Today we’d like to introduce you to Taylor Watt.
Hi Taylor, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’ve always had a deep interest in music. My father, a guitarist himself, is someone who I have idolized throughout my life. Listening to his CD collection or pressing record for his band were formative moments in my childhood. My parents really encouraged me to explore different instruments. There are so many pictures of me as a kid playing drums, guitar, bass guitar, screaming into a toy microphone; it was an obsession. Back then it was mostly noise, but as I entered my preteen years, the brooding inevitably started, and I pushed myself to cover songs on guitar, which I later attempted to emulate in order to write songs of my own. It always started with poetry. I kept several journals stashed under my bed or packed into my school bag. In high school, I started meddling with 4-track and 8-track cassette tape recorders, manipulating sounds and taping demos in my room at, sometimes, 3 or 4 in the morning. A lot of those recordings I still have tucked away in the analog collection at my house. As my skill grew with experimentation, I entered college focused on forming a band and playing live (I had only played a few times before at my high school, local coffee shops, and a bar right before I graduated). Moving from Houston, TX to Portland, OR was a big adjustment, but it brought on new opportunities and put me in the same space as many other young artists, so it was only a matter of time before I found somebody to work with. I played for about a year and a half with both my bands in Portland, respectively. After my time there, post-graduation, I moved down to Denton. It felt like a homecoming for me. My parents met at UNT in the Delta Lodge way back when, and I was born here, so it was, to me, the logical next step. I quickly met our drummer, Simon, online a few months after I arrived, and we immediately hit it off. We started with old material of mine, but I was already working on something new. I was in a very traumatic relationship at the time, and Simon was really one of my only friends. So, I spent a lot of time working on music, which had always been an outlet. We played one show together under our current band name “Smothered” before COVID, and after that, I was able to leave my relationship, move into my own apartment, and settle down comfortably for the first time. Over that summer, I wrote the entire record we are set to release on 2/22/22. It was a culmination of all the difficult emotions and experiences I had dealt with over the previous few years, and it was the first collection of songs I really felt proud of. Writing and rewriting, driving around in my car for hours listening to demos, talking in my phone at odd hours of the night, sitting in the parking lot of the laundromat listening to the pieces play out in my head, it was all part of this greater act of healing that I didn’t even know I was doing at the time. Thanks to Zach, our bassist and another great friend of both myself and Simon, we were able to spend the last year recording and producing the songs together. Finally, after all this time, I can put my past behind me, put these songs out there, and focus on the present and the future.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not to dwell unnecessarily on trauma, but I think that there are certainly parts of my adult life that have affected my songwriting as well as my overall well-being. I’ve struggled in many aspects with my mental health, since early adolescence, and during/post my previous relationship I was severely hurting. I have had to relearn how to be a person, to be vulnerable, to let someone in. It’s difficult for anyone who has survived something like that to pick themselves back up and carry on. It took therapy, never-ending support from my girlfriend, friends, and family, sobriety on my own terms, and hope, honestly. However, I have fully moved on from that part of my life, and songs I write now really are a reflection of that growth.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am primarily a guitar player, vocalist, and songwriter. I can play a few different instruments, enough to produce most of my songs or demos solo, but guitar is really the only instrument I’ve had a deep connection with. I’ve always been more of a rhythm guitarist. My dad used to tell me that his hands weren’t built for all the flashy lead stuff, and I have to admit I’m the same way. I taught myself guitar, starting when I was much younger, so there are some aspects of the instrument like more complex theory that goes completely over my head. I mostly come up with parts for songs from the sort of sounds I hear in my head. I’ll sing them out into my phone notes or play on them for a while in the backroom of my house and see what sticks. I always start with guitar. I remember an interview a podcaster did with Tori Amos in which she described her songwriting process, and it really resonated with me, still does to this day. She said that she has these kind of “muses” in her head that give her little bits and pieces of a song or an idea. The trick is, they never give her the full picture, that’d be too easy. Her job is to take what’s there and piece it together like a puzzle. Although, sometimes that puzzle isn’t fully realized until you’ve had the right experiences or lived enough life. I have pieces of songs I’ve let sit for years that I still come back to. I’d say if I’m known for anything, Simon and Zach tell me I’m really good at songwriting so that must mean something! Ha. It helps that I don’t like to tie myself down to one particular genre, I like to mix a lot of my favorite sounds, so at one point you might hear a gut-punch of a song, and the next minute you’ll hear a ballad with a part that’ll get stuck in your head for days. As far as positionally is concerned, being a lesbian guitar player in a sort of male-centric genre is an interesting combination of challenges and opportunities. On the one hand, there is that pressure to be a hyper-feminized version of myself to be a girl in a band (thank you popular media), but the stronger voice in me has always been like screw it wear the carpenter pants, which also gets some amount of attention. I don’t think it’s unique for me to have to deal with being talked down to by men in the music space, but it surely is an intersectional issue when they treat you differently because there’s not a chance with you. At the same time, the boys in my band are my lifeline, and I wouldn’t trade them for the world. Intersectional issues are complicated, so I think my perspective is worth hearing in the music I write and in the venues I stumble through.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Honestly, anytime I was in the kitchen with my mom. Both my parents are very good cooks, don’t get me wrong, but when my mom and I cooked together it was always an affair. My grandmother passed away when my mom was 14, and as a gift my mother, along with other family members, received a cookbook of all the family recipes, including many of my grandmother’s. I’d always ask to cook my grandmother’s fettuccine, but we’d venture out in almost any direction. Even now, we’ll bake during holidays together, along with my younger sister. I think our best in that arena was the panettone we made a few years ago. For a long time, my mother was dealt a twisted hand. Her health declined for a while when I was in middle school, and she spent a lot of time in bed dealing with a severe amount of pain, until a few years ago. However, she would always get out of bed to cook with me. I’m so thankful for those moments with her. Now she’s a lot better, thanks to stem cell treatments and a ferocious will. Every time I see her, I know we are going to eat well and laugh while doing it.
Contact Info:
- Email: smotheredband@gmail.com
- Website:smothered.bandcamp.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smotheredband/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/smotheredband
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Smotheredband
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/tTwjWvN9Ggg
Image Credits
Jake Mitchell
Cece Case-Hernandez
Texas and Beyond Photography
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