Seduced by your dirty blues and cheesy ballads, compulsive songwriter Woodstock Taylor is on a brief visit to Earth.
For the past fifteen years or so she has been churning out an eclectic blend of strangely accessible tunes with proper lyrics. During that time she has had the chance to work with some people she really admires.
A bit of a musical chameleon, she's been compared in the press to characters as diverse as Tom Waites, Kirsty MacColl, Edith Piaf, Michelle Shocked and Marianne Faithfull. Really she just sounds like Woodstock Taylor.
Recent appearances include the CCA, Glasgow, the Borderline Theatre, Ayr, the Trowse Festival, Norfolk, Wickerman Festival, Dumfries & Galloway, Edinburgh People's Festival, Craigmillar and the Arts For Life Festival, Prince's Street Gardens, Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Based in Edinburgh, has a guitar, will travel.
Woodstock Taylor began writing songs at the piano and playing in restaurants in 1990. She appeared in two one-woman shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe before taking up the guitar 15 years ago.
Half French and half British, she grew up in London and is now based in Edinburgh.
After BBC Radio One featured one of her songs in a documentary, Politics and Pop, presented by Billy Bragg, she attended the first of several songwriting workshops led by Kinks songwriter Ray Davies.
Since then she has been a regular performer at a wide range of venues in Scotland and England, both as a solo artist and fronting a variety of different lineups. Many of her songs have been played on BBC Radio and she has supported a number of well-known artists.
In 2002 her debut album, Road Movie (Woodstock Taylor & The Aliens), produced by 60s legend Zoot Money and featuring an allstar bill of British bluesmen, was released on the Cuppa Records label.
Woodstock has also fronted her own band, Alien Kabaret, in two different incarnations. The first, which included guitar virtuoso and fellow songwriter John Peacock and cellist Stephen Hughes, enjoyed some success on the London indie scene between 1999-2000. A more recent Edinburgh-based lineup, featuring "Accordion Pete" Garnett, morphed into a contemporary folk project to provide a European twist to some of her more melodic songs. Live appearances at cabaret and experimental theatre venues in Scotland were enthusiastically received, with appearances at the Wickerman Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
More recently Woodstock has been seen acting and singing in various guises in alternative cabaret and fringe theatre as well as performing solo gigs and working as a backing singer for a number of different live and studio projects. She is currently working with producer Stuart Epps towards a new studio album. Slowly, as it is self-financed, but surely.
Give me a microphone and an audience and I'm happy. I love the buzz of a big crowd, and also really enjoy playing small clubs where you can see people's faces. Once I played a set in a railway carriage when we got stuck for several hours en route between Durham and Darlington. The train staff provided free soft drinks and it was all very jolly.
Ray Davies, Marianne Faithfull, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Pink Floyd, XTC, Alexis Korner, Derek Taylor, Jack Bruce, Pete Brown, BB King, Woody Guthrie, Jacques Brel, Michelle Shocked, Maria Muldaur, Michael Marra, Roy & Nick Harper, John Martyn, Gerry Rafferty, Kate Bush, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Spencer Davies, Pete York, Geddy Lee, Edith Piaf, John Peacock, Damon Gough, , Maria McKee, Donovan and Zoot Money - and I don't sound like any of them. I don't look like any of them either.
Voice, mike and anything else I can get to work at the time.
Only sweat the small stuff.
