Today we’d like to introduce you to Anson Taylor.
Hi Anson, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
It all started with a guitar and a live Garth Brooks VHS. I used to spend countless evenings in front of my parents tv with a little guitar and cowboy boots mimicking everything he did on stage. My love for music started at a very young age with my mom introducing me to Cash, Waylon, George Jones, Garth Brooks etc, while my dad would blare AC/DC, Motley Crue, Bad Company, Sabbath, and loads of others in his truck when he’d pick me up from school.
Video games, especially Castlevania, had a huge influence on me as well. I remember times where I would turn the game on just too listen to the music at night to go to sleep. Something about the creepy classical style fugues really spoke to me as a kid.
I finally got my first real guitar when I was about eight, a Yamaha ERG-121 Strat copy that dad bought me from Mars music in 100 Oaks Mall when that was still a thing. Unfortunately it just sat there covered in dust for the longest time. Even though I loved music and spent all that time mimicking the Garth Brooks VHS, I hadn’t heard anything yet that really made me go “I’m learning to play this thing.”
The first “push” I had was one night when I woke up, and saw KoRn’s music video for “Blind” on MTV. I was already a budding metalhead. I had grown from the classic bands my dad showed me and was listening to Metallica, Slayer, other thrash bands because of my cousin introducing me to them. Something about that video just woke up something in my brain. I remember staring at the tv with my jaw dropped. At the time, it was the darkest and heaviest thing I’ve ever seen or heard, and after that a seed was planted.
Slowly but surely, my walls started to be covered with KoRn, Slipknot, and other nu-metal bands of that era, but my guitar still sat in the corner. Funnily enough, I began picking it up to mimic like I was playing the songs, head banging and flailing around my room like I was on stage. That seed was growing and growing fast.
The final push, and the day that seed finally sprouted, was when I discovered the radio stations on Comcast Cable. We didnt really have internet yet so that was all I had besides going to FYE or Sam Goody to flip through the metal albums trying to decide what album art would piss my parents off the most when I brought it home. But what that TV radio station did was introduce me to the song “Imperium” by Machine Head.
I remember going to the kitchen when the song started, and as soon as the heavy guitars kicked in, it captivated me just like the KoRn video did. I stood in the living room, jaw dropped, just in awe of what I was hearing, and when that song finished, the only thing I could think of was guitars and learning how to play. The hooks were finally set.
Soon after I remember begging to go to guitar shops and taking home catalogs flipping through them and circling ones I thought looked cool. Being an edgy teen I couldn’t just have a stray copy. No. In my brain it needed to be black, pointy, it needed to scream metal. So one Christmas morning, I opened up a box containing a B.C Rich Warlock. Black with white tribal graphics. Classy.
I don’t remember any discussions about lessons with my parents or anything, but I do remember taking that thing with me to school everyday. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, even though I couldn’t even play a single note yet. My English teacher finally asked me one day if I knew how to play.
I remember saying, “man, I don’t even know how to tune this thing” he looked at me and said, “well, I’m guessing you wanna learn to play metal right?” “Yeah” “Give it here” he took it, tuned it, and said here you go. First step I guess, got it tuned atleast. He even gave me a piece of paper with the notes each string should be tuned to.
D-A-D-G-B-E. Guitarists reading this already know what comes next. What always happens when a young metal head discovers the mythical Drop D tuning.
I took the guitar home, took it out of the case, and put Godsmack’s “Awake” album in my cd player. Skipping through the songs until it landed on my favorite on the album. “Vampires”.
I sat there with the guitar in my lap, hitting the strings to try to get the rhythm down of the song, but I noticed something immediately. When I hit the open first string. The note matched the song. I have never felt a rush of excitement quite like when the realization had set in that I could now play up and down the neck and figure out the song. So there I sat, and a few hours later, I had learned how to play my first song. Horribly. But I could play it. And it’s been love ever since.
Fast forward to today I’m in my favorite project I’ve ever been in. Mourning Candle. Were this weird amalgamation of darkwave, goth rock, and metal. I can honestly say it’s the most fun I’ve ever had musically, even after touring in my old black metal band. It really is the first time I’ve felt creatively “free” to mix all my influences together.
Leslie Benson is by far and away the most talented vocalist I’ve ever worked with. I always say she’s what makes our music sound as good as it does. I met her when my partner volunteered us for a cemetery clean up, she mentioned she was in a band, so I looked her up, and as soon as heard her sing I looked at my partner and said “She’s my new vocalist”
Immediately I started writing the music to what would become our first song “Never” and told my partner “hey, send this to her and ask her if she’d be interested.” I was really honestly expecting her to not be into it or have time, but she replied back very excitedly to start work on it, and it just snowballed from there.
Her work ethic is absolutely insane. We cranked out I want to say almost six songs in the first few months we began working with each other and practiced them for almost a year before we started playing shows. I sent her our first in late September of last year, our first show was in September of this year. We just put our nose to the grindstone and poured everything we have into getting the songs ready and performing them live and it’s definitely paid off. My main goal starting the project was to MAYBE be able to play the local monthly goth/industrial nights Fascination Street and SLC (She’s Lost Control) after a year of playing shows, and those two nights wound up being our second and third shows.
We’ve built up a very loyal following around Nashville, and it’s the best feeling in the world when someone comes up to us after a show and says they found us online and had to come out and see us. It’s extremely hard to draw people out to local shows, so when I look up and see how many people are in the crowd watching us, it’s very exciting and humbling. I honestly could not ask for any more support than we already have, and I’m truly grateful for it.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Wait, there’s a road?
Every part of my musical journey has seemed like a struggle, but also in the best way if that makes sense.
From playing in bands I had absolutely no interest in the music they were making. To just finding other musicians to play with that had the same interests I did. Metal drummers in Nashville are unicorns to me at this point. You can throw a rock and hit twenty metal guitar players, but you have to perform a blood sacrifice to make a metal drummer appear, and when they do, they’re already in four other bands and don’t have time for yours. I could list so many more, but this would take forever.
But those types of struggles specifically really drove and inspired me to keep going and get better and better. Even though I played with some bands whose music I didn’t like, it made me a better guitarist and songwriter. Not being able to find other musicians gave me time to practice more and more.
So even though it hasn’t been smooth, I definitely wouldn’t trade it for a thing, because it just made me a better artist in general.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Technology is my other passion, building PC’s specifically, so I’ve spent most of my time in tech/IT related jobs. Honestly if art and music didn’t have such a death grip on me I’d probably be some sort of hardware engineer or something at this point. I’m always playing around with pc’s, 3D printers, things like that.
I learned my first programming language at thirteen, built a pc when I was twelve, that’s what I’m most proud of I would say is everything I do know how to do, I taught myself. I may have taught myself how to do it the most backward way possible, but I can do it.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
It still really surprises people that I’m a huge country boy at heart. When I’m not messing around with some piece of tech or writing music, I’m spending my time on a lake fishing, listening to country music, sitting on my front porch with a beer. I grew up with VERY southern parents. We even owned the Hee-Haw farm when I was growing up. So as much as I don’t look like it, I’m very much a southern guy.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mourningcandle?igsh=aXNnNTRqYngzYTAz&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mourningcandleband/
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5SgO1yHP7JqGPWz9icMrDh?si=RFuzTw7oTG2VBySnS4jtzw
