Muddy Bottom Blues
Program #109 (June 23 at 8:00 p.m.)
Dulcie Taylor learned a hard music lesson at an early age – don’t leave your ukulele unattended in a porch chair at the beach. Some clueless teenager can sit on it and smash it to bits. The demise of her ukulele was a tough moment for ten-year-old Dulcie but that Christmas her Mother bought her a guitar and Taylor’s lifelong love of singing and songwriting began.
In hindsight, a grown-up Taylor sees the smashed ukulele as something of a blessing in disguise…after all, she has shared the stage with a long and impressive list of artists, including Jerry Lee Lewis, Asleep at the Wheel, Guy Clark, John Gorka, and Kathy Mattea.
Taylor launched her recording career in 2000 with the self-released title, Other Side of the Bed. Immediately, her work was noticed and praised by her peers. Other Side of the Bed took home a Wammie, (Washington Area Music Award).
Her second release Diamond & Glass, her first recording for Mesa/Bluemoon, (2002) received substantial national airplay and charted at Album Network’s non-commercial AAA format. Like Other Side of the Bed, Diamond & Glass won the coveted Wammie Award (Best Contemporary Folk Recording).
Taylor delivered her third recording, Mirrors and Windows for Mesa/Bluemoon in March of 2004. It was no surprise that this anticipated release also got significant airplay nationwide – climbing to #7 on the Roots Rock Chart at Roots Music Report. Like Diamond & Glass, it was the TOP PICK MP3 at The Washington Post MP3 site.
Taylor recorded the album at the Signature Sounds studio in Palmer, Massachusetts. Mark Thayer produced and Dulcie and her guitarist John Landau co-produced. Dulcie is featured on vocals, guitar, dulcimer, and harmonica and is accompanied by several of the best musicians around – Rounder Records recording artist Duke Levine (Mary Chapin Carpenter) guitars and lap steel; Richard Gates (Suzanne Vega, Richard Thompson, Patty Larkin) bass; Lorne Entress (Mighty Sam McClain, Susan Tedeschi) drums and percussion and Michael Bellar (Art Garfunkel) Hammond B3 organ.
Her 2012 recording Free of this Sorrow on MesaBluemoon reached No. 1 at Amazon for Top-Rated Americana. It has been followed closely by her latest CD, Only Worn One Time, released on July 7, 2014, produced by George Nauful and Tyson Leonard.
Like Free of this Sorrow, this new CD features Tim Pierce on many of the guitar parts (he’s played with so many wonderful artists – Bruce Springsteen, Rascal Flatts, Neil Diamond, and Santana to name a few) and was also mixed by legendary Keith Olsen (Fleetwood Mac, Ozzie Osbourne, Pat Benatar, to name a few). It also features her long-time music partners – George Nauful and Tony Recupido – playing their inimitable guitar parts and each singing two of their original songs – that’s the “and Friends” part of her 2014 CD.
In addition to writing songs, Dulcie Taylor is a writer of poetry and prose. She served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Poetry Series at Washington, D.C.’s Folger Shakespeare Library when living in the DC area. The Folger attracts scholars from around the globe, and is also home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, as well as magnificent collections of other rare Renaissance books and manuscripts.
(story provided by Dulcie Taylor)
