Jazz Drummer Payton Taylor Is Beating Expectations

The evening hours are crawling toward midnight on a steamy Monday in Deep Ellum. Elm Street is just about empty, except for a small group standing outside the big garage door windows of Three Links. As Dire Straits sang, they are there to “hear the jazz go down.” The sound is tight and tasty, played with skill and restraint. And the band is young. Outside of the guitar player, who is celebrating his 21st birthday, they are all playing with Xs stamped on their hands.

There is one woman on stage. Sitting at the drum kit is a petite, not-quite-21 blonde named Payton Taylor. It’s her name on the marquee as well, as in the Payton Taylor Project. It may be her project and her band, but you might never know unless you listened. Taylor lets every member shine.

“I always want to make other people sound good, to make the music feel good and make everyone on stage feel comfortable.” she says. “If there is any kind of tension, you can hear it.”

Taylor displays the kind of leadership skills that could get her a gig doing corporate management workshops. If she played hoops, she’d probably hit the game-winning shot while doling out 20 assists and talking about how great the team played.

It all started in a home that embraced music, even if no one in the household really played. There was a definite soundtrack to Taylor’s upbringing, but the family didn’t get their first musician until she asked to take piano lessons.

“My best friend growing up played piano, and every time I would go to his house he would have to go and practice, and I got jealous that I didn’t have to practice, and so I started taking lessons, too,” she says. “I asked my parents, told them I wanted to take piano lessons, and they said OK.”

One of the first contemporary songs Taylor learned was “Martha My Dear” by the Beatles.

“And I remember that is was so exciting playing something we were actually listening to,” Taylor says.

Piano lessons morphed into attending the School of Rock, and then the legendary incubator of young Dallas artists, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Booker T. is where Taylor was “encouraged” to broaden her outlook past the rock and contemporary beats with which she was comfortable, she says.

“I played rock until I went to Booker T. and my teacher made me take jazz, and I didn’t really want to. It seemed too hard,” she says. “But he said you need to learn this, and now … that’s all I want to do. And I didn’t want to do it, but he made me audition, and it completely changed my life.

“Rock is still fun, but the improv side of jazz is like a whole different world of creativity and expression, and that’s when you can really speak on stage and express yourself. Whatever comes out is all you”.

Whatever was coming out was good enough to get her accepted to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, which she now attends. The school introduced an entire new level of discipline to her playing. Although Taylor no longer plays the piano seriously, one of her summer assignments is to transcribe a John Coltrane solo to piano. It’s the kind of note-for-note assignment that doesn’t leave room for sloppiness.

The young artist will be back at school in the fall. In the meantime, she gets to learn to navigate two music scenes outside of a classroom.

“I think Dallas has one of the best music scenes in the country. I don’t think Boston has as good of a music scene as Dallas, I’m not gonna lie,” she says, but COVID might have something to do with it – East Coast venues closed down hard and stayed dark longer than those in Dallas.

“The biggest jazz club in Boston is Wally’s, and it’s been closed until just recently,” Taylor says. “So people always ask if I’ve played Wally’s. It’s closed!”

Finding gigs in Dallas has been less of a problem, and Taylor is a skilled contributor and an attentive student looking to grow. Payton Taylor and a rotating group of friends can be heard at The Free Man every Tuesday all summer long.

“The past couple years I’ve been sitting in on a lot of jam sessions, like with RC and the Gritz, and you have to just get up and play whatever,” she says of the musician’s open jam. “Some vocalists will get up and call a random song and you have to know to listen to each other and use your ears. Communicate through the music.”

Last year, Taylor played Dallas’ Balcony Club every Monday night with Lenny Nance.

“A two-hour gig, and we had no set list, just call-out songs and improvise for two hours,” she says. “Just putting yourself out there trains your ears, and I learned to really listen to the bass player or the left hand of the keys player to figure out what the form is. It really makes you learn to be disciplined and not just sit there and wait for your chance at a solo”.

Her approach is getting noticed, with established talents that she holds in awe starting to come and watch her play: R.C. Williams, Cleon Edwards, Shaun Martin.

“Every time I play, having these guys watch me makes me so nervous, and the next day I’m going out and practicing all day,” she says. “I’m nowhere where I want to be.”

Taylor’s growing recognition and acceptance in the jazz community has made some parts of her life easier. Like getting into clubs.

“People don’t believe me [that I’m playing with the band],” she says. “I’ve been disrespected, and people don’t take me seriously until they hear me play.”

The boy’s club attitude has become part of what drives her.

“I don’t want people to say ‘She’s really good for a girl,'” Taylor says. “I want to compete with the boys. I don’t want to be in some sort of subcategory”.

It’s an uphill battle, but one Payton is equipped to win. During a shopping trip for a new drum head, the (male) salesperson insisted on mansplaining things to her, finally asking Payton “Do you even know who Tony Williams is?”

Taylor calmly took her phone out of her pocket and turned it so the sales person could see her lock screen’s wallpaper. It has a picture of none other Tony Williams, who played drums in Miles Davis’ band. No doubt, one day she’ll be the first photo on many a fan’s phone.