Growing up in Northern England\u2019s Black Country\u2014the region that gave the world Led Zeppelin\u2019s Robert Plant and John Bonham and Deep Purple\u2019s Glenn Hughes\u2014Joanne Shaw Taylor wasn\u2019t especially fond of the British blues-rock records her father played at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad was a frustrated blues guitarist and harmonica player who would have loved to have done that, but since he had a wife and children, he had to get a real job,\u201d Taylor said in a recent interview. \u201cMy mother had been a professional ballroom dancer in her late teens and early twenties, until she met my dad, who had two right feet. It was just your typical working-class upbringing, but they were both brilliant, and very supportive of me and my brother and what I\u2019ve done, so I got very lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet the music resonated and stuck.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to say I struggled to get into the 1960s British blues boom,\u201d she said, \u201cbut growing up, I just heard so much of it around the house, because my dad was that sort of typical English teenager that had grown up seeing the Stones and Jimi Hendrix on Top of the Pops.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, Taylor was drawn to Texas blues, an influence that has stayed with her throughout a career that includes multiple chart-topping albums and awards, including the Best Female Vocalist at the British Blues Awards.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was Stevie Ray Vaughan who sent me down the rabbit hole,\u201d she recalled. \u201cAnd then Stevie Ray Vaughan led to Albert Collins, who then led to Freddie King. So I was listening to a lot of American blues artists, which was already kind of strange for a 13-year-old girl from England to be doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Taylor ultimately absorbed from existing British counterparts was the realization that artists could come from working-class towns and find real-world success.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere were these other people who had come from the same place and gone on to have such important roles in music,\u201d said Taylor, who moved to Detroit and now lives in Nashville. \u201cI think it was sort of an encouragement, like, \u2018Well, he did it. So why can\u2019t I?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the past few years, Taylor has maintained a busy touring schedule, has been working on improving her vocals while also finding time to hit the studio, releasing her current album, Black & Gold, in 2025, just a year after her previous release, Heavy Soul. The former album was produced by Kevin Shirley, who also worked extensively with Taylor\u2019s friend and mentor, Joe Bonamassa.<\/p>\n
When it comes to recording, Shirley is known for being fast and focused, a very different approach than the one Taylor would normally take on her own.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a massive procrastinator,\u201d she admitted. \u201cI can\u2019t do anything unless I\u2019m down to the wire. So I think for me\u2014I mean, everybody\u2019s different\u2014but recording very quickly does tend to focus the mind on what is important and what\u2019s not, and what\u2019s good and what isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Taylor has enjoyed considerable success in her career, it was not without sacrifices along the way. A few years after her mother passed away, Taylor collapsed on stage from exhaustion and had to be carried off on a stretcher.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was definitely in bad shape,\u201d she recalled. \u201cI was in a really bad management deal at the time as well, where I didn\u2019t have access to my own bank account, and was just being worked very hard. I had this chest infection, and management just kept wanting me to keep touring. I\u2019d never really had time to grieve my mom, so it all kind of compounded into me not being in good mental health, and therefore physical health.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her father had to step in and secretly get her a plane ticket home.<\/p>\n
Taylor has since channeled that grief into \u201cFade Away,\u201d a deeply personal and emotional song that she plays live alongside fan favorites like \u201cWatch \u2019em Burn\u201d and \u201cDyin\u2019 to Know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI really enjoy performing \u2018Fade Away\u2019 live, because I\u2019m thinking about who in the audience has gone through this but doesn\u2019t have the luxury of being able to do the same thing and write a song about it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s quite a therapeutic thing and just a lovely thing to be able to share.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joanne Shaw Taylor plays the Fountain Blues & Brews Festival at Plaza de Cesar Chavez on June 27th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Growing up in Northern England\u2019s Black Country\u2014the region that gave the world Led Zeppelin\u2019s Robert Plant and John…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":["post-366952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}