About Me
Throwing in the towel as a drummer may have been Brian Taylor's single best career move.
A few years after coming to Nashville as a talented but naive 18-year-old, Brian headed back to Florida to regroup. It was during that visit that an impulse decision changed his life
"I decided to take the money I was making with a local band and buy my first guitar," the Pensacola native says with a smile. When he moved back to Tennessee a few months later in 2001, it was in front of a band rather than behind it. In less than a year, playing at an O'Charlie's on the strip in Knoxville, he went from being unknown to packing the place every time he took the stage.
"I was completely beside myself as to how successful I was at it," he says. "For the first time in my life, I got by totally on my voice. It made me go, 'Wait a second! Maybe I've been doing the wrong thing all along.'" Back in Nashville, packing some of the city's best-paying night spots, he began turning the right heads.
"I heard Brian on a few occasions singing in clubs downtown," says Rascal Flatts guitarist/vocalists Joe Don Rooney' "and I remember being blown away with his voice. When I found out nobody was working with him just then, I thought, 'Wow! Lucky me!'"
Joe Don took Brian into the studio and the result is music that captures a singer ready to make a huge impact on the industry.
"He is a singer's singer," says Joe Don. "No matter what it is, uptempo or ballad, when Brian is singing, you will be moved."
Brian's first influences were the country acts he heard his parents playing on the radio. As a teenager playing in the cover band as well as his school marching band, he found himself drawn to Don Henley, Bryan Adams and Steve Perry. When he reached Nashville, he found himself drawn to the work of classic artists such as JohnnyCash and Merle Haggard, and to their "outside the box" approach to their artistry. He also drew from dynamic vocalists like Vince Gill, Brian White and Steve Wariner, and the combination left him with what calls "a pot luck mix of vocal styles I've been able to make my own."
His is a voice that sounds lived in , that has enough edge to turn ability into emotion. The result has been called "Bryan Adams meets Rascal Flatts meets Keith Urban." Combined with a stage presence that is pure excitement, it makes for an unbeatable package.
These days, drumming is the jaw-dropping ability he adds to the mix when he's already won a crowd with his vocal abilities.
"It's become my hidden talent," he says, "which is really funny to me, after all the effort I put into trying to make it a career."
As his star rises, more and more music fans are finding out that trading drumsticks for a microphone was the right decision for everyone.
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