GOING BACK TO HER ROOTS
Dione Taylor creates prairie blues
You can see for miles on the Prairies. And Dione Taylor’s voice is powerful enough to hear for miles. So perhaps it’s fitting that she’s coined the term “prairie blues” for her current career direction.
“The whole concept of it is me being from the Prairies and growing up with my experience as being a black Canadian female singer who grew up in the church but who loves jazz and blues,” Taylor said recently from a tour stop in Montreal.
“The blues is actually all about storytelling, so that’s where prairie blues comes from. It’s basically stories about my upbringing and my personal journey and people who have been on a similar journey to me.”
Taylor grew up in Regina where her dad was and is the pastor of The Shiloh Assembly Apostolic Church. She played organ at four and was music director by 10.
“The earliest memories I can remember are me being this little, tiny, four-year-old and not really being able to quite see above the piano, just kind of reaching up and just sitting beside the piano and sitting beside the organ and feeling so at home with the music there. That’s actually my foundation of my schooling in music was through the church.”
Taylor established her career in Toronto, getting a Juno nomination for her first album and performing with greats like Oliver Jones.
Her latest project is Born Free, an EP that she’ll follow up with more original music. She was inspired by William Still, father of the Underground Railroad.
“He was part of the generation of blacks who were born free, so he was not born into slavery. He was educated, he was an abolitionist.
“Born Free is about my journey and my truth and all about just being true to everything that happens and being open to all of your experiences whether they be positive or negative and somehow trying to understand the lesson, which is really about unconditional love.”
Here are Taylor’s thoughts on other aspects of Born Free and her career.
Prairie values: “Prairie values to me are being humble, obviously. When you’re a professional and even before you become a professional, you spend a lot of time alone and a lot of time practising and listening to music and when there are a lot of distractions around you, it’s really hard to do that. So I think growing up in the Prairies really allowed me to be able to do that, and to be quiet and to really soak in all those beautiful Prairie sunsets and sunrises and be humble.” Performing: “I’m used to interpreting songs like classical and jazz, that’s kind of been my template for many years but it’s a really empowering feeling to be able to sing songs that I’ve written, the lyrics and the music, and bringing my songs to the guys in my band and us working on these projects together. When I look out in the audience and see people with tears in their eyes or people laughing or people clapping, I know that I’m doing something great and that the feeling that I get when I sing, I’m able to translate that to them and that’s really all that I ever want to do.”
The band: “The Backsliderz are amazing. It’s fiery. It’s the prairie blues. It’s hard to describe, you have to experience it.”
Her voice: “I’m purposefully changing the sound of my voice for this project because it’s not jazz, it’s not classical. It’s got gospel, it’s got the blues, it’s got soul. And I’m still really, really working on my sound but the sound is getting fuller and it’s more unique than it was before, I think. It just feels right. It feels really authentic and it feels like it’s me.”