A Conversation with Hayley Taylor – HuffPost 8.26.10

Mike Ragogna: Your new album is titled One Foot In Front Of The Other. Can you tell us about it?

Hayley Taylor: Sure, I started making it about three years ago. I didn’t know if I was going to make an EP or a record at first. In the beginning, I wasn’t working with a label, and I just wanted to continue creating music. I found that I could pretty much do it on my own, collaborating with friends. So, I just started writing songs and working on them and having friends play on them. I got some great placements for the songs, and I decided, in the end, I’d rather have control of what was happening with the record.

In terms of making it, I first worked with an awesome producer named Eric Robinson who is based in L.A., and we did five songs including “Waking.” We recorded the songs live with my band, then did some over-dubs with my cellist and a lap steel player, and vocals, of course. That was awesome because you get to capture the live performance that way, and it was really fun playing all together. I took those five songs and sent them to a bunch of people, and got some great placements for them. I was going to put it out as an EP, but because I had already done an EP, I said to myself, “I really want to put out a full album.”

So, I ended up using a guy in New York, Dan Romer, who is an incredible musician and producer. We got along so well that I decided I wanted to record some songs with him as well. I flew out to New York and worked with him. He played most of the instruments on those songs, though we did have his drummer and some of his friends join in. Working with him was great. He really likes to sketch things out first, and he introduced all these cool, unique instruments like ukulele and stuff that I never would have thought of which was really, really fun.

MR: You have a really interesting amalgam on this album of folk, roots, country, and pop. And you use the electric instruments less for power than for arrangement.

HT: Thank you. I don’t know if I planned that, but it just coincided that way, I think.

MR: You mentioned before about song placement. You’ve had songs in How I Met Your Mother, Royal Pains, Privileged…

HT: Yeah, and some MTV shows.

MR: And you have a single, “Felt Like Love,” that’s featured in a Vicks campaign?

HT: Yeah, that was featured in a bunch of Vicks commercials. Everybody seems to be really drawn to that song. I never would have thought that it was the single of this album, I didn’t really write it to be a single. But everyone keeps telling me, “This is the single,” and I think it’s the most upbeat and fun song. I think people are drawn to that.

MR: You’ve also done some acting, right?

HT: I have.

MR: And we’ve seen you in many shows over the years. Do you remember what you’ve acted in?

HT: Oh, wow. I’ve done a bunch of things. I’ve done a couple of movies–Nuts when I was younger, and I’ve done a lot of guest spots on 7th Heaven, The Twilight Zone, and just a bunch of different TV stuff.

MR: Why did you transit into music?

HT: Well, it’s really funny because in my head, I never planned on being a musician even though, looking back, I had been doing a lot of music. I played classical piano as a child and was always performing, but it wasn’t until college that I really got into it. I grew up acting. My mom is an actress as well, and she took me on an audition when I was two year’s old where I got the part instead of her. So, she decided it was meant to be. By the age of four, I was working off and on. I was still going to school and my parents really believed in getting a good education, which I’m really happy for.

I loved acting and I went to college and did a bunch of plays, and I went to L.A. after college to take an acting class. In the class, you could either play a song or do a monologue, and I played the one song that I knew how to play on guitar, and a guy in the class came up to me afterward and said, “Wow. That was really great. You kind of sound like Bob Dylan. Do you want to start a band?”

I had always written, growing up. I was really into poetry, I was an English major in college, and I first thought I would be a poet. Then, I realized that even the Poet Laureate has a day job because you can’t sustain yourself. So, songwriting was a way for me to integrate my poetry with music, and it made it ten times more exciting for me. I had always been drawn to music, but I had never considered it. I started a band with the guy from my acting class, and we played around L.A. for a couple of years. It was really fun, and it kind of took off. Then, after awhile, I realized that the people I was playing with weren’t entirely on the same page as me. My guitar player really wanted to be in a jam band and the drummer wanted to be in a hard rock band, and I was really focused on the lyrics and the singer-songwriter aspect. That was about the time that Hotel Café opened and it was really tiny. I started playing there, and playing a bunch of other venues where I met a bunch of other singer-songwriters and really got into that kind of music. I just found that that suited me more.

MR: Who are your influences?

HT: I’m so inspired by a lot of musicians out there. I love Aimee Mann, and Radiohead, and Ingrid Michaelson has been a really great model for doing music on an independent level, and doing it really well. The producer that produced my album produced her album as well. So, I got to kind of see a close-up of her career, and it’s definitely inspired me that doing it independently is almost a better route at this point. I’ve seen so many friends be on labels and get shelved for years, under the gun of someone telling them, “You don’t have a single. It doesn’t fit in here.” So, I think in life, I’ve found that, at this point, I’d rather do it independently so I can have creative control.

MR: Many artists have just had it with labels. You can really get lost in the cracks.

HT: Exactly. This way, I make the decisions along with my lawyer who is a great friend that I absolutely trust. He actually lives in Alabama, and everybody says to me, “Why don’t you have a lawyer in L.A.?” I say, “Because I have a great lawyer in Alabama.” I just find that, creatively, it’s more fulfilling. I have a hard enough time playing songs for friends and getting their feedback, but most of the time, the longer I sit with the song, the more the vision comes to me of what I want it to be. I listen to a lot of music while I’m recording, and actually get inspired by that.

MR: By the way, you’re a Vassar graduate, aren’t you?

HT: Yes, I went to Vassar, and I loved it.

MR: I’m just curious, what was the song that you sang at the acting class that so intrigued your classmate?

HT: It was called “Family” by Dar Williams. My best friend’s younger sister had taught it to me on vacation. I knew how to play that, and also, I think “Wonderwall” by Oasis.

MR: There are a lot of singer-songwriters out there. How do you–especially when you have an independent album–cut through the din?

HT: I think the first thing is really having passion for what you’re doing, and doing it for the love of doing it, not with an agenda because you never know what’s going to happen. In art, there’s just no direct path. If I went to medical school, studied hard and did all the steps, I would become a doctor. There is no set path for any art, really. One day you can be on top of the world, and the next day, people won’t return your phone calls.

In terms of getting my album out there, I saw a trend in America or, I guess, in TV that they were using a lot of music. They weren’t using songs so much back in the day, they had theme songs and scores. Then slowly with shows like Felicity, and The O.C., they started using more actual songs in the shows.

MR: Right, many times, as part of the plot.

HT: Exactly. That’s how I was finding a lot of new music; I would go look up the songs and see that other people were looking up the songs. So, I just realized that was a really great asset, and it was almost the best promotion that I could possibly get. I just focused on trying to do a lot of music placement, and just making songs that I believed in, and working with great people, and…yeah.

MR: You could have put out an EP that was kind of a Hayley Taylor’s Greatest TV Hits, but you went for the fully fleshed-out album.

HT: Right. I think albums might be outdated soon. With people being able to download one song on iTunes, you could almost just release singles. I had a discussion with a friend of mine the other day about just that. But I still love an album, I love having the artwork and the cohesiveness of a bunch of songs together.

MR: Speaking of artwork, your album cover is really sweet. It has a lady on a tightrope putting one foot in front of the other which is kind of the philosophy for this record, isn’t it?

HT: It is, it really encapsulates how I feel about art in general–you have to do what feels right to you and then just keep going forward. For a long time, I thought that if you didn’t succeed right away at something, you should try something else. I bounced between a bunch of different artistic pursuits; I went to art school for painting, I was acting, I was writing, but music was the one thing I was super-passionate about. So, I just made a decision at some point that I was going to forge ahead and do it no matter what. Even on the days where I was like, “This is totally pointless,” or days when people said stuff that didn’t gel with me, I just said, “One foot in front of the other.”

MR: You’ve met a lot of interesting people. Do you have any interesting stories about those interesting people?

HT: I have definitely met a lot of people, especially growing up in Los Angeles, which I wouldn’t recommend to anyone raising children. I always dreamed of walking to school instead of being in the valley, but it definitely created an interesting life for me. I don’t want to get too sad, but Brittany Murphy was one of my best friends from about fifteen on, and I dedicated the record to her as well as to other people that died this year that were really important to me. She was a great friend, and she really supported my art; she threw an art show for me and hosted it, she came to all my music shows, and she was very musical and really believed in me. It was really difficult to put this album out and keep forging ahead after this year, but I decided that the people that I loved who I had lost would want me to continue on and grow and carry their memory with me.

MR: That’s really sweet. Are there any songs that you wrote about her specifically?

HT: “Plans” was kind of a song about us, how it’s not too late to do all of the things you wanted to do while you’re still here. Looking back, it’s kind of sad now because I guess for her, it is too late.

MR: What does the future bring?

HT: What does the future bring? Let me look into my crystal ball (laughs). I really don’t know. I hope that it brings more opportunities for me to create songs and to collaborate with other people. I would love to do more touring, I really haven’t done a lot of that, I’ve mostly been focusing on music placement. As an independent artist, I’m kind of a one woman machine. I go through different phases of performing, editing on Pro Tools, gathering musicians, rehearsing, promoting the album, and then it just sort of starts over again. There are a lot of jobs that I am trying to fill.

Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney