Willy Tea Taylor brings his love of baseball, fingerpicking and song to Pierce Ranch in Monterey.

“We never thought life would get so real/We always thought life was a baseball field,” Willy Tea Taylor sings softly on his nostalgic fingerpicking ballad “Brand New Game.”

“Even if we lost we’d never complain/ There’s always tomorrow and a brand new game.”

If you’re detecting a baseball theme…

“My dad taught me how to play [baseball], his dad taught him and his dad taught my great grandfather,” Taylor says from Austin, Texas, a few hours before performing at Hole in the Wall, his first gig at this year’s SXSW. “Baseball is kind of a religion for us.”

Other than watching Hunter Pence make a diving catch or Buster Posey smacking a grand slam, another thing that makes the clouds part for Taylor is a new song taking shape, at any time.

“It could be that I just watched a Sam Peckinpah film and was meditating on The Wild Bunch and I pull from that,” he explains. “Then everything lines up and a song just reveals itself like, ‘Here it is, here’s the song.’”

Taylor, a bushy-bearded redhead who looks like a lumberjack (who swallowed a redneck), wields a weathered 1927 Martin four-string tenor guitar. His lyrics have an everyman charm that feels like a fastball down the middle.

As April approaches, Taylor simultaneously anticipates opening day and the release of his aptly-titled sophomore solo record Knuckleball Prime, which he recorded at pH Balanced Studio in Nashville with Grammy Award-winning engineer Phil Harris.

Taylor scored some of the best session musicians in Nashville, thanks to his longtime pal, dobro master and the album’s producer Michael Witcher. Witcher, whose connections run deep, called on a bunch of his friends to come in, including Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench, and Punch Brothers players Noam Pikelny (banjo) and Gabe Witcher (fiddle).

Taylor reports one of his favorite new tunes is “Bull Riders and Song Writers.” As a little kid growing up in the rodeo town of Oakdale, Calif., Taylor wanted to be a rider before he learned how to play baseball. When he became a singer-songwriter, he realized that bull riders and musicians aren’t much different.

“All the rodeo guys drive the same roads as we do and trek all over the country,” he says. “And we both ride in hot and smelly vans.”

WILLY TEA TAYLOR and CALAMITY CUBES 7pm Wednesday, April 1. Pierce Ranch Tasting Room, 499 Wave St., Monterey. $7-$10 sliding scale. 372-8900.