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Rising Stars: Meet Holly Taylor of Lawrence

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Holly Taylor.

Holly Taylor

Hi Holly, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, let’s briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
Music has always been part of the fabric of my life. My Dad played electric guitar and loved playing his favorite albums on the weekends. I’d roller skate around the basement to the music, and when I was eight, I began playing keyboard by ear. I took piano and organ lessons from an amazing 80-year-old woman a few miles down the gravel road. The next summer, a glittery red snare drum caught my eye at a yard sale in time to join the 5th-grade band! My family and small-town community supported me. I was the piano accompanist for vacation Bible school each summer and played for a few weddings. As a kid, I remember being told, ‘Don’t wash the dishes; practice your instruments!’ Deal! I took percussion lessons at Keith Larson’s Drum City and, over the years, studied marimba, snare, and drum set, and even took some timpani lessons with the multitalented Brian Busby! That venture into percussion took me on a European tour at 16 years old, and with the Youth Symphony of KC, I played venues like Kemper Arena and The Folly Theater. This culminated in a scholarship award for Percussion Performance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music. Halfway through college, I was at a crossroads, wanting to widen my career options beyond music performance. I briefly considered composition and ethnomusicology, but I found the music therapy program most intriguing. In my studies and clinical practice, I witnessed how music impacts our physiology, cues our social interactions, improves our mental faculties, and moves us in our emotional and spiritual realms. As a Board Certified Music Therapist, I have had the opportunity to work in hospitals, schools, psychiatric/behavioral health units, wellness centers, private homes, and as a workshop facilitator in my community. Music and sound are truly universal keys to enhance our human journey- which is why I continue to write, perform, teach, and share music in so many ways with the community.

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Being a musician does come with challenges. Most of the focus doesn’t land there, but many of us have been carting around instruments our whole lives! From marimbas in minivans to amps, guitars, and drum sets stacked with Tetris skills, to a keyboard case that weighed 75 pounds, you really have to love music to be your own roadie! But the bigger challenges come from balancing a family, keeping the bills paid, and keeping your smiling face familiar in the scene. Beyond that, some cultural unraveling regarding women in the music industry is still working itself out. I have been blessed to find avenues of support, often created by musicians, such as the Lawrence Women’s Songwriter Nights, the KC Music Girls events, created by Marva Turner Besette, which are held monthly all around the region, and KKFI radio spotlights for women.

Beyond balancing family life and work, the music industry is performance-based and is often image-based. I value the artists who remain authentic to their style, to allow the value returned to individuals as a whole. I look forward to our next chapter, getting outside of the box regarding where we find/play music in the community and expanding our roles in this global community.

Thanks for sharing that. So, you could tell us a bit more about your work.
Currently, I have several part-time jobs in the music field. So I’m on deck running the kids to and from school and all their extracurriculars and keeping musical with the community. At Americana Music Academy, I teach private lessons, lead the women’s jam, and am part of a new collaborative music program at Raintree Montessori School. I am the music director at Unity of Lawrence, where I play and arrange music and book-featured musicians each week. I’m on call as a private music therapist and sound healer for individual and group sessions and fill in as a substitute MT-BC whenever needed. As a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, I perform regularly in Folk in the Flow, Starsister Revival, and as a soloist. With the professional engineering of Bo Osborn at Delta Rhythm Studios, I have recorded three YouTube music videos-one for each musical project! This year, I released my first two singles in my ensemble, Holly Taylor and the Soul Thread Legion, and we released our first Folk in the Flow single!

What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
I love sharing my music and songwriting as a tool to explore our inner workings. I enjoy the many aspects of therapeutic healing, which is a lifelong journey. The world of holistic wellness, spirituality, quantum physics, and psycho-immunology keeps expanding in potential, and so do we! I enjoy writing in all forms, so I developed talks for my church, created music therapy-based workshops, and a values-based creative arts program for kids. I look forward to publishing my stories and expanding further into the creative arts field. As an artist, my hopeful attitude and versatility have been the keys to my success. Perhaps an artist’s success is best defined in pictures, songs, stories, and colorful
life experiences.

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Image Credits
Thomas Kuhn, Marla Keown, Ashley Chandler

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