Album Notes

Rachel Taylor-Beales is an avant-folk singer/songwriter with a voice thick enough to stand a spoon in. Now based in Cardiff, UK, she has spent the last decade singing her way across Australia, America and the UK. She Moves as seamlessly between keyboard, banjo and acoustic guitar as she does between, folk, soul and bluegrass.In essence she is a storyteller re-counting her observations with humour, anger, sweetness and all of them dressed in her mesmeric, dancing voice. These are songs to celebrate our extra-ordinary ordinariness, the dignity in the mundane and the good in the sad.

By the age of 12 Rachel had notched up 13 different houses, 7 schools and 5 relocations between Australia and the UK. Surrounded by a family of musicians she picked up a spare guitar and 2 years later began by writing a song about the death of her best friend’s granddad. She remembers hearing Tori Amos on the radio, late during one sleepless night, already on a borrowed diet of Joni Mitchell, Suzanne Vega, and the Beach Boys, music soon became as natural as breathing.

She began performing regularly on the Nottingham scene; met Bill (a visual artist) got hitched and left for Australia. They spent the next 4 years traveling round on variety of modes of transport from push bikes to station wagons held together with string, and after playing and painting in all kinds of places, they formed a performing arts company, 3 Chord Trick (Now Collective AM). Along the way they picked up other singer-songwriters, dancers and a rainmaker and decided firmly never to get proper jobs. Since then they have composed and performed their way through theaters, schools, prisons, pubs, clubs, festivals and even an audio book and played an extensive tour of the UK and America.

Now based in Cardiff, Wales, Rachel has established herself as a solo artist, self-releasing her debut album Brilliant Blue and subsequently being signed to Martyn Joseph’s own label, Pipe Records. Four years on from her debut she's launching 'Red Tree' the second in her color trilogy.

Always ambitious Rachel's live shows combine the intimate soundscapes with visual art inspired by the songs creating an intoxicating mix of acoustica, live art and projected images.

for more information about Rachel please visit her websites:
www.racheltaylor-beales.com www.myspace.com/racheltaylorbeales