JOANNE SHAW TAYLOR - SIMPLY THE BEST

Is Joanne Shaw Taylor now the outstanding UK Blues Rock performer on either side of the Atlantic? I think there’s a very good case to say yes, she is. I’ve followed her career path since the release of White Sugar back in 2009 and seen the steady progress made, as with most artists not everything runs smoothly, not every management decision is right, but ultimately JST comes back stronger and grows artistically.

WORDS: Steve Yourglivch PICS: Stacie Huckeba & Laurence Harvey

With the release of her new album Heavy Soul, I feel she is at her highest point so far with no reason to doubt her ability to go still higher. She has come through the great young guitarist phase, the brilliant female guitarist phase and is simply now an awesome guitar player who also has evolved into an outstanding songwriter. Like Samantha Fish she doesn’t limit herself in terms of style or expectation and that takes confidence and inner strength.

I caught up with Joanne on her recent short UK tour and she made time to talk to me pre-show ahead of sound check and all the other preparations that required her attention. We start by talking about Heavy Soul, I know that with previous release Nobody’s Fool she had focused on honing her skills as a songwriter, and successfully achieving that. I felt that with Heavy Soul she wants to add to that more soulful blues guitar.

‘’That was really the goal. Nobody’s Fool was really fun for me to do in that it followed The Blues Album and the Live release, so at that point I felt then more than any other time I could sneak in some music that I wanted to fit in because I’d just had two very traditional blues releases. So, I sat down and had fun with it, playing some catchy melodies so without really planning to it did come out maybe a bit poppy. Songs like Figure It Out, I probably would never had done before. I just love that chorus, so it was just good fun. So, the challenge was what to do with this album because I never want them to just sound the same otherwise what’s the point? The albums are all snap shots of me in my career, you know 22 year old Joanne, 32 year old Joanne etc, and they will sound different because I’m in a different stage of my life. I wanted to find a way to go back to more what I am really, a blend of Blues, Soul, Pop. I did have some songs left over from Nobody’s Fool, A Good Goodbye was one for instance, and Wild Love, both of those. I had the bulk of it written but they just needed a bit extra. You know the only way I know how to make music is through my experiences, it’s very much a therapeutic thing for me, so I think being honest and authentic to myself is the best way forward for me. At least that way if I create something nobody

likes it’s down to me rather than trying to write in a certain way just to please other people.’’

I wondered if Joanne had ever felt put under pressure by labels etc to produce a certain type of album:

‘’No, I’ve always been very lucky in that way. Through Thomas Ruf and Sony, I just give them the finished product. I’ve got a bit of thing about the number of tracks. I think 10 is perfect for me, I don’t like odd numbers. So, it’ll always be even and 12 is too many so I stick to 10 tracks.’’

It definitely felt that there is a theme of relationships lost but, hey, that’s OK running through Heavy Soul:

‘’Yes, I think that’s true. I’m at a point in my life now where I think I can look back and re-visit maybe something I wrote about on an earlier album and view it from a different perspective. You know, I don’t think I’m really a blues writer, I am a blues guitarist, so I’ll always approach music from that way, so using the instrumentation that I have, plus I love that blues is about anger and heartbreak, real emotions that are great to create great music with. The players I love, like Stevie Ray, Albert Collins and Freddie King were really aggressive players. You know they weren’t wimpy. Even Otis Rush playing a ballad was tough playing. I also really love Luther Allison, that Blue Streak album.’’

For Heavy Soul, Joanne has some heavy hitters on board. As well as Kevin Shirley producing, the core band is Anton Fig on drums, Alison Prestwood on bass and Rob McNally on guitar. Fig is well know for his work with Joe Bonamassa,

of course, but the other two are very highly in demand session players on the Americana Country circuit.

‘’Yes, they are Nashville session players for sure, but Rob’s first love as a guitarist was Stevie Ray Vaughan and Alison has toured with Frampton this year, so you know they are the type of players who can fit into anything. I requested Anton because I’d never played with him although I knew him through Joe and I thought his playing was well suited to me, a bit heavier you know. Rob is just such a professional guy in the studio, I just hand him a couple of ideas and he’s there on it straight away. Alison, I didn’t know of until Kevin suggested her, she was new to me. She was absolutely brilliant as a musician and a person; it was also nice to have that extra feminine energy in the room too. We also had Jimmy Wallace on piano and keys who toured a lot with Kenny Wayne Shepherd who did an amazing job on several tracks. In fact, when we recorded Black Magic he came in the next day and insisted on re-recording it because he felt his parts could be better; turned out the piano was slightly out of key, and although I was happy with the original take he was right, the new version was stunning.’

“It was really nice as well that I did some covers on this album. With All The Way From America, a track I love by Joan Armatrading, I felt I could really put my own feel and emotion into it. And the Van Morrison song Drowning In A Sea Of Love has such a wonderful melody. I’m not usually into covers but Kevin brought that in and the band played it so well. It was really good to work with Kevin again, we did Wild together in 2016, and were meant to do the follow up but in the meantime, I signed to Sony and it just didn’t happen.”

“I don’t think this album would’ve been created without Kevin. You must let go of a certain amount of control and trust the producer etc. There’s still other producers I’d love to work with out there, Don Was for example, and I’d love to work with a woman producer because I think we approach music in a different way. Thankfully I’m able to plough on with what I want to do and I’m in a position now where I’m taken seriously. I hated the hype in my early days, you know the whole 16-year-old female guitar player thing. Even when I wasn’t a teenager anymore, I was referred to as a female guitar player, so I always shied away from that. It’s frustrating because it makes you sound like you’re just a novelty and you just want to be taken seriously. Looking back, I often think my career might have been different if I had been a boy. All the players I loved were male but I was never gonna sing like Howlin’ Wolf, or even Johnny Lang. So for vocal inspiration, I had to look outside of the blues - so Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie and Bonnie and Joni Mitchell, which got me writing in a different way.’’

With that, Joanne was whisked away to sound check with the rather splendid US band that had travelled over with her. The performance I have to say was outstanding and Joanne now has the stage presence and personality to match her undoubted guitar chops. Heavy Soul came out on June 1st and I highly recommend it. She has a couple of European dates before embarking on a massive list of U.S. tour dates, catch her live shows whenever you can, Joanne Shaw Taylor is the real deal.

Joanne Shaw Taylor’s new album “Heavy Soul” is released by Journeyman Records and available from www.joanneshawtaylor.com