Blues musician Cassie Taylor will perform in support of her CD release at 8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 8, at the Dolores River Brewery, 100 S. Fourth St., Dolores.
A written statement from Piedmont Talent, of Charlotte, N.C., provides the following profile on Taylor:
Whats a blues girl to do but find her own sound and go her own way?
As a teenager, Cassie Taylor took over bass duties for the band of her father, Otis Taylor, learning the rigors of touring the world and playing and singing on several of his trance blues albums. Now the 25-year-old Boulder native is branching out on her own, performing gigs all over the United States and Europe as part of the Girls with Guitars trio and getting ready for the stateside release of her solo debut, Blue, released earlier this year overseas.
Im going to have jet lag until Im 40. Ive been to Europe seven or eight times this year, and we go to Australia at the end of September, said Taylor. Its been the most amazing learning experience, and if they ever had a collegiate degree for being a rock star this would be what your culminating year would be like.
That means getting up early and getting to bed late as you travel from gig to gig in a van with four other musicians and a tour manager, and playing in clubs, coffee houses and festivals to audiences that range from a handful of enthusiastic listeners to thousands who are watching you open for Foreigner in Norway.
And spending countless hours with the same people.
Youre always going to have your disagreements when youre sitting in a van with someone for eight hours every day of every week, but for the most part we go shopping together, we do our nails, we talk about our boyfriends, Taylor said. Its great.
We caught up with Taylor at Starrs Clothing, the Pearl Street store where just a couple of years ago she spent time between touring to learn how to properly fit customers for Levis jeans. She teamed up with Starrs once again for Fashions Night Out, a Downtown Boulder event which was held on Sept. 8.
I just loved it here, and they were so great to me, Taylor said. I love fashion, and its always something that Ive been into. This was my first retail job.
Taylors bosses at Starrs allowed her the flexibility to work at the store between tours with her fathers band. These days, music has become Taylors full-time job, which means shes gone most of the time. And with two records to promote the Girls With Guitars disc she recorded with fellow 20-something musicians Samantha Fish and Dani Wilde, and Blue getting its U.S. release in November Taylor keeps a pretty tight schedule.
People are always saying, Youre living the dream. And Im so thankful to be out on the road, to be employed, to have the gigs that I have, Taylor said. But people also dont realize how labor intensive it is. When I go to work on a tour, I am working from the second I leave my house to go to the airport to the second that I come back and put my bags down at my door.
So at an age where most musicians her age are dreaming of scaling greater heights of fame and fortune, Taylor is already pining for a quieter future. For now, shes already at work recording her second solo album. But her dream job would be to stay home and write. She composed all 10 songs on her debut, a collection of love songs, best described as pop with a bluesy edge, that show Taylor aiming for audiences her age.
My goal is to be an accredited songwriter and to have a touring background so I can get my songs out to the public and eventually just write songs, she said. In 10 years, my ideal situation is just being at home sitting in front of a gigantic Yamaha piano, drinking coffee all day in my pajamas and writing songs. That would be made it for me, if I could get to the point where that is a financial possibility.
For now, she measures success by how often people stop by to buy a CD and pay a compliment after a show: If you can get just one person to say, Hey, that was really great, then youve done your job.
The cost is $10.
For more information, contact the brewery at 882-4677.
