Sultry smokey
melodies…a razor sharp lyrical bite…her bittersweet folk-pop
odes take on a new dimension that deserves to be universally adored
When a song called
‘Fall on Me‘, was recently played on Johnnie Walker‘s Drive
Time show on BBC Radio 2, he was inundated with e-mails wanting to
know who this new singer songwriter was, where they could find out
about her, and most importantly would he ‘please play more‘.
He had so many
requests that he plugged her website the next day, and informed the
listeners that it was taken from ‘Montpelier‘ a debut album by a
singer songwriter called Jane Taylor who was from Bristol and who
bizarrely enough wasn’t even signed to a major label. He played
her song again the next day only to be inundated once more with
questions and messages of ‘more please..‘.
From that one song
being played just twice on National Radio, hits to the site, e-mails
to Jane herself and orders for the CD came flooding in, and now Jane
is booked for a live session on Johnnie Walker's drive time show on
Feb 2nd 2006 at 6.25. And so the journey begins...
But Jane Taylor’s journey had really started some three years
ealier in 2002 when she decided to give up life in the real world
(marketing) and focus her attention on the fact that she’d been
writing songs since she was little, and maybe there was something in
that.
Walking into a
Bristol studio to record her first single she fantastically bumped
in to Angelo Bruschini, the guitarist from Massive Attack who was so
intrigued by her sound that he offered to play guitar for her. The
single was called ‘BlowingThis Candle out‘, and it became the
first recorded track of her EP, ‘Barefoot‘, which she went on to
release at Ronnie Scotts. She booked her first UK tour and together
with local BBC radio interviews and live sessions she began to build
up her fanbase across the UK.
In 2015 she won the
International competition ‘Reach’ and, supported by her band,
toured Ireland with three other bands from the USA and Canada. She
then went on to win both the UK and the International Song writing
Competition, again with her single 'Blowing This Candle Out', in the
singer/songwriter category where no less than 11,000 people entered.
Last year, she
appeared on the arts program ‘Earshot’ for HTV and more recently
her song 'Getting To Me' has been included on the soundtrack for the
new Sony Television’s DVD of the hit TV series 'Dawsons Creek'.
The fact that she's also managed to perform at Glastonbury Festival
and the Edinburgh Fringe two years running, headlined the Wurzburg
music festival in Germany, played to sold out venues frequently and
consistently in Bristol, not to mention being played on national BBC
radio, may not come as a complete surprise when you see her perform
live. The fact that she does this independently is, however,
something to consider.
After almost two years of performing and touring with her band,
(Neil Gay - guitar, Beth Porter - cello, Robin Davies - double base,
Ben Hostler - drums and Eleanor Murphy - piano), Jane finally
secured backing, through Exec Producer Johnny Stirling, to complete
her debut album, ‘Montpelier’ (after an area in Bristol where
she wrote most of the songs). The album was recorded in a barn at
the beginning of winter out in the countryside near Sarsden, Oxford,
and was released on November 12th 2005 through her independent label
Bicycle records.
Astonishingly , creating and manufacturing ‘Montpelier‘ involved
some 250 people along the way. The immediate recording and
production team (including award winning Producer and composer Bill
Lovelady who composed string parts for the album and also mixed it
alongside co-producer and engineer Hugo Richardson and Angelo
Bruschini, who guest mixed three of the tracks) and the hundreds of
people that pre-bought the album 3 months in advance to produce
funds to manufacture it. Testiment to the faith people have in what
Jane creates.
Plans to promote and tour the album over in Ireland are already
underway, and her official UK tour is currently being arranged for
the Spring of 2006, but she will be performing a handful of special
gigs around the UK before then, (check out the dates for gigs in
your area on her gig page), because for the full spine-tingling
experience, you’d really need to catch a live performance and
decide for yourself!
‘Jane Taylor is no ordinary singer songwriter. She has this
intangible magic in her voice…the kind that draws you in and holds
you right there until the moment you notice that you’ve forgotten
to breathe…and then you hear her words that bizarrely seem to have
been written for you and stand there transfixed like it’s a bit of
fate that brought you here…and I’ll defy anyone not to leave
without a cd or at least humming one of her songs‘ – Get Rhythm
July 13 2006
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