Beautiful Road Returns Star to Home on Stage

By ALEXIS TONTI

Friday night at the Hot Tin Roof, Kate Taylor came home. She took to
the stage with confidence and launched the set with a clear voice, her
petite frame radiating enormous energy and vitality. And, as with any
proper homecoming, she was greeted by friends and family, all who had
come to celebrate the release of her new album, Beautiful Road.

Home, of course, has also been the Aquinnah cottage where
she's lived for the past 30 years, and where she sat with the
Gazette Tuesday afternoon to talk about her life and career. That home
has been her priority for a long time, and is where she set aside music
to raise her daughters with husband Charlie Witham and run a business
crafting wampum jewelry.

But through a weekend of sold-out shows at the Roof, Kate was
reminded that music, too, feels like home.

"It feels so good," she says. "Every time I
perform in front of people, that's really kind of the ultimate. I
learn something new, get something new from the experience and from the
audience."

Though it's been more than 20 years since she last released an
album, Kate says that "music was always a part of the landscape,
always simmering." She collaborated on a few projects (including
the Grammy-nominated rock/gospel album Strong Hand of Love) and did an
occasional show, but five years ago music returned to the forefront.

Kate recalls: "Charlie sat bolt upright one morning and said,
‘We've got to make a record,' kind of like out of a
dream: ‘We have to make a record.' And right away we rented
some recording equipment, called the band in and started this."

The album, she says, was a real labor of love. Her husband
coproduced it with Tony Garnier, musical director for Bob Dylan, who was
often on the road, making it difficult to find time to work on the
album. "But somehow or other we chipped away at it," she
says. "And along the way our friend Arlen lost his wife and one of
his daughters in a car accident, and other band members had children and
there was a lot of life stuff that went on. And then Charlie became
seriously ill, and as the record progressed his illness was more and
more intense and affected him more and more. But he was determined to
finish the project. And he did."

Charlie Witham died last September.

"I've had a lot of support and help," she says.
"I know this is what Charlie would have wanted me to do. I do miss
him very much, and I think he would have enjoyed all of this. But in
some sense, I really feel as if he's still around, helping to move
things forward."

She considers Beautiful Road to be her most personal album yet.
There's a mix of musical styles at work, from country and
rockabilly to folk, gospel and R&B. Many of the songs were written
by her husband, and the Island's influence is clear.

"Charlie's writing style," she begins, then stops,
looking out across Menemsha Pond, which appears gray under the darkening
sky. "He's a very visual person," she says finally,
slowly. "It's like painting a picture with the songs he
wrote. He loved this place, and I love the way he describes the natural
aspects of it, the birds and the trees and water."

Kate herself penned one of the songs, He's Waiting.
"It's an interesting process for me," she says of
songwriting. "I don't know how it is for other people, but I
find they kind of reveal themselves when you least expect it, like in a
dream. Or some kind of image will strike, or one line will come to me,
and then the rest just sort of follows, just fine tuning it. I feel I
don't have any kind of method to it." She pauses, then adds:
"But I'm pleased when they show up."

Kate has lived year-round in Aquinnah since 1970, but her Island
ties go back to the mid 1950s, when her family first summered here. Of
the five Taylor children, Alec, who passed away in 1993, was the oldest,
followed by James, Kate, Livingston and Hugh ("quite a cast of
characters," Kate says with a smile). Though they grew up in North
Carolina, all lived on-Island at one time or another - and her
mother eventually moved here full-time as well.

"I always knew music would be a part of my life," Kate
says. "There was a lot of it in our house, in our environment, in
the general time that my brothers and I were growing up. Music was a way
that our generation communicated with each other, and there was a lot to
talk about.

"We always had opportunities to learn an instrument or to
listen to music, and were always encouraged, and when we started to
perform through various opportunities when we were kids, it really just
felt like home."

She recalls having her first band when she was 15, and another at 17
called Sister Kate's Soul Stew and Submarine Sandwich Shop.
"We just played around and had a good time," she says.
"It just always looked like fun. It was fun to be in the audience
watching live music, but it also looked like fun to be on stage. And it
is."

Her professional singing career unexpectedly began more than 30
years ago, when her brother James invited her to come to London, where
he was working with music producer Peter Asher at Apple Records.
"One day we went to Peter and Betsy's summer house in the
country and their pool wasn't filled yet, and James and I sat in
the bottom and sang songs. It was very echoey," she says, putting
a bit of gravel in her voice. "But it was great acoustics. And
then I came back home, and a little while later Peter called me and
asked if I wanted to make a record."

That's when she went to Los Angeles to make the first of three
albums produced in the 1970s: Sister Kate, followed by the releases Kate
Taylor and It's In There. . . and It's Got to Come Out. But
she knew a career in music would be too all-consuming. Family was what
she wanted to put first.

And in the end, for all that she's done musically and
otherwise, Kate remains proudest of her daughters, Elizabeth, Aretha and
Aquinnah. She admits to no regrets ("I try not to spend too much
time on that; you could fall into the hole and never come out")
and would much rather look ahead.

To that end, though Beautiful Road was produced on their own label,
Front Door Records, she says she might look to other resources for help
with more widespread distribution. And though she has no expectations
and no idea where it will take her, she feels the pull to travel and
focus on singing.

"It's a new stage in my life, and I feel excited about
it," she says. "My relationship with Charlie, we were
together for 27 years. And what he gave me in my life, it's this
really solid foundation for what's yet to come. He gave me so many
things, and I feel that to honor him, to honor the faith that he had in
me - and to honor the faith that he helped me to feel in myself
- I really want to, well, put this show on the road."