Joanne Shaw Taylor: “Stop Trying to Be Better Than Everyone Else”

Renowned blues powerhouse Joanne Shaw Taylor is a guitarist from the Midlands, UK with a distinct songwriting and playing style that draws on her early influences like Stevie Ray Vaughn and Albert Collins. Her career began to flourish at just sixteen years old when she was discovered by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics and she has since gone on to become a globally recognised name in blues, pop, and rock circles. Her latest album ‘The Trouble With Love’ is coming this October and features a collection of deeply personal songs that draw on her experience of love in all of its guises. 

We recently had the pleasure of chatting with Joanne about her upcoming album, her approach to technique and playing, her beloved telecaster ‘Junior’ and life on the road. 

Thank you so much for chatting with Guitar Interactive today. You have a new album coming up - ‘The Trouble With Love’

I do! Yes. 

 Tell me a little bit about what everyone can expect from this album. What's the inspiration behind the title? What are the main inspirations kind of at play for you at the moment?

To be honest, it was a bit more of a concept album, and I hate to use that term because it sounds so bougie, but just in terms of I wrote the first track, ‘The Trouble With Love’, and kind of decided to use it as a theme really of…and maybe, I know you're exceptionally talented guitar player, you know, female artist, maybe you can relate to this is over the years I've tended to notice the theme of whenever I write songs about love or breakups, I kind of get the cliche of like, you know, Adele, everyone has to have a breakup in order to write music. And you know, it's not always about that. 

I think it's just after, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years, we've been writing music on this topic and plays and films, and you know and it just seems to be a subject that fascinates us all. So I decided to write every song about the different facets of love, I suppose, whether that's unrequited or successful or you know, ones that should work, but they don't, or whatever it may be. Friendships, there's a song on there for my best friend Rachel. So that was kind of the idea behind it. And in terms of musically, I kind of touched back a bit more on blues roots of, I mean, I think I've always…not struggled with that, but that's always been my fun challenge of I'm a blues guitarist that's a soul singer that likes writing rock pop songs, you know, so how do I make like a fun blues pop album, I suppose.

So anyway, it's hopefully a really interesting and fun album, and I certainly had a lot of fun recording it!

Yeah, I mean, I think it sounds to me like there's going to be something for everybody to relate to on that, which I guess is always nice if you can have a little bit of yourself kind of reflected back to you. And you're also on tour very soon, if I am not mistaken.

Yes, my time off is over. I am returning to the States.

Yeah, it's summer though, you know, hopefully the road will be good to you!

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. We're coming to Europe and then into the States and I'm ready for it. They've given me three weeks off, which was lovely, but I've got to stop playing my PlayStation and get back to being a grown up.

So you're in Europe first. Do you have like a favourite city or even a favourite country to play live?

Not so much play, because that's the nice thing about music, and I'm sure you can relate to this, of like it's the great sort of language breaker, you know, whether you're in Poland or Southern states, it's one thing we can kind of all transcends everything, you know. So, I mean, people are people wherever you go, and people are, fortunately, in my experience, have been lovely supporters of mine.

But for sure, there's places where it's like, yeah, I wouldn't mind a day off in Amsterdam, you know, as opposed to like the middle of nowhere Kansas or like Paris. And particularly coming to Europe, obviously it's nice because it's an excuse to stay an extra week and see the family.

Yeah, no, it's definitely true. I mean, audiences usually if you've cultivated your own fan base that's nice humans, you're going to get that wherever you go. I always think that most audiences are mint, but Glasgow is always just like that little bit madder. That's my favourite place to play.

There is that.

That's my favourite.

Yeah, I will say there's something where, and my grandfather's Scottish, hence I've got the Shaw in my name as a middle name. So I hope they'll forgive me for saying this, but they're just the right amount of like unhinged.

Oh, yeah, 100%. 100%.

Yeah, it's nice, isn't it? But as soon as you walk on, I mean, it's ridiculous that we do what we do for a living that essentially as soon as we walk on into a room, people will applaud us. But when you go on stage in Glasgow, it's like an extra level of like, oh my God, you guys are nuts.

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I think sort of currently, as much as I don't like to allude too much to like a negative state of the world, I think like the music industry at the moment is going through such rapid kind of unprecedented change. It's shifting all the time.

Yeah.

And particularly like the live music industry, you know, in terms of like where live music sits now and everything, it's changing so rapidly and so sort of how has the landscape of touring sort of changed even within your career so far? Is it much different from when you started out?

It's not much different, to be honest, in that it was hard when I started out and it's hard now. And you would think it gets easier, but it doesn't. And I say that in that it's not a hard job. You know, I'm very lucky to do what I do for a living, and I love what I do. But it does feel like we're sort of fighting against the business side of things that doesn't want to make it profitable to tour. And, you know, we're seeing more and more press articles. I think Garbage was the last one I read.

Yes!

Where they've retired from touring just because they can't sustain it, and with everything we've got going against us with Brexit, for example, or just, you know, concert tickets going up and that whole Live Nation, you know, situation we've got going on at the moment, it is getting harder, but the lovely thing is that makes it extra special to me, I think when doing a show and it's like, okay, these people could have done anything else tonight. And, you know, there might be doctors and nurses here have pulled like 18 hour shifts and they've still spent 50 quid to come and see me. So it makes you extra thankful, I think. I think you've got to try and look at that positive. If not, it's just what Patreon and all this stuff, you know, more people are deciding not to travel, but I still love it and I'm still, you know, thankful for anyone who comes out and, you know, shows support for me and the venues.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, goodness knows we're losing too many live venues at the moment, so it's equally important to keep getting out there and playing, I suppose. But just sort of taking it back and getting more kind of strictly musical. So you kind of mentioned, you know, being a blues guitarist, but also like walking those other genre lines as well. What what was your introduction to the blues? How did that come into your life?

My dad's record collection, like I think a lot of my generation, you know, is a kid who grew up in the UK in the 60s, watching Hendrix on top of the pops and Stones and kind of got into the older blue skies through the modern day pop stars. But yeah, Steve Ray Vaughan for me, I just saw a video of him, and I've been playing classical guitar, and I loved playing guitar, but it was just so disciplined for me, personally. That when I saw Stevie, then the next guy was Albert Collins who's, if anyone's familiar with him, it's not how you would suggest to learn to play guitar. Albert Collins' technique. It's like capo at the 8th fret, guitar tune to, like, F minor, I think it was. But that's what I loved about it, like, there were no rules, you know, as long as you put your personality into it, you know, and Albert Collins, you can tell who Albert Collins is, is very different to Freddie King, he's very different to T-Bone Walker. So that was kind of my real attraction to the genre of the guitar playing certainly.

And you're primarily a Telecaster player. Usually whenever I see a video of you, there's a Telecaster in hand.

I love them.

So, why the Telecaster for you? What was the journey to playing Telecasters, and what do you love about them?

I think the first thing was that like a lot of kids in my generation that got into guitar playing because of Stevie the Strat was just so… and even now, when I pick up a Strat, I revert to being, like, 13 years old and just hacking my way through pride and joy, it's like I've learned nothing in the last 30 years.

Yeah, Scuttle Buttin’ still kicks my ass.

Yeah, Rude Mood, Scuttle Buttin’ - no thank you. So I think it just kind of forms bad habits for me, so I wanted, like, a cleaner canvas. It was a massive Albert Collins fan, really big Johnny Lang fan growing up. And then my other favourite guitar player of all time, Keith. So it's that kind of inspiration originally, but I just find that the tellies, one, it's really, really versatile. You can attack it as much as you want, and it's going to give back to you, whereas I can hack away at a strap for days and just can't seem to get anywhere. Which again is a personal preference to the player, not the guitar itself so yeah, love it, Tele. Always probably going to be a Tele girl.

Yeah, I tend to find that I always reach for Tele in the studio whenever I need that, even though I'm, like, very much a Gibson player, if I need the little sparkle over the top, it's like, right, time for the Telecaster.

Yes. Yeah. You can't yeah and you know it's like you can't make a Les Paul sound like a Telecaster and you can't make a Telecaster sound like a Les Paul.

Yeah, absolutely. It's just finding your voice, I suppose, isn't it? And whichever one fits with you.

And mine's an angry Telecaster.

Yeah, and you know it's really interesting that you mentioned sort of some of those blues players with really unconventional techniques. I think, you know, when you do get into playing through blues, you're looking at a lot of self-taught players, you're looking at people with a lot of like unconventional things. So how was the process of sort of developing your technique? Is there anything you do that's maybe a bit unconventional that people might not know?

I think originally the first sort of challenge I had was because I've been playing classical guitar for 5 years, was how to then, you know, move to a guitar pick. So I still use my fingers a lot. Another of my early influences and favourite guitar play is Lindsay Buckingham who kind of did the same thing, and then, of course Albert Collins finger picked, so it's still actually, for 50% of the show, probably use my fingers, it just doesn’t look like it, just feel like there's more control for me, you know, there's not something between you and the strings, you know, so you can kind of feel it more and feel your way around it more. 

But I mean, again, I think that the main things I really wanted to achieve as a guitar player was I just wanted to sound like me. You know, I wanted you to be able to hear me and go, that's Joanne Shaw Taylor. I didn't necessarily want to be the greatest guitar player that's ever lived. I just wanted to put my voice out there and go, well, you know there's only one of her, because she only sounds like she does. So there was a couple of things early on I focused on. It was very important to me that I loved a really good vibrato, and quite like a identifiable vibrato, like Albert Collins had that, Paul Kossoff, you know, some of my favourite players. 

And then I also wanted to be, and I think this was a bit of a chip on my shoulder starting out as a 13 year old girl was, you know, back when I was learning, I mean, I'm 40 now. There weren't really any women to look up to playing guitar, you know, there was like Jennifer Batten and Bonnie Raitt, you know. I started in the days when people would still tell you you were good for a girl.

Yeah, I've had that lots of times.

Yeah, as if you'd like that. Thank you, I did really well with this disability of being female. So I wanted to be quite an aggressive player, I think. That was a bit of a chip on my shoulder, you know, watching guys like Stevie really kind of attack. And I was at the get-go, I've kind of reeled it in a little bit, because it was getting a bit over the top in my… certainly my teenage years. But yeah, those were kind of the things that I really kind aspired to be good at, I suppose.

Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, certainly from my perspective, you've managed to shape that identifiable sound. And I think that's really what any guitar player wants, right? Is just sounding like them. It's a wonderful thing to be a catchall player that can sort of do anything, but that's maybe more of a vocational skill than an artistic one.

Yeah, I always say if you're hiring me to play a solo on your album, it better be because you want it sounding like me. I'm not going to be able to sound like anyone else. If that's not your cup of tea. You know, we're all just sums of a part, aren't we? We're a bit Stevie Ray Vaughn and a bit of Jeff Beck and a bit of whatever it's how you package it together to be your own thing.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's your blend of influence is essentially, isn't it? And you come out with your own voice. Obviously, we're really lucky being Guitar Interactive - all our watchers and listeners and readers, are big guitar nerds, so we like to get into the minutiae of just guitar playing really. And I love hearing about other people's approach to practice. In terms of both ethos, you know, because it's, like, practice versus playing, and how much do you do of each, and also, like, literally the minutiae of the process. So, yeah, I'd love to know, sort of, what your approach to practice is, and if you sit down to kind of practice, what does that, what does that look like for you?

I think it's very different now to, in the early days, like the first 3-4 years, it was very, okay, I've got to do like 12 hours a day and this is what I want to achieve so it's like warm-up scales, 3 hours dedicated to BB King, 3 hours dedicated to Stevie, 3 hours, like, improvised jamming with a backing track. Now it's more about playing, to be honest, just one keeping the passion alive so I don't overdo it. Because I did certainly for a couple of years and then COVID kind of hit, it did me good actually to not touch a guitar, because every time I saw a guitar I just thought of my day job, which is, you never want to kind of lose that passion. So for me now it's more about just having fun if I want to sit down and yesterday I was putting on a Kenny Wayne Shepherd video and kind of noodled along, or most of the time now, if I'm off, I actually play acoustic. Just because it gives me a different sort of palette. It helps with the songwriting, write mostly on acoustic, and also just heavier strings, so it keeps the fingertips up, so, you know, take 3 weeks off and go back to gigging the first gig's not too painful.

Yeah, I am really guilty of being an acoustic guitar dodger. I really am. I need to, yeah, do it more.

It helped me with the songwriting, because then I just - it’s hard, I'm sure you know sometimes when I pick up my man guitar Junior, it's just I go back into old habits and I do the same things over and over that I'm used to doing. So at least like picking up something different, you know, I can't do what I do on Junior online acoustic, so it kind of forces me to learn some different chord shapes, you know, strengthen up the fingers, work on the finger picking…so that'll help me. Change is as good as rest, you know.

Yeah, definitely. I think it can be really great if you ever do kind of hit a creative wall to as much as like personally, I've never been that much of a gearhead, mainly because I've been broke my whole life.

Welcome to being a musician!

But yeah, I think like gear can be a great way, though, if you if you do pick up something new or plug in something new, to have something new come out. So is there is there any are there any weird and wonderful highlights of your guitar and gear collection?

No, I'm really boring you know, I've kind of stuck with Junior since I was 15, which is 66 Esquire that I got picked up cheap, cheaper, on Denmark Street. Someone had attacked it with a knife and I had a Saturday, Sunday job in a guitar shop and I was gigging as well. My nan, bless her, said ‘you’re working really hard and are you saving up for a nice guitar, so what have you put away, me and your granddad will match.’ So I think I got together about 800 quid and, bless them, they matched it for my Christmas and birthday present. And yeah, I've kind of… he has just been the sort of the voice that I have. I don't play any of the guitar quite as well.

Then I'm also spoiled of being next door neighbours and best mates with Joe Bonamassa, who's done the work of buying all the guitars. Literally all of them. And all the pedals.

He told me the other day that he's got, like, seven Klon Centaurs? I couldn't believe it.

Probably. I think you've missed a digit off the end of that, to be honest. But it's also just thinking smartly and practically, why would I spend money on things when I know the door code to Nerdville? So I'm very lucky in that situation. But yeah, I'm pretty, I'm pretty boring.

Well, boring or just calculated, minimalistic?

Yeah. Plus, I made a financial decision that all my money goes on this thing [Hank the sausage dog]. Budget's pretty tight, so [Hank] came along.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I've definitely always been a player that I do like to just stick with one guitar mostly. I've always been a bit bemused by, you know the players that have a different one for kind of every day of the week because I don't know, I feel like that would be a bit destabilising.

Yeah, and I don't want to travel with them. I've got to do guitar changes more often through the set than my guitar tech hates me because he's literally got like three guitars to mess around with but yeah, it's… I just find it makes my life, personally, a lot easier.

Yeah, no, I think that definitely makes sense. So another thing I sort of like to ask everybody that I chat to via GI, because I like to steal people's tricks, is what are your kind of best pearls of guitar wisdom, that could be really, kind of, technical, and could be a really practical bit of advice, it could be something more kind of ethos and approach-based, but if there's anything that, you know, if I had to ask you, like, what is that one thing that will make me better - what’s your go-to?

I mean, I wouldn't worry about being better. I mean - well no that’s not true. I think when I was younger, I worried so much about being better than, you know, there was a level of, like, this person's this good. And it's, you know, you can't be that person, you know, just as you can't look like them. You're never gonna sound like them. So I think just be true to yourself, try and find… at the end of the day this is a vehicle for you to express yourself. So find whatever your voice is, you know, if there's bits of, as I say, Paul Kossoff's vibrato that you want to beg, borrow, and steal to make your own, you know, do that. And I mean, the main thing is just enjoy it, you know. 

We’re the lucky ones that we found something in this world that, as you mentioned earlier, is a little bit rocky at times. You know, it's meant to be a great thing. It's meant to be something that brings you joy and makes your life better. So just enjoy it, you know, make it your own. And there are no rules. 

Yeah, yeah, I think certainly in the social media day and age, it's so easy now to immediately be kind of bombarded with just a universe of other guitar techniques. It can be… I think maybe that can be a bit distracting from… from having that really characterful style, maybe.

Yeah, I think I'm really lucky in the generation I grew up in, because it was kind of in between the two of like when I first started out to cycling to Birmingham to go to like our price and go, oh, can you get me in a BB King album? They'll be like, oh, it's going to be six weeks. We've got to ship it from the States. Great. And then having the internet early on when I was about 15, 16, but we didn't have YouTube. You know, so I could find out more information about the guitar players I liked and order CDs, but it wasn't like I could go on and find not only, I don't know, say you're studying Eric Johnson, everything Eric Johnson's ever performed, every video of him alive, plus his own lessons that he gives out. So I think it was nice that you had to kind of, like, go, like, oh, I like this, I'll borrow a bit of that, but I can't find too much of it, so I'm gonna go here now. There is such a thing as too much information isn’t there.

Yeah, I mean, I, unfortunately, I'm very much the YouTube generation, so it was kind of, yeah, everything all the time all at once from the get-go, but I think, you know, I've often been quite jealous of how players that we're coming into playing guitar before that kind of came into it, because I think it evidently forced you to be really intentional. It was like, no, if I want this record, I gotta want it, I gotta wait 6 weeks for the import, you know, or whatever.

Yeah, and I think the wait time in between, you know, so I had, like, one solo to learn over six weeks, so I had to add in parts of my own personality to it, as opposed to moving on. So yeah Burn your computer.

Yeah, it kind of, I guess it, yeah, it makes you it makes sure that you're consolidating skills before moving on. I'm definitely guilty of being, yeah, half finishing something.

It might be kind of a bit of a magical treasure hunt too. You know, it was definitely more fun than just having access to everything. But yeah, good luck with that.

Thanks.

It's fun being old.

So you've got the tour coming up, got the album coming out. Now I know that typically by time it's finally time to release an album, it's probably more in the works already. I would just be, or maybe not, but I would be really interested to sort of know where you're at right now, is it just full-on tour prep? Are you writing? What's going on?

It's just tour prep. You are correct in that usually I would say that, but I'd actually recorded this album Trouble With Love before I'd released the previous album, Black and Gold. So if you'd have interviewed me a couple of years ago, that would have been true. But yeah, I did two albums in one year, recorded them. So kind of having a little break. I am writing, but mostly for other people, just for kind of my own challenge. And also sometimes you have ideas that you really like, but it's like, hey, this doesn't really work for me to put out, but it's a shame if it, you know, doesn't see the light of day, so that's kind of been a fun creative challenge. But yeah, I'm kind of I mean, we've already been, this will be the second time we've been to Europe this year, and it's not even June yet. So I say I'm having a lazy year of where I kind of look after myself and Hank. But it's still pretty busy, so it's my version of a chill year, spending a bit more time with the family and stuff.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's so important to just look after yourself, especially because you sing as well. And yeah, when you sing, you've got to look after your health.

That's, yeah, that's the one and my little nephew Oscar Hendrix is just which is a good name for a guitar player who's just he's 11, and he's just got his first Strat so having a bit of an auntie nephew time.

Yeah, with the name Hendrix and a Strat in hand, no pressure kid but he's going to have to shred, you know?

Yeah, no, he's doing really well. Is it bizarrely obsessed with The Cranberries though, so I don't quite sure know where that's going to go.

Well, it's all about the 90s whimsigoth at the moment with the youth.

Yeah, I mean, I love The Cranberries, they're one of my favourite bands, but it's a bit depressing for an 11-year-old, but we'll, we're keeping an eye on him. We'll see how it goes

I think I was really into Rainbow at 11 years old, that's arguably worse. Yeah, didn't quite take in that the lyrics were not appropriate! It’s always really nice, I think, to pass on sort of any guitar skills to someone else. I think you learn so much more about your own playing if you're showing, especially, like, especially a kid, because they take on everything so fast, they're such sponges. 

Yeah, and it's nice that after, you know, decades of being around, you know musicians, it's kind of nice to be around someone that's got that, you know, he's just discovered a whole new world. It's like, hey, have you heard of Angus Young? I'm like, yes, I have heard of Angus Young. Welcome. Welcome. You've got so much to enjoy.

Yeah, the honeymoon period with, like, realising that rock music's just the best thing in the world is great. I wish I could go back and relive it again. So just a slightly kind of quick fire one heading towards capping things off. What are you listening to at the moment? What's on your turntable that's inspiring you right now?

I just started watching, I'm halfway through it, actually, I'm gonna go back to it when we end this convo. The Harry Styles concert on Netflix. I think he's having a… I really liked his album Fineline and I think he's having a really interesting career. I was watching him change as an artist, there seems to be now some sort of Bowie, David Byrne talking heads kind of influence. So I'm kind of digging into that to see what - where he's going to go, it's kind of interesting to watch this kid grow up from, like, a boy band thing to being a quiet, you know, established and respected artist. The 1975, I've been listening to a lot…What else have I been listening to? I've mostly been playing Hogwarts Legacy on my PlayStation, like the boring millennial I am.

I used to love the Lego Harry Potter game. That was the one.

Got it on my switch! First thing I did. For Europe, I've downloaded it onto the switch for the flight. But yeah, to be honest, at home, I mostly listen to a lot of classical music, just because it’s…I read a lot when I'm off the road, so it's kind of nice to, like, sort of Clara Haskil piano sonatas and stuff, which is, like, such a bougie response.

Well, no, I've had lots of other people say similar and you know what, I'm partial to a bit of Rachmaninov but I'm a recovering classical pianist.

See I would love to play piano. So I think I'd really enjoy listening to it, because sometimes I don't know if you get this when I listen to a guitar player, even if it's for enjoyment, I end up analysing it and I know what they're doing in certain spots. Not always, but you know I know what they're doing whereas with piano, I have no idea, so it's like really it's a lot easier to just kind of lose yourself in it. But yeah, I'm pretty sure they've just rescinded my birth certificate from the Black country for saying that I like to listen to classical music. 

No, I think, yeah, listening to an instrument that's not yours is definitely healthy at times, but I always found that piano, even though in theory it is just pressing buttons - it’s so hard, that's why I don't do it anymore!

Someone told me once a guy I worked with, massive influence on me, Dick Decent, was amazing musician from Black Country, used to play with Def Leppard for a long time. He said that guitars harder at first and then gets easier once you've mastered the bit at the beginning. Piano is really easy at first and then gets incredibly difficult.

I would, as someone that's tried both, I would echo that sentiment. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah, I do think about learning, but then I just think, well, I think I'll just have a sit down, rest me old bones.

In between tour of time, you need to just chill, you need to recharge yourself. so anyway, any sort of just last bits before we kind of sign off and I'll let you get back to your evening. Anything you want to plug, shout out?

Just the album, I guess, I'm actually really excited by this album. I mean, I like, you know, I obviously wouldn't put something out if I didn't think it was representative of me and that people, hopefully my fans would enjoy it, but really looking forward to it coming out. I think it's a strong, interesting album, and looking forward to the tour dates, you know, it's the thing I love most. So, yep, if we're near you, come say hello.

Yes, absolutely! It’s all about the playing live, I think, at the end of the day as well, isn't it? It's certainly a fun bit for me.

Yeah. Well, someone asked me once why I don't have a therapist, and I was like, well, I scream in a microphone and play obnoxiously loud guitar for a living, I don't need one, it's my therapy.

Joanne Shaw Taylor’s new album “The Trouble with Love” is released by Journeyman Records on October 23rd.  Further info: www.joanneshawtaylor.com