Liner Notes

I was a complete liner-notes-junkie when I was a kid. This page includes what should have been the liner notes for my last two albums and for the album due this summer. Hope you enjoy!

Gileah, The Golden Planes (2005)

Chris and I got married in 2003. We didn’t intend to make a record, but we did. Chris recorded everything in our first house- the house he grew up in. I remember waking up one morning and making coffee and Chris popped out of the studio room and said, “The mic is set up. You need to sing White Florida Sun right now.” I’d had some trouble getting that song down in our after-work-after-dinner sessions, and he thought I might do better singing it in my morning voice. He was right. It turned out rather well.

I played piano and acoustic guitars, and I even tried out my friend Bill Laubsch’s drum set on C’mon C’mon. I recorded that song by myself one sunny afternoon. I don’t play drums, and you can tell, but I still like it. Chris played electrics, and sang a little, too. Ava Quigley sang some of those harmonies she’s famous for recording in one or two takes. And Kevin Woerner played bass guitar. And these little sticks we called the bones. And tambourine, too.

We played a few shows when we released the record. I was six months pregnant with our first daughter who was born in February of 2006. She’s been going to my shows since before she was born, though that was not her choice. Fortunately for me, she begs to go to my shows now. She stands and listens and I think that music really moves her four-year-old heart. I can’t tell you how hard it is to swallow the joyful tears when I get a glimpse of her standing and watching Mommy sing songs to a bunch of strangers- and her.

Gileah and The Ghost Train, self-titled (2007)

After I had Clara I took a short break from music. But I couldn’t stop entirely. Things were happening. I became a Christian in summer of 2006. And most of the songs from the Ghost Train record were written in that time period. I practiced once a week or so with Kevin Woerner and Ava Quigley, and when Chris’ producer, Allen Salmon, told me that he’d be interested in recording us I knew I had to do it.

We recorded the ten songs in about five days in Chris’ parents beach house. It was May of 2007. It was hot. I had a nice tan going. Allen went back to Nashville and added himself on bass, and Ben Phillips on drums. And ta-dah! We had a record. The sound of those songs is entirely different from the way that I play them live currently. But I’m happy that I had that moment with a small community of musicians and friends. The record was released in October 2007. And I included a home-burned copy of You Are Golden, the side project I recorded with violinist Molly Hodges and the matchless Ava Quigley.

Gileah Taylor, What Kind Of Fool and A Crooked Line EPs (2010)

Another record, another variation on my name. Except that this is my name.

Once I was a one-named artist. Then I was an artist leading a band. And now I am a homemaker AND an artist. I am a wife, and a mother, and a creator of songs. I don’t want to wear so many different hats that I confuse myself, my husband, my children and you. So I’ve created this multi-purpose hat that I can wear to the grocery store, then to the stage. I am fully myself in both instances. God created me to be a wife and a mother, and He also put a passion for making music in my heart and in my life. I’m blessed to be able to do all of the above. (And the laundry even gets finished most days!)

The songs on this upcoming record are written from this homemaker/artist perspective. I remember writing a couple of them in the time that Chris was signed to a major label and he was away from home, on tour. I was a little jealous of the fact that he got to do this amazing thing, and I was at home literally barefoot and pregnant. (It was the spring of 2008 and did I mention that we were expecting our second child? I found out I was pregnant just days after he’d left for his first tour ever. Haha!)  Where was I? Oh, yes, I was jealous. Well, I’m happy to say that God redeemed that down time for His glory. I finally gave up on the idea of being something I wasn’t, and was able to fully embrace my calling as a wife and mother.

And guess what? It was good to be that woman- pregnant, barefoot, and on my knees begging for direction from the God of all creation.

It’s safe to say He gave me a new direction. And a few new songs, too. And a passion for things besides music; like homeschooling, bread baking, organic eating, blog reading, bubble blowing, play dough rolling, abc singing…You get the picture.

So there are the highlights of my music “career” as I remember them, in the middle of the night. My second daughter is sick with a cold, so she’s sleeping beside me. She was born two months early, the week after Chris came home for a break in his fall tour. He never went back out. So those moments of jealousy were all for nothing. No, they were for something. They were for the telling of a story that isn’t over yet, Lord willing.

Thanks to my husband for being the man I always dreamed of.

Thank you for reading all of this. Thank you for listening for all of these years and to all of these songs…

Gileah Taylor, May 2010