If you are a musician or work in the local music scene and haven’t come across Taylor Johnson yet, then I’m not sure where you have been hiding. The young man frequently appears on BBC Radio Ulster championing new music, runs music site Encore NI, helps organise Spectrum festival each year and fronts one of the hottest bands from NI at the moment, Brand New Friend, .
A lack of funds this year has led to him coming up with the idea of recording and releasing some music with his brothers and sisters as a Christmas present for his Mum. Rather than put it out under Brand New Friend, Taylor has opted to unleash a side project called, The Crying Shame.
We are delighted to bring you the first single from the project, the raw and heartfelt, ‘Plano, TX’. The lo-fi nature of the track is accompanied by hand shot footage of his friends and family over the last few years. It may well be a side project but plenty of love and care has gone into this release and we’re betting that his mum is going to love it.
“Basically I’ve written and recorded a load of songs with my younger brothers and sisters for my Mum as a Christmas present – because I’m skint and she needs something new to play in her car. I’ve put them together into a sort of DIY, lo-fi album thing and decided rather than them just stay in my mums car I might as well put them out in case anyone else liked them!
The video is made up of clips I’ve recorded of my family & best friends from over the last 4/5 years – from ice bucket challenges, to university days, to my Dad on stage at the Ulster Hall with Noel Fielding (one of the strangest and most brilliant experiences of my life)!
The last few years have been so crazy and memorable, I wanted a place to put all of these memories together. There’s also quite a few clips from my school days in there too, so there’s a lot of nostalgia in one video!”
Taylor Johnson
