have the luxury a lot of the time because I release things independently, so I don’t get forced into a yearly release schedule. It’s been a while for me, but then again I get to pick and choose the best songs over the span of time, so I’m happy with it. Then what we have to come out with is the best stuff. I do think we’ll have a release sometime around June or July. I’m not sure what we’re going to do right now, because we have to get back to mixing it. But we got fried, so we had to step away from it.

SSv: What makes you finally stop? Do you have to feel good about a specific amount of songs?

Ben: No, not really. My hesitance is not an artistic one at all with the mixes done by professionals at all. It all sounds really good. My trepidation is more on a state-of-the-business type of level. Given what I have, which is a huge number of songs — some of them recorded three or four times with different production styles, I don’t know if what I want to do is release an album or do EPs or three subsequent collection of songs all in the same production style. I don’t know whether to do something digitally or physically. I’m just trying to figure all of that out right now, as so many people are.