| Jane Taylor | |
|---|---|
| Born | 19 July 1972 Nocton Hall, Lincolnshire |
| Genres | Folk, Vocal |
| Occupations | Musician, Songwriter |
| Instruments | Guitar, Piano |
| Years active | 1977–present |
| Associated acts | Robin Davies (Double Bass), Lizz Lipscombe (Violin), Robert Bray (Percussion & Uke), Kate Robey (Chello) |
Jane Taylor 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. Her second album Compass was awarded the Best Album title in the Folk / Singer-Songwriter category at the 2010 Independent Music Awards.
Jane’s debut album hit BBC national radio when Johnnie Walker decided to play the opening track from an album entitled Montpelier that he found on his desk, because he liked the cover (a charcoal sketch of her street which Jane had doodled herself). The response from the listeners was enormous, highly unusual for an ‘unknown’ and Johnnie Walker played the track over 15 times, despite it not actually being on the play list and invited Jane into the studio to perform a live session on the show.[1]
Jane’s first album ‘Montpelier’ had been made on a shoe-string, in a barn, with all manufacturing costs financed by pre selling the album to her dedicated fan base (which she’d home grown from the city of Bristol). Jane, producer Bill Lovelady and her band recorded the album in just 9 days in a freezing October (this was a real barn, not a conversion!). Once it was made she just posted it to BBC Radio 2 and crossed her fingers.
Because of the response to the airplay she was invited into the BBC to perform a live session on the show. From there she went on to support Jools Holland, Bill Wyman, Seth Lakeman, Paul Buchanan, Andy Fairweather Low and Paulo Nutini. She secured a distribution deal, had Fall on Me played on MTV, and toured the UK and Germany, spreading the word and connecting her music to even more ears.
Two years later, Jane released her second album, Compass which was financially backed by two huge fans of her music whom Jane now refers to as The Angels! Jane had never met her benefactors before, but they are now very good friends indeed! She made the album with Mercury nominated producer Colin Elliot (famous for his work on the Richard Hawley albums) in Sheffield’s much loved Yellow Arch Studios.
The album features the Grimethorpe Colliery Brass Band (who performed in the film Brassed Off), a gospel choir made up of some of the finest songwriters and musicians in Bristol and Bath, a very special rhythm track featuring everything from a rustling bin to the cellists impression of the sound of a dolphin, and beautiful classical and quirky string arrangements from her resident band Robin Davies, Bethany Porter and Feargus Heatherington.
Tracks from Compass received BBC Radio 2 airplay. The album recently won an award for Best Album in the Folk / Singer-Songwriter category in the 2010 Independent Music Awards.[2]
After taking some time out to give birth to her son, she booked a special concert in at St George’s Hall, Bristol, which was completely sold out. Jane invited a host of wonderful musicians to join her on stage including her incredibly gifted and charismatic band: Lizz Lipscombe on violin, Robert Bray on percussion and uke, Robin Davies on double bass and Kate Robey on cello. Other guests included Marimba player Alphonse Daudet Touna, singer-songwriter Roger Tarry, The JT Brass Players (Andy Davies, Matt Davies and Chris Sanders) and the Barefoot Collective & Original Sing choirs. The concert was a great success and was voted one of the top three gigs in the South West for 2010 by Bristol’s Venue Magazine.[3][4] A recording of the concert was released as the fabulous Live Album in November 2011. In December 2011, Jane released her brand new single Oh December.
Jane continues to create music with her band and tour under her own independent label Bicycle Records. She is supported by her dedicated and loyal fan base, who in 2010 raised over £9000 to help her promote her work and fund her tours, and who keep in touch with her regularly. They have even been known to put up the band on tour and book gigs in their local villages, towns and cities. It is a relationship that keeps the JT Project thriving and for which Jane is hugely grateful.
More information about Jane's Tours and to hear her Music, please visit her Website (www.JaneTaylor.co.uk).
"Without the people who buy my music and support the gigs and concerts I would never have got this far. Being an independent artist, making the kind of music I do, and competing with the more commercial and larger labels can be fiercely overwhelming at times! But then I’ll get an incredible email from someone who’s connected with the music or have the most wonderful feedback after a gig and I couldn’t ever think about doing anything else!!" Jane Taylor
"Classic, timeless songwriting. A quintessentially English Gem." Time Out
"Beautiful." Johnnie Walker, BBC Radio 2
"A very talented artist." Bob Harris, BBC Radio 2 [5]
Jane was born in Lincolnshire in 1972, 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 a 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. It was here that she really began to create her own music and find her way around the piano. She is 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.
Jane 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 many of the students visiting the Folk Club there in the 90's.
Following university, Jane landed a job in the record business working for one of the few independents at the time, 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 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.
In 2003 Jane decided to give up her normal job in the real world and make a go of it as a full time singer-songwriter.
A month later, she found herself in a studio in Bristol recording her first single with Massive Attack guitarist Angelo Bruschini. The track was called Blowing This Candle Out and 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. 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.[6]
The Bristol music community is strong and has integrity. 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 requested permission to play the track Getting To Me (which was just a demo at the time) on the hit TV series Dawson's Creek. Jane then decided it was time to set up her own record label, which she called Bicycle Records.
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 is 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".[7]
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 the Radio 4 show 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.
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, Ukuleles 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 afoot for 2010 while she settles in to being a mum. Meanwhile songs from the album have been played on the Bob Harris show on BBC Radio 2.
You can see a video for the album song All Things Change on the JaneTaylorMusic channel on YouTube, as well as some footage of her live performances. More information is also available on 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."
In January 2011, Compass won Best Album in the Singer-Songwriter Category at the 10th Annual Independent Music Awards.[8]
More information about Jane's Live Performances, please visit her Website (www.JaneTaylor.co.uk).
Jane Taylor: "This is the debut album. It was made in a barn in Oxfordshire with the early JT Band and Award Winning Producer Bill Lovelady. It was freezing cold, as it was an ACTUAL barn, but Bill was right; the acoustics in that barn were amazing and they really helped create quite a special atmosphere for the whole album. Johnnie Walker played the opening track 'Fall on Me' about twenty times on BBC Radio 2 and then invited me in to play a live session. It was the beginning of the journey outside into the world for me. The doodle is of the street where I wrote all the songs in Montpelier, Bristol."
Jane Taylor: "This album was made in Sheffield's Yellow Arch Studios with Mercury Nominated Producer Colin Elliot. It features the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, strings (arranged and performed by Robin Davies and Beth Porter, with guest violinist Feargus Heatherington), a Steinway (borrowed from the Victoria Rooms in Bristol), a gospel choir (made up of singing friends from Bath and Bristol) and the entire Richard Hawley band (without Richard, who kindly lent them to me for a morning!)."
What fans have said: "Inspiring...", "Beautiful, beautiful album...", "It’s on permanent play back in the car", "I LOVE it! Didn't think you would manage to create a follow up to Montpelier that I'd also fall in love with. But I completely have. Well done!!"
Jane Taylor: "This album is a live recording of the fantastic gig we all performed at St George's Hall in Bristol. It features the JT Strings (Lizz Lipscombe, Robin Davies and Kate Robey) and the JT Brass (Andy Davies, Matt Davies & Chris Sanders), a gospel choir made up of Original Sing and The Barefoot Collective, Singer-Songwriter Roger Tarry on electric guitar, Singer-Songwriter Rob Bray on Percussion and Uke and Alphonse Daudet Touna on his African Marimba. It was awarded a Top Banana from Venue, declaring it one of the top 3 gigs of the South West of that year. It was sold out and it was possibly my favourite gig to date. So it's a real pleasure to be able to finally share it with you all. It was recorded, mixed and engineered by Dave Lewis who came in at the very last minute... I only thought about recording the concert three days before!! I am so very very glad that I did."
Jane Taylor: "This is the track we'd like to get into the iTunes Download chart this Winter... Download today and help us give 'Take That' a run for their money (god love em!). It was recorded in Toy Box Studios this year and there are pictures of me and the band recording it in the gallery. The brass was arranged by Robin Davies (our bass player) and Lizz Lipscombe arranged the strings (our violinist). I love this track very much. It's how I feel about the month of December. It explodes into a medley of Christmasness at the end. One for the car journey somewhere in the month... Send in a review or write one on iTunes or Amazon. xxx"