The next episode of “KRWG Music Spotlight,” airing Saturday night at 10 on KRWG-TV, will feature Las Cruces-based singer-songwriter Taylor Paul. In this preview, host Scott Brocato talks with Taylor about his songwriting, and his cancer diagnosis in 2019 at the age of 23.
Scott Brocato:
Tell me how you got into music. How old were you?
Taylor Paul:
So I was exposed to music from a very young age. Both my parents are musical. My mother played piano and my father was a bass player and a singer and played in a variety of bands. So from three or four years old, I was exposed to live music, and was really taken aback by it. And there's some old photos of me pretending on stage to play along with my dad's band, so I definitely was interested in it very early on. And it wasn't until I was probably 12 or 13 that I really decided I wanted to try and get a guitar and really learn for myself.
Scott Brocato:
And are you self-taught, or did your dad teach you?
Taylor Paul:
He taught me some of the basics, and then some musicians that he played with kind of passed a couple of things on to me. But primarily self-taught. And then when my other friends started playing music, we kind of started learning bits and pieces off each other.
Scott Brocato:
But they've been very supportive, your parents, being musicians themselves?
Taylor Paul:
Yeah, they've always been very supportive and really, really enjoyed coming to watch me play and stuff.
Scott Brocato:
What about artists? What artists influenced you as you were growing up?
Taylor Paul:
You know, I love all kinds of music. I think the first thing that grabbed me was electric blues guitar playing. I have a memory of my dad showing me Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn. And like a lot of other guitar players, you know, I really was taken by that and really wanted to figure out what they were doing and try to understand that.
Scott Brocato:
When you did pick up a guitar in your early teens, did you find it easy?
Taylor Paul:
No, not at all. The first few years were...it was a real uphill battle, and it's hard to not get discouraged starting out for sure.
Scott Brocato:
Let's turn to your songwriting. What kind of themes do you find yourself approaching when you sit down to write a song?
Taylor Paul:
So I started out as just a guitar player for many years before I got into songwriting. And so it took me a little while to find my footing as a lyricist and a vocalist. And so my first several songs were...you know, I was just kind of going for a more poppy sound and trying to find things that are easy on the ears and fun hooks and stuff.
But I write now a lot about mortality and about life and things like that. When I was 23, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and I spent a lot of 2019 in the hospital and in various institutions. And so fortunately, I had music in my life as a pretty invaluable source of therapy, and a way of just processing feelings and emotions, and that really helped me work through it. So, I've tried to move past that in more recent work, but that's always an element of my sound.
Scott Brocato:
Do you have a general process in songwriting? Lyrics first, music first, or do you just leave yourself open to the musical gods?
Taylor Paul:
(Laughs) I think we're all kind of open to that, but I know that everybody's different, and I think that's really interesting.
For me, a lot of the time I get the idea of the title of the song or a line in the chorus first. And then I try and think about, well, what would that sound like? Putting music to that sound, what would that sound like? And then from there, I start to arrange the song, come up with the chord progressions. And then after I've kind of got the song arranged and I know what the title of the song is, then I kind of have to reverse engineer and figure out, well, what is this about?
Scott Brocato:
You have a metal side. You have a little side thing, Taylord, right?
Taylor Paul:
Yes.
Scott Brocato:
Talk about that.
Taylor Paul:
So in high school, my friends, they all wanted to play heavy metal music. So I kind of got pulled into that world a little bit. And I was able to find music in that space that I really connected with, particularly progressive metal music, which is not always 10-out-of-10 aggressive rock all the time. There's a lot of variation. There's a lot of ethereal textures to the sound and a lot of clean singing in there as well. So while I don't do vocals over that kind of music, I was always really inspired by it. And so that was kind of when I learned how to compose and how to write songs with kind of a metal backdrop.
Scott Brocato:
Are you conscious about--like going back to songwriting process, if a song comes to you, a title, (do you think) "this would be good for Taylord," or "this would be good for Taylor," meaning you?
Taylor Paul:
Yeah, they're very different worlds. And I'm usually playing it on different guitars and utilizing different equipment. So it's pretty easy for me to decide which way it's going to go.
Scott Brocato:
Earlier you mentioned that you were diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2019. You were 23. Where are you at with that right now?
Taylor Paul:
I'm doing really well. Most of 2019 was kind of ablur for me, and then it's interesting coming out of that right into COVID, into the pandemic. So that made for an interesting couple of years of my life for sure. But aside from a couple things here and there, I've been in really good shape the last few years. I've been very thankful for that.
Scott Brocato:
That diagnosis and the treatments that you received since, did that influence your songwriting at all, your outlook?
Taylor Paul:
Absolutely. You know, that kind of seems like a thing that happens to other people and is not ever anything until it hits so close to home, let alone yourself. So it really took a long time to process and come to grips with what was happening.
But your 20s, that's when you're supposed to be feeling invincible and you want to take on the world and do whatever you want to do. And to have everything shut down like that...it put a really different spin on what this is all about and what do I want to be doing in my life and what's important to me?
Scott Brocato:
What about new music? Do you have any new music out now or coming out?
Taylor Paul:
So I put out a couple of singles this year. I put out “Don't Give Up on You,” and then I recently put out “Rain in the Windowsill.” Those are Taylor Paul singles that you can find on my YouTube (channel) and stuff. But I'm working on another record and I hope to have that out hopefully at the tail end of this year, if not the top of next year.
Scott Brocato:
We have about a minute left. What advice would you give to a young musician who's just starting out and wants to do it professionally?
Taylor Paul:
I knew you were going to ask this question, so I was trying to think about it.
I think a lot about this Berklee talk that John Mayer gave several years ago. It's like a six-part series that's on YouTube. And he really talks about the importance of defining your expectations. So there's a lot that you can do in the space of music, and I think it's important to identify what you want to do and then kind of adjust what you're doing to make sure you meet those goals, whether it's to be a fantastic bass player or be a songwriter. Do you want to travel? Do you want to go on the road? Do you want to be in a variety band and do that thing? So there's a lot of spaces that you can occupy in music. That's something that I think about a lot and still grapple with sometimes.
