Maria Taylor

Indie / Acoustic / Electronica

Omaha, Nebraska

Billboard

We are so pleased to announce that Maria's self-released digital EP Savannah Drive is available on iTunes today!

Recorded with producer (Bright Eyes), musician (Now It's Overhead), and friend Andy LeMaster, the EP is a mix of favorite tracks from 11:11 and Lynn Teeter Flower, as well as new songs, all performed acoustically. Tracks include "A Good Start", "Leap Year" and, "Tell Me".

Maria is also in the midst of a tour of the US, please come out and say hello if she's in a city near you!

For anyone in the Washington DC area, our friends at The Vinyl District blog are giving away a pair of tickets to the show at The Rock N Roll Hotel on June 19th. Click here for more details and maybe you'll be a lucky winner!

Jun-18 New York, NY @ Knitting Factory
Jun-19 Washington, DC @ Rock and Roll Hotel
Jun-20 Philadelphia, PA @ The Barbary
Jun-21 Kingston, NY @ Free Wall Street Party
Jun-23 Boston, MA @ The Paradise
Jun-24 Hamden, CT @ The Space
Jun-26 Toronto, ON @ El Mocambo
Jun-27 Detroit, MI @ Magic Stick
Jun-28 Chicago, IL @ Beat Kitchen
Jun-29 Chicago, IL @ Belmont Art and Music Fest
Jun-30 Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry
Jul-01 Omaha, NE @ Waiting Room
Jul-02 Denver, CO @ The Hi-Dive
Jul-03 Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court
Jul-04 Boise, ID @ Neurolux
Jul-05 Portland, OR @ Doug Fir
Jul-06 Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern
Jul-09 San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill
Jul-10 Visalia, CA @ Cellar Door
Jul-11 Los Angeles, CA @ Echoplex
Jul-12 Sonoma, CA @ Gundlach Bundschu Winery

For more info check out the tour section.

More news soon!

LYNN TEETER FLOWER

Lynn Teeter Flower
Buy at iTunes
buy at The Saddle-Creek Store

Photos - see all 7

Videos - see all 2

Friends - see all 504

Blog - see all 2

Gear stolen in SF...PLEASE READ! Jul 10

Yesterday in San Francisco Maria Taylor's van was broken into.

Maria and the band are pretty devastated as the culprits got away with 6 guitars, 2 suitcases, pedals, and plenty of merch.

We're hoping some of these items may turn up online or in local San Francisco pawn shops. As you can imagine, this gear has lots of sentimental value as well.

Bio

The first time Maria Taylor’s graceful voice was heard through our speakers, we knew it was love at first listen. On Azure Ray’s 2001 debut, she sang with a knowledge and a weariness that made us trust and believe her words, fragile tones fragmented through soft acoustic strumming and velvety textures. Skip forward four short years later to when Maria set off on her own for a while, resulting in the stunning solo album called 11:11. A critical smash that wrapped her now-familiar voice in everything from acoustic folk to electronic dream pop, the album established Maria as a master storyteller with a flare for perfect, harmony-soaked melodies. To follow up a stunning debut, Maria has put together another glimmering collection of songs in the shape of her second solo record, Lynn Teeter Flower.

The songs for Lynn Teeter Flower, an album named after a family friend in Maria’s native Birmingham, Alabama, were written in between tours for 11:11. The collection reveals a woman settling very well into her role as a solo artist, peeling back some of the layers of the last album to reveal a more organic sound, one that resembled the hundreds of shows she had done all over the globe in support of 11:11 over the course of the last year. She began her new recording sessions with Spoon’s drummer Jim Eno in Austin, hopped over to Athens to record four more tracks with Now It’s Overhead’s Andy LeMaster (who worked on 11:11), and then ended up in Memphis to work with Doug Easley (Cat Power, Pavement). The record sees contributions from Maria’s brother and sister – bassist Macey Taylor and keyboardist Kate Taylor, both of whom played in her live band, as well as Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst, who co-wrote and sings on “The Ballad of Sean Foley.”

With Lynn Teeter Flower, Maria Taylor is taking her songcraft to new heights, mixing together soaring guitars, bubbly electronics, feathery farfisa organs and sugary layers of vocals into the sweetest confection of an album you’ll hear all year. Opener “A Good Start” is propelled by a vicious groove, setting the tone for an album more influenced by rhythm, very possibly the result of one of Maria’s favorite hobbies: playing the drums. “Smile and Wave” weaves a bed of “Strawberry Fields”-esque mellotron with ribbons of Maria’s rich voice, while “My Own Fault” strips everything down to a sparse drum machine, a dry electric guitar and a seasick organ mingling with Maria’s lament. “Irish Goodbye” picks up where 11:11’s “One for the Stockholder” left off, dancing in a place where acoustic guitars mix effortlessly with a crisp electronic beat, and “Lost Time,” with its lone acoustic guitar, melancholy piano and plaintive vocal, reminds us of some of the moments that made us entranced by Maria Taylor in the first place: a voice as smooth and sweet as honey spinning marvelous, insightful tales of the world around us with much aplomb. As far as we’re concerned, that’s certainly something worth falling for.