Isn’t it Lovely to Use Your Gifting for Good? Special Guest: Trey Taylor
“I try to tell kids, ‘Hey, if I had this dream and this happened for me, then your dream…can happen.’”
They’ve gone country! Dust off your boots and don the rhinestones to join Tracy and Rachel as they welcome country musician and philanthropist Trey Taylor to the show! Billed as the youngest African-American in country music history when he showed up on the Nashville scene at age 16, Trey shares how he fell in love with traditional country music (and its grande dame Dolly Parton) at the tender age of eight. This affinity led to the passion, discipline, and drive that resulted in a storybook ending of being signed to Dolly’s own producer by the time he was 16 years old. Trey explores the ways his signature style and faith in his dreams sustained him during years of bullying and misunderstanding, while emphasizing the importance of both respecting and entertaining an audience. Trey further explains how in the midst of a rigorous 300-show year upon graduating from high school he determined that 10 percent of his shows would be devoted to raising money for worthy causes, making philanthropy a cornerstone of his career. (Local listeners are invited to join Trey on Thursday, September 28, 2023 for An Intimate Evening with Trey Taylor to benefit anti-human trafficking organization Call to Freedom.) Trey and Rachel agree that sometimes you should meet your heroes, while Tracy and Trey celebrate the mash-up of culture and style and that all people really need are “three chords and the truth”.
Episode Mentions:
Trey Taylor Website: http://www.treytaylormusic.com/
Trey Taylor Instagram: @treytaylorofficial
Trey Taylor Facebook: Trey Taylor Music
Intimate Evening with Trey Taylor Event (A Benefit for Call to Freedom)
Call to Freedom Website: https://calltofreedom.org/
Call to Freedom Instagram: @calltofreedomsd
Trey Taylor is a singer, composer, public speaker, philanthropist, multi-instrumentalist (He plays over nine instruments) and a true entrepreneur in entertainment. He steadily gains more respect every day by members of the music industry for his continued involvement in every aspect of his career contrary to allocating complete control and responsibility to managers and agencies as done by most artists his age.
Born in Colorado to a single mother, Trey had an instant attraction to music and sang word by word to Disney sing-a-long songs by the age of three and by age four, Trey’s uncle saw enough potential to bring him to Hollywood in the summer of 2003 to audition in front of executives at Walt Disney Creative Enterprises. Trey longed for his musical identity and soon found it when he saw Dolly Parton sing on television being drawn to the genre she sang called “Country” which he had not been familiar with. He begged his mother for Banjo lessons and began fluently playing the banjo and Appalachian Dulcimer but it took Trey accidentally flipping onto a Glen Campbell PBS TV special at age thirteen that brought Trey to be entranced by Glen’s virtuoso guitar playing and became determined to mimic Campbell resulting in Trey becoming an impressive guitarist by the age of fifteen.