Life & Work with Paula Jo Taylor

Today we’d like to introduce you to Paula Jo Taylor.

Hi Paula, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I was born in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, began playing lead guitar at age seven, and performed with my dad’s band, Joe Taylor & The Red Birds.

Along with my brother Dan Taylor and my Aunt Patty Corbat, I performed both on stage and on my dad’s live weekly radio show. Wanting to venture from the nest and spread my “Red Bird” wings, I started my own band during high school.

After graduation, I co-hosted a weekly television show on PBS. I always wanted to move to Nashville to better my craft of guitar playing. However, it took getting married, divorced, remarried, and raising three children to finally be able to do so. By this time my youngest child and only daughter Amanda, started singing with me and I knew it was now or never. In 2005, my husband John and I along with Amanda moved to Nashville.

While Amanda attended Belmont University, I traveled with an all-girl band called, broadBand. We played all over the country opening for many major label acts and making wonderful memories. After Amanda graduated college we formed our mother-daughter band, The Taylors, and The Mama Tried Band. We played many lower Broadway and tourist venues and we are featured artists endorsed by Vietti/Southgate Foods.

Our picture and bio are found on the back of Vietti BBQ Pork cans sold in grocery stores throughout the south as part of their Vietti Vinyl Series. We share this honor with artists such as Chris Young, Restless Heart, Riders in the Sky, and others. We have been featured artists performing at the Country Music Hall of Fame, Spotlight on Musicians series and we have performed many times on WSM radio.

We continue to perform regularly in and around Nashville. I have played lead guitar for artists such as Roni Stoneman of the famed television show, Hee Haw

Having a comedic nature I took to writing comedy songs and have had a few of them cut by major label comedy artist Cledus T. Judd among others. I performed with Cledus T. Judd on a TV pilot show for Comedy Central as well as the Warner Brothers Showcase stage in Nashville during CMA Fest. I’ve also been blessed to have a video go viral, to have had an Emmy award dedicated to me, to have been on national television, to act in a movie and to have a signature model guitar named after me.

There was also another reason why moving to Nashville was so important to me. I strive to be an inspiration to women, especially older women who may think they’re too old to make changes in their lives. As wives, mothers, and grandmothers we often feel guilty about doing anything for ourselves.

I have struggled with that guilt a lot but knowing people enjoy hearing me play, has helped me with that. My message to women is that you are NEVER too old to pursue your dreams and it’s, ok.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
In 2015, the all-girl broadBand would come to an end when sadly, we lost the leader of the band to cancer. Unfortunately, that was not the only bump in the road that year. My life would change yet again when I was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer.

Just ten days after my double mastectomy, I returned to the stage with surgical drain tubes still inserted in my body. For the next eighteen months, I found myself taking chemotherapy by the day and performing my gigs by night. It wasn’t always easy but it was my love for music and entertaining people that gave me the drive to keep going and beat cancer. I’ve had eleven surgeries thus far and I have no intention of slowing down.

I realized from the beginning that starting this chapter in my late forties would have challenges. As Vince Gill said, “it’s a young man’s town.” I believe when it comes to women in the entertainment industry, however, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. No matter how talented you may be, if you’re not a twenty-year-old “hottie” it’s going to be an uphill climb. Playing music in Nashville was something I had waited all my life to do and I was not going to let age nor cancer or anything else stand in the way.

As it was for most people, 2020 was a very hard year. I lost many friends and family to COVID including my aunt Patty who was the last of the founding members of The Red Birds, where it all began for me. With the clubs and music venues closed down, we had no gigs so we had to reinvent ourselves with things like virtual concerts and keeping a presence on social media.

Nothing worthwhile in life is ever easy so you have to learn to steer around the potholes to get where you’re going.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a songwriter and singer but most of all, I am an accomplished electric-lead guitar player. I feel very blessed for the notoriety I’ve received since moving to Nashville and I have so many things to be proud of. In 2017, I was playing guitar at a summer NAMM booth when a small crowd gathered to take a video of me.

To my surprise, one of those videos made its way to Nikki Sixx, bass player for Motley Crue. He graciously featured my video on his L.A. radio station Sixx Sense, coining me the “Viral Granny Guitarist.” The video has gone viral with over six million views. It has been shared by ‘Guitar World Magazine, Guitar Player Magazine, Society of Rock, NAMM, and hundreds of iHeart radio stations across the country. It has been shown on television stations nationwide as well as on the Glenn Beck show.

Articles have been written about me in Society Of Rock, Sixxsense.iheart.com, and many others. I have been featured in Guitar World Magazine as their pick for the top 10 female guitarists and I performed live at their summer NAMM show booth in 2019. https://www.iheart.com/content/2017-07-28-viral-granny-guitarist-surprises-the-internet-with-how-she-shreds/.

In 2020, I was blessed to have WSMV Channel 4 news reporter Forrest Sanders, win a Mid-south Emmy Award for the feature story he filmed on me. The story was called, “Plans Change” which highlighted my continuing to perform during my battle with breast cancer. The story was named after a song written by my daughter Amanda called, “Plans Change.” https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1495176167249665.

In 2021, I was a featured guest and performer on Governor Huckabee’s television show in his “Huck’s Heroes” series. Everyone was so nice and professional there at his show. I am very humbled and honored to have been a part of that segment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSPA12YAkDk.

Aside from being a mom and grandma, one of my biggest dreams was fulfilled this past year when I got the chance to act in a movie just released, called; “My Perfect Love.” I play a “guitar-shredding Granny.” Acclaim Films creates movies that raise awareness of child trafficking.

RescueTheKids.org is a 501c3 charitable organization and 100% of the funds they raise go to organizations that actively rescue victims. I am very proud to be a part of this project. You can watch the film at www.mplmovie.com.

Probably the biggest legacy I can leave my children is to have been honored by Willow Creek Guitars making a signature model guitar in my name called, The Paula Jo.  I am so grateful for this special blessing as it is certainly something I never imagined.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
I have many favorite childhood memories but one that stands out is the day I learned how to play poker. My dad’s band was the house band at Buck Lake Ranch, a well-known concert park in Angola, Indiana. We played there every Sunday from Memorial Day to Labor Day opening for stars such as Johnny Cash, Ernest Tubb, George Jones, Hank Williams Jr., and many others.

I was just a guitar player kid on the show and I didn’t yet realize how blessed I was to be among such celebrities. One Sunday when I was about ten years old, a young man and his band were playing cards backstage in their dressing room. This then seventeen-year-old young man was getting ready to go on stage as he was the headliner act that day. He was wearing the most beautiful blue, “eyelash sequin” vest I had ever seen.

I said to him, “wow I wish I had a vest like that.” He responded by asking me if I wanted to win his vest in a poker game. I had no idea how to play poker so he said to me, “sit down little girl and I’ll teach you.” His name was Hank Williams, Jr.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/viralgrannyguitarist/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paulajo.taylor/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/paulajotaylor?lang=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLPux6PFd_wqEBO3MSWZhKQ
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqSSbliTD2U

Image Credits
Doug Littlejohn, Thomas Blug, and Gene Sibbett