Jane Taylor (musician)
Jane Taylor (born 19 July 1972, Nocton Hall, Lincolnshire) is a Bristol-based guitarist, pianist, songwriter and vocalist. Jane won the UK and International Songwriting Competition in 2003 with her song "Blowing This Candle Out".
Career
Early career
Jane was born in Lincolnshire, in an RAF hospital called Nocton Hall. As well as being in the RAF, her father was an artist, songwriter and guitarist. His MusicAL talent and love of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Simon and Garfunkel heavily influenced the young Jane, as did her mother's love of classical music.
Jane picked up her father's guitar at the age of five and composed her first song. Brought up in an English village near Newark, Nottinghamshire, she attended Brownies and Sunday School at the local Church Hall and took to wandering off on her own and sitting herself at the piano in one of the empty rooms in the Hall. Here was where she really began to create her own music and find her way around the piano. She is still a Self Taught musician on both the guitar and piano and can barely read music. But it was an instinct, and she always wrote for herself, out of a need to express her troubled emotional world.
She continued to play the guitar and piano and composed throughout her childhood, winning school competitions and gaining a reputation for playing her music to the school, encouraged by teachers and pupils alike. At the age of 19, Jane went to Keele University, Staffordshire where her music took on a political flavour. In particular, a song entitled Tiananmen Square became a much loved anthem for a lot of the students visiting the Folk Club there in the 90's.
Following university, Jane wandered off into the record business, working for one of the few independents The Grapevine Label Ltd. Grapevine had signed many famous artists, including Emmylou Harris, Christy Moore, and one of her major early influences Joan Baez. There she learned AbOUT how to make and manufacture a record, and most importantly how to promote and sell a record. It was this early education into the music business that helped her gain the confidence to finally create and promote her own work some years later.
Professional musician
Just a few years ago, Jane decided to give up her normal job in the real world and make a go of it as a full time singer-songwriter, on a whim, after a chat with a rather convincing friend!
A month later, she found herself in a studio in Bristol bumping into Massive Attack guitarist Angelo Bruschini, who then agreed to play on her first recorded track Blowing This Candle Out. The track went on to win best song in the International Songwriter Of The Year competition, and landed Jane her first major gig at London's famous Ronnie Scotts. And so began the whirlwind of a journey that took a girl out of her bedroom where she'd been playing solo for years, and into the great big world.
The Bristol music community is strong and has integrity. And word travels fast when there's something new, credible and EXCITING on the scene. So it wasn't long before Jane had formed a band, made up of some of the finest musicians in Bristol and started touring around the UK and Ireland. She also went on to tour in Germany and Italy, gathering more and more beloved fans along the way.
Sony TV then requested that another of her tracks (which was just a demo) Getting To Me be played on the hit TV series Dawsons Creek. Jane then decided it was time to set up her own label, Bicycle Records.
Montpelier (2006)
Together with award winning Producer and composer Bill Lovelady, Jane and her band created her first album Montpelier. Made on a complete shoe-string, the album was financed by the fans who pre-bought the album up to half a year in advance. It was recorded in a barn in Oxford, in a freezing cold October. The barn was chosen for its unique acoustics, and it's what eventually gave the album such an individual sound. It was an interesting experience trying to record an album in the cold whilst wearing hats, gloves and coats, and drinking endless cups of hot tea to keep warm. The experience was complicated somewhat by the crowing cockerels, squeaky wheelbarrows and a local celebrity who liked to take his plane out most days! Montpelier was born.
When Johnnie Walker played the song Fall on Me on his BBC Radio 2 show in 2006, he was inundated with emails 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 decided to mention her website the next day, and informed the listeners that it was taken from Montpelier the debut album by a Bristol based singer-songwriter called Jane Taylor, who had produced everything under her own little label, Bicycle Records. He played her song again day only to be inundated once more with questions and messages of "more please..."
Johnnie Walker then invited to Jane to play a live session on his show and the CD requests and e-mails flooded in again. Since then Jane has appeared on Radio 4’s Loose Ends, secured an international distribution deal with Pinnacle, had a track from the album included on The Word magazine, and landed support slots opening for Jools Holland, Bill Wyman, Paolo Nutini, Seth Lakeman, Midge Ure, Andy Fairweather-Low and Paul Buchanan of The Blue Nile.
Compass (2008)
Jane’s new album Compass was finally released in 2008.
Created in Sheffield at Yellow Arch Studio’s with Colin Elliot, (particularly famous for his work on Richard Hawley's 'Coles Corner' album), it features an eclectic mix of aural delights. Classical Vaughan Williams style strings, a Steinway piano, a Gospel choir singing with half the Hawley band, the Grimethorpe Colliery Brass Band (who appeared in the Ewan McGregor film 'Brassed Off'), a music box, Ukulele’s and a rhythm track made up of everything from rustling rubbish bins to the cellist making a sound of a Dolphin. It's all going on!
The album was released in October 2008, with a number of special album preview shows in Scotland. The first official launch was in Bristol's converted church, Circomedia.
Not long after this Jane discovered she was going to have a baby boy! So plans for a re-release of the album are away for 2010 while she settles in to being a mum. Meanwhile songs from the album have been played on the Bob Harris show at BBC Radio 2 and you can see a video for the album song 'All Things Change' on YouTube, as well as some live footage of her performances (visit Jane's MySpace page).
Get Rhythm said: "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 (which bizarrely seem to have been written for you), and stand there transfixed like its a bit of fate that brought you here and I will defy anyone not to leave without a CD or at least humming one of her songs."
Radio airplay
- BBC Radio 2 - The Bob Harris show.
- BBC Radio 2 - Johnnie Walker Drive Time.
- BBC Radio 2 - Johnnie Walker standing in for Terry Wogan.
- BBC Radio 4 - Loose Ends.
Some of her live shows
2004
- New Bands Stage, Glastonbury.
2005
- Toured Ireland 2005.
2006
- Toured the UK.
- Main Stage, Trowbridge Pump Festival.
- Supported Seth Lakeman at Plymouth University.
- Supported Andy Fairweather-Low on his UK tour in October 2006.
- Supported Paul Buchanan of The Blue Nile on his UK tour in November 2006.
- Supported Paolo Nutini at The Cluny in Newcastle on December 2006.
2007
- Toured the UK.
- Supported Martha Tilston.
- Supported Jools Holland at the Larmer Tree Festival 2007.
- Supported Midge Ure in 2007.
2008
- Highlands Tour for Compass.
- UK launch tour for Compass.
- Glastonbury Festival.
- Trowbridge Pump Festival.
- Supported Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones at The Robin 2 in Wolverhampton in 2008.
- Toured Germany 2008.
2009
- Dartmouth Music Festival.
- Supporting Ezio at The Robin 2, 26 August 2009.
2010
- Touring Germany 2010
For more up-to-date information on her live performances see her official websites.
Discography
Barefoot EP (Bicycle Records Ltd., 2005, JT001)
Montpelier (Bicycle Records Ltd., 2006, JT002)
- Fall On Me
- My Street
- Hit The Ground
- 16 Points
- Chef
- Mirror Mirror
- Blowing This Candle Out
- Landslide
- Feels Good
- Brother
- Getting To Me
New stuff we're still messing with EP (2007)
- All Things Change
- Old Friends
- Cracks
- Home
- Hallelujah
Compass (Bicycle Records Ltd., 2009, JT003)
- Cracks
- Hallelujah
- Old Friends
- All Things Change
- Compass
- Home
- I'm Fine
- Lay Down Your Sword
- Where Is Your Grace
- I Will Get There