Joanne Shaw Taylor’s Heavy Soul mixes epic tales of turbulent love affairs with bodacious guitar playing. With Anton Fig on drums and producer extraordinaire Kevin Shirley behind the glass, the result is a mix of soul, pop, and R&B with the emotional ecstasy of the blues.
Heavy Soul has a wonderful synergy between your vocals, writing, and guitar playing.
I love writing songs. It’s very therapeutic for me and I love playing guitar. My job at the end of the day is to play obnoxiously loud guitar and scream into a microphone about things that bother me. I’m very lucky. It’s free therapy (laughs).
It’s like scream therapy.
Oh, 100 percent! I call it the “Adele effect.” People think I break up with someone every time I write an album. I want to write about things close to me because, at the end of the day, my job is to make people feel something. If I don’t feel it, I’m not going to make someone else feel it. Secondly, it’s why I do this. It’s why all artists do what they do – to express themselves. It might be something I’ve been going through recently or someone I haven’t thought about in 10 years, and I might feel a different way than I did 10 years ago. Age and experience is a beautiful thing.
You’ve recorded a lot of albums. That’s a lot of breakups (laughs).
I keep writing about the same guy who’s getting more and more pissed off at me (laughs). It’s all relative. “A Good Goodbye” was about the benefits of knowing when it’s time to move on. Just because a relationship ends doesn’t mean it’s a failure. That’s not always the case. That song came from a conversation with a dear friend. It wasn’t that I was leaving a relationship. You can build in life experience without actually having to piss off someone in a relationship (laughs).
Your music now has plenty of soul, R&B, and pop.
That wasn’t intentional. When I did White Sugar, I was 22. I was listening to blues guitarists, but my career would have taken a different route if I’d been born a man. The guitar is a gender-neutral instrument. I can try to make it sound like Stevie Ray Vaughan or Albert Collins. If I fail, it’s because I’m not very good, not because of my gender. I was never going to sing like Luther Allison, so I had to find female artists to learn how to sing from. Most of them tended to be in soul and pop, which tended to be Tina Turner or Stevie Nicks. So, it was a necessity to branch out into other areas. I love a catchy chorus and yes, I am a Swiftie (laughs). Life is too short not to be true to yourself. I want to write the best songs I can.
If you’re a dude, there are a million role models out there. You can say, “Hey, I want to be like Dave Grohl or Eric Clapton.” There wasn’t a single woman who did everything I wanted to do. There’s Bonnie Raitt, but she plays slide. There’s Jennifer Batten, but she doesn’t sing. There’s Sheryl Crow, but that’s not a blues thing. We look for ourselves in our idols. Then there’s Samantha Fish, who I hope a hundred girls see and say, “I wanna do that!” which will spawn a thousand other girls.
Your guitar playing on the album is very powerful.
It’s not hard to play a great guitar solo when you’ve got Anton Fig on drums and you’re feeding off him. Most of the setup for the recording was my ’66 Esquire and a ’63 Bassman. In terms of tone, it was plug in and go. I also played a 2008 Custom Shop Les Paul. I’m boring when it comes to pedals. I don’t want to carry them around. I’d rather spend my money on shoes (laughs).
Not a big fan of effects?
When you’re onstage trying to entertain people, playing rhythm guitar while singing and driving the band, you don’t want to do the tap dance switching pedals. How much harder do I want to make this just to add a bit of flange? Live, I use an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Nano Reverb and an Ibanez TS08 to add a little boost.
The tones on “Wild Love” and “The Devil In Me” are fierce.
That was my main objective. I may never win “Greatest Guitar Player In The World,” but I hope you can tell it’s me, which is what I love about the great guitar players.
Who would win in a guitar duel between you and Orianthi?
She would kill me (laughs)! We have the same friends but we’ve never met. I hear she’s an absolute sweetheart, so I look forward to meeting her one day.
This article originally appeared in VG’s September 2024 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
