JOANNE SHAW TAYLOR
Photo Credit: © Joe Armitage c/o BoneShaker Pictures

NEW STUDIO ALBUM JOANNE SHAW TAYLOR “THE DIRTY TRUTH” RELEASED 22nd SEPTEMBER

British blues rock guitarist Joanne Shaw Taylor returns to UK shores with a Nationwide UK Tour in November 2014 (WITH SPECIAL GUEST BERNIE MARSDEN), which follows hot on the heels of her fourth new studio album, “The Dirty Truth”, which is currently being recorded in Memphis.

The new album, “The Dirty Truth“, is released on Monday 22nd September on Joanne’s boutique label Axehouse Records. Joanne will be reunited with Jim Gaines who produced her 2008 debut album White Sugar.

“I wanted to go back into the studio in Memphis with Jim to retain the same vibe that we captured on the first album,” says Joanne. “The new album is a combination of rock and blues, and I think it’s going to be an exciting collaboration, and hopefully, my fans will love the rockier edge.”

The forthcoming album and UK tour follows 2013’s critically acclaimed Songs FromThe Road; a live album energized with soul power, blues savvy and rock roots.

In May 2013, when Joanne originally performed an intimate concert at London’s Borderline, The Blues magazine wrote, “Joanne slips from bursts of muscular rhythm to searing riffs rooted in the blues but not dominated by it… JST bristles with self-confidence, energy and excitement.”

In 2013 during an in-depth interview, The Blues magazine asked Joanne if she was having fun playing live. “How can you not enjoy that job?” she responded. “I get on stage, turn my guitar up really loud and I shout in the microphone for two hours. It’s like the best therapy in the world.”

Joanne-Shaw-Taylor
Photo Credit: © Al Stuart

In November 2013, TV presenter Malcolm Gerrie said the following about Joanne in the Sunday Times – “Who said white gals can’t play the blues? Killer licks, soaring solos and heart-wrenching vocals.”

“A Brummie blues singer? Yes, really,” wrote the Sunday Telegraph about Joanne last November. “Joanne Shaw Taylor has enough soul to compete with the best the Mississippi Delta has to offer.”

Fans will also be able to order the following versions of the new album from www.joanneshawtaylor.com :

Signed copy of Limited Edition Digipak CD (£12.99) (including p&p)
The CD will arrive on release date

Joanne Shaw Taylor – Biography

Sold out concerts. Screaming fans. Her name in lights. Joanne Shaw Taylor never anticipated any of that at the start. Back then, she was just an ordinary Black Country schoolgirl, bored with the disposable pop she heard on late 90s radio, rifling her father’s record collection for sunken treasure, and falling for albums by Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert Collins and Jimi Hendrix.

At 13 she played her first electric guitar. “Guitars were always lying around the house,” says Joanne.  At 14, she defied her teachers to play The Marquee and Ronnie Scott’s, and began to overcome insecurity about her voice.

“I never set out to be a singer,” she modestly told Classic Rock. “I’ve always had a deep voice. I think it came from my influences as a kid.

When I was singing to records, I was listening to Albert Collins and Freddie King. When I was a teenager, I became a big rock fan: Glenn Hughes, Skin, Doug Pinnick. I wouldn’t get far on The X Factor.”

Joanne left school at 16 and ran straight into her big break, as a twist of fate directed her demo into the hands of Eurythmics icon Dave Stewart after a charity gig.

Reflecting on his first impressions, Stewart recalls that “she made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.” His call the following day proved the start of a lasting friendship, with Joanne seeking his advice on the industry and accompanying his DUP supergroup across Europe in 2002.

Stewart gave Joanne her first deal, but when the label ran into financial trouble, it gave her a chance to regroup and work on her songwriting. Until then, original material had perhaps been a neglected side of her talent.

“I never really wrote songs until I was 21.” Suddenly the dam broke. In 2008, Ruf won the rush for Joanne’s signature, and soon she was working with veteran producer Jim Gaines (Carlos Santana, Johnny Lang, Stevie Ray Vaughan), bassist Dave Smith and drummer Steve Potts on the songs that became debut album White Sugar. “We recorded it in this little backwater town in Tennessee,” she recalls, “and if we needed a break, we’d walk to the shop and buy root beer.”

When White Sugar dropped the following year, taking in gems like Bones and KissThe Ground Goodbye, it turned out the press had a sweet tooth, with Classic Rockcrowning it Blues Album Of The Month and Guitarist noting “she plays with more attitude and flair than most – massive potential here”.

Soon enough, the buzz was building, with Joanne both raising her profile supporting Black Country Communion, and honing her craft on 2010’s Diamonds In The Dirt. This second album was another step up, from the explosive lead breaks on Can’t Keep LivingLike This to the heavier influence of her adopted Detroit hometown on the crunching country-blues of Dead And Gone. Not bad, considering she had written the material in just two days and recorded it in less than a fortnight: “It’s the dreaded second album curse. You have ten years to do the first one, and ten days to do the second!”

By then, she was unstoppable, with Diamonds In The Dirt proving not only a classic record, but also a skeleton key to every door in the industry. Having received a nomination for Best New Artist Debut at the auspicious British Blues Awards for White Sugar, Joanne scooped consecutive wins in the Best British Female Vocalistbracket at both the 2010/2011 events: a haul that cements her position, as Blues Matters put it, as “the new face of the blues.”

Since then, it’s gone stratospheric, with Joanne breaking into the notoriously hard-to-crack US market, beating the stereotypes of her age and gender, and being watched by 17 million viewers as she played an angel-winged solo during Annie Lennox’s set at the 2012 Diamond Jubilee Concert.

That same summer gave us Almost Always Never; a bar-raising third album that found Joanne dodging expectations, writing the songs her muse dictated, and diving in at the deep end with just her talent to keep her afloat.

Recorded in Austin, Texas, these twelve cuts moved from the savage Les Paul solos ofSoul Station and the strutting hooks of Standing To Fall, to the failed relationship achingly depicted on You Should Stay, I Should Go and the title track’s refrain of “You crash, you burn/you live, you learn”. She’d never sounded more open and honest. “I’ve loved every album I’ve made for many different reasons,” reflects Joanne. “But I’m so proud of these songs. It’s the perfect and truest example of who I am as an artist to date.”

Maybe so, but if you only know Joanne Shaw Taylor as the songwriter and studio magician, then it’s time you heard Songs From The Road. Released November 2013 on Ruf Records, it’s a candid snapshot from the road that makes your front room feel like the front row. “That night was just really good fun,” she reflects. “And I think that translates on the album.”

In May 2014, Joanne reunited with her White Sugar album producer Jim Gaines, and recorded her new studio album in Memphis.  The new studio album entitled The Dirty Truth is a return to Joanne’s original sound that mixes rock riffs with blues influences.  The album will be released in the UK on September 22nd on Joanne’s own independent boutique label Axehouse Records.

Joanne-Shaw-Taylor
Photo Credit: © MHP Studios

Joanne Shaw Taylor – Official Website: www.joanneshawtaylor.com