Life & Work with Joshua Taylor

Today we’d like to introduce you to Joshua Taylor. 

Hi Joshua, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
I snuck up on being a professional musician. My first public performances were in my late twenties—ten or so years ago now—thanks in no small part to our dearly departed pal, Louie Brazier (Lestat’s West). Prior to that, I grew up in and around Oklahoma City, left for school out East in 2002, graduated from Annapolis with a B.S. in history, and served a few years as a Navy officer. In the summer of 2011, I was out of the Navy and had landed in San Diego. Over the next couple of years, while I was doing my first few dozen coffee shop and art show gigs, I put together my first band and played some shows around town with a set of about 50/50 originals and covers. During that time, I was going to grad school for counseling psych as well, training as a marriage and family therapist. 

In late 2014/early 2015, I went through a series of major personal and professional shifts in priorities. Just as I was going through a divorce, I started getting more work as a musician and learned that it was possible to make a steady living at it. At some point in early 2015, I felt like I needed to leave behind the idea of pursuing a career as a therapist, and I finally threw all my eggs in the music basket. I’ve been a full-time musician ever since, and I’m fortunate that my work has kept expanding over the years. I’m now a session singer and guitarist, sideman/hired gun, and a principle member of a couple of different original projects outside of my own bands. I do a bit of light producing and teaching as well (I particularly like teaching/coaching professional musicians). 

These days, I bounce between home and travel gigs, and 2022 has been a year filled with new music releases from multiple projects I’m involved in. I released a new album with my solo project on October 30th, titled Unscene, and produced by Jeff Berkley. My band with my wife Sandi King, called King Taylor Project, released two singles earlier this year. I’ve traveled quite a bit with my bandmates in Arizona-based Americana-soul band Ponderosa Grove, opening for Tedeschi Trucks Band a few times, and doing some other shows trying to build some industry awareness for the band. Ponderosa Grove has released three singles this year, and we’re traveling to Nashville to record a new EP in November.

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?
Few roads are smooth. Aside from the intense financial pressures every artist faces—with which we’re all nauseatingly familiar by now—I think the hardest part of being a musician is self-doubt. Most of the great musicians I know struggle with imposter syndrome, at least occasionally. The inner critic can manifest in many ways, depending on your temperament, I suppose: toxic competitiveness or comparison, FOMO, stage fright, substance abuse, cantankerousness, whatever. I don’t treat music as a competitive sport, I tend to be fairly agreeable, and the substance monkey seems to have missed my back, so one of my biggest challenges has been the sense that I’m racing a clock against irrelevance. I’ve wrestled quite a bit with the sense that I wasted several years not being in music, falling behind my own imagined expectations for my age group. In a youth-obsessed entertainment culture, I sometimes worry that by the time I’m doing anything worth noticing, I’ll be too old for anyone to care. There are other, more pragmatic obstacles, of course, but I think they’re fairly universal. 

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m a singer-songwriter and guitarist. I have my own original project as a solo artist, I have a band with my wife, vocalist Sandi King, called King Taylor Project, and I’m in an Arizona-based band called Ponderosa Grove. I work with other original artists in San Diego as a backing vocalist, guitarist, and sometimes co-producer. I’m also a hired gun, session vocalist and guitarist, and I do a bit of teaching/coaching with guitar, vocals, and songwriting. I gather that I’m known for being easy to work with, creative with guitar parts and vocal arrangements, a good study, a competent instrumental soloist, and a respected songwriter. I think I’m sort of known for having a buttery, soul-based vocal style, too. To be honest, I’m probably best known for being the husband of Sandi King, who is an absolute force of nature, and (rightly) beloved by all who encounter her. 

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
If I’m doing generally more good than harm in the world, paying my bills, meeting personal and professional obligations, and maintaining a reasonable balance between the “because I care about it” and “because I have to” activities, I feel pretty successful. I think we have an incredibly unhealthy “success” culture as it is, and obsession with the kind of success most people are blathering on about breeds a terrible preference for productivity over humanity. I’m just trying to create a nice space to stand in while I’m here. 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.joshuataylormusic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshuataylormusic/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joshuataylormusicpage
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUqDkTVlJ1mMHTBDRYd49Jw
• Other: https://www.patreon.com/KingTaylorProject

Image Credits
Rodrigo Izquierdo
Andrew Middleton
Martin Mann
Jim Kappel