Joanne Shaw Taylor teases new album, reveals songwriting process

It’s going to be a busy year for Joanne Shaw Taylor, but her fans need not worry—a new album is on the way.

Taylor is set to kick off a U.K. tour in February and will begin a U.S. tour at the end of March. (Scroll to the end of this article for tour details). Along the way, she will be releasing new singles from her forthcoming album, her first since 2022’s Nobody’s Fool.

When exactly that album will be out hasn’t yet been confirmed, though Taylor predicts it’ll be in the “next couple months.” The new release strategy her team is testing focuses on building excitement through singles, though there will eventually be an album for fans who prefer listening to the full project. But first, every new song will drop as a single.

“Music now is really just a massive platform for us to promote our tours—that’s kind of our bread and butter as professional touring musicians,” Taylor said during a recent video interview with Blues Rock Review. “Traditionally with an album, you build it up and you’ve got maybe a month’s worth of publicity out of that. But because we keep releasing a new single every month and a new music video, it’s giving us a bit more shelf life to promote the tours.”

The English guitarist is looking forward to her upcoming shows. “I love performing,” she said. “I love being on the road. I love everything about it.” Returning to the U.K. is “always a bit more special” because it brings her close enough to home to visit with family and friends.

For those who keep up with Taylor on social media, the answer is yes—the four-legged friend who joined her touring squad last year will be joining her when she hits the road. Hank, a dachshund who turns 1 later this month, popped into view about 10 minutes into our interview with Taylor. He’s a hit with her Instagram followers, and she said he’s also become fast friends with her tour manager.

Hank, an emotional support animal, came into Taylor’s life last year. He has “been really beneficial to my whole mental health and well-being,” she said, adding that she’s also training him to become a service animal. “I’ve been quite open with the fact I was struggling with depression and anxiety and panic attacks. He’s been brilliant for me, just having that extra thing to focus on, in particular when traveling.”

Taylor believes having this new source of positivity in her life will help fuel her music, too. “He’s been beneficial to me overall, which of course is only going to produce work, you know, if you’re healthy and happy and balanced.”

Taylor has kept busy with touring and recording since she released her debut album White Sugar in 2009. The pace works for her—she describes it as “the treadmill that I’m on.”

“At this point in my life, it’s kind of natural. I’m sure that will slow down eventually, and I’m sure, like anybody’s life, other things will come in and be a priority,” she said. But for now, her “creative edge” is “still there.” She hopes her current balance of creating and performing music “maintains for a while” because “I definitely still really enjoy both creative processes.”

On the songwriting front, Taylor has a strategy that’s worked for her for years, even though the writing itself is “really hard to control.”

“I’ve always described it as turning on a tap,” she said. “You’ve got to wait for the water to get warm, and then it’s warm for a certain amount of time, and then it starts going cold again.”

When writing a new song, Taylor said she always begins with the title. Once the music has been written, she uses the title to shape the lyrics, with the melody dictating the number of syllables allotted for each verse and the chorus becoming the song’s conclusion. She encourages younger artists to give this songwriting strategy a try, because she’s found it to be “a good way of being very disciplined with what the story was about.”

Taylor described her recent creativity as being “a bit slow” due to the winter holidays. “And Hank’s decided he likes licking my guitar when I’m trying to play it, which isn’t all that handy,” she added. However, she did release four new singles—“Sweet ‘Lil Lies,” “Black Magic,” “Wild Love” and “All the Way From America”—through Joe Bonamassa’s Journeyman Records last year before the holidays.

“Sweet ‘Lil Lies” was the first song Taylor wrote for her new album. While some songs take a significant amount of time to write, this one took about an hour. It’s rare for a song to come together that quickly, she said.

“It just happened to be a good day,” she recalled. She began by tinkering on the piano, an instrument she insists she “can’t play.” Using a musical tool she’s not as familiar with gave her “a bit more of a canvas” for creativity without subconsciously leaning on the songwriting tendencies she has for guitar.

“Black Magic,” another of Taylor’s recent singles, was initially planned to be a short instrumental for Nobody’s Fool that she initially called “Butterbeer Blues,” a reference to a beverage in the Harry Potter series. When she revisited the song for her new album, it struck her as having a “catchy” melody, and she decided to turn it into a full song with support from her producer, Kevin Shirley.

Shirley was instrumental in Taylor’s cover of “All the Way From America.” The original version was recorded by Joan Armatrading, who Taylor described as “such an incredible force and role model for women of my generation.” Though Taylor hadn’t heard the song before Shirley brought it to her, she was excited by the idea of trying something that was “outside of my natural wheelhouse.”

“I’m also at the point where I want to have fun with music and I want to try different things,” she said. “I’ll never release something that I feel isn’t me. But I’m happy to experiment and push the boundaries of what I feel is me.”

Nobody’s Fool and 2021’s The Blues Album both felt like “quite a departure” for Taylor as she immersed herself in traditional blues music. She wanted the next album to reconnect her with the sounds and styles she loves, and which fans most associate her with. “That was kind of a fun challenge, because I do want to look back when I’m done and go, ‘Okay, every album was different, but it all sounds like one artist—just different shades,’” she said.

Taylor believes there’s also a new maturity coming across in her music. “I sound like a more mature person who’s more comfortable in their own skin and understanding their own power as a woman,” she said, adding that it is a “nice chapter in my life to be in.”

“Wild Love” is one of the album’s new songs on which Taylor said she was embracing the growing comfort she feels with herself. “The song is about a sexual attraction to someone,” she said. “Which probably is a subject I would have veered off in my 20s and been too shy that it was going to open up a can of worms or be judged. And I’m just at the point where: judge away. Have at it.”

Taylor has found her 30s to be “far easier” than her 20s in terms of finding self-confidence. “I’ve sort of got this mindset of, ‘Why don’t I just be myself?’” she said. “I don’t feel like I’ve got to restrict myself anymore and be a certain way or stick to certain topics. I’m very much the same on social media, as I’ve learned to be myself a bit more. And that includes telling people where to go if I feel the need to, because I don’t care.”

She realizes that this growth means that any new music she creates down the line will inevitably be different from the music she released in the early days of her career because she is “a very different woman” now than she was then. “Someone told me once that albums are really just like a snapshot of where you’re at in that year,” she said. “It’s kind of like an audio photography book, in a way, of my life.”

With a new album on the way and the future unwritten, Taylor said she hopes her fans will “sense growth” and be “excited to continue on this journey” with her. She’s happy living with her puppy in Nashville, and is enjoying being “very productive.”

Taylor said she is also entering the new year feeling lucky for the fans she has. “They’re so supportive and kind and genuinely care about me, as well as my welfare and my music. Which is an incredible way to live, to have that sort of appreciation and support for yourself as an artist and as a person.”

See below for upcoming Joanne Shaw Taylor tour dates.

Joanne Shaw Taylor tours the Netherlands and the UK from February 14th until February 29th. Tickets available from https://www.joanneshawtaylor.com/tour

Wednesday, February 14 – Paradiso – Amsterdam, NL                
Saturday, February 17 –  Royal Northern College of Music – Manchester, UK                
Sunday, February 18 –  Queen Margaret Union –   Glasgow, UK                           
Monday, February 19 – City Varieties Music Hall  – Leeds, UK
Wednesday, February 21 –  The Fire Station –  Sunderland, UK               
Thursday, February 22 – Indigo at The O2 – London, UK             
Friday, February 23 – The Wulfrun – Wolverhampton, UK                       
Sunday, February 25 – The Waterfront – Norwich, UK                 
Monday, February 26 – De La Warr Pavilion – Bexhill, UK                                    
Wednesday, February 28 – The Apex – Bury St Edmunds, UK      
Thursday, February 29 – Palace Theatre – Southend, UK