BEE

came into my life through a song. She has a voice that demands you to pause, a world-worn grit with wings. Her grooves shake the dust out of my soul and resurrect the forgotten parts dear to me. Oh, this is what it is to live and feel. I don’t understand her magic trick, and I don’t want to.

We hung out a little bit one day at a picnic, and she told me that she mainly listens to “music by dead people,” I knew then that we had a lot to discuss.

I have a diverse playlist for my portrait sessions and usually shuffle the order. For hers, “Awful Dream” by Lightnin Hopkins randomly played and transformed the mood instantly. If you haven’t heard the song, it’s a mournful, hypnotic groove with apocalyptic imagery (in the key of B, go figure), Not the usual “portrait soundtrack” unless you’re Bee Taylor. She swayed, trancelike, and tapped into something beyond our studio, intangible but present. The feeling of the past is a continuum through her—the place where her music takes me.

She doesn’t bull shit, there’s no “small talk” in her, and I’m grateful because I suck at that anyway. She writes and records in her kitchen, and one of her songs is about her Grandmother’s Peach Pie recipe. Her song “Company” is the soundtrack for our new show, and I can’t wait for you to hear it.

I haven’t had a “Bee” in my life until now, and she’s proof that it all gets more interesting.