Artist description Susie Taylor & the Crystal Cannon Band A four-piece rock group fronted by guitar singer songwriter Susie Taylor. They bring you Detroit city rock-n-roll. Their first CD, Shooting Blanks, Has catchy hooks and a feel-good beat. Their second self-titled CD will be released in the summer of 2002. The genre on this CD will be on the modern rock side. www.crystalcannon.com

Music Style Rock

Musical Influences Classic

Similar Artists Grace Slick, Rush, Pat Benatar

Artist History Susie Taylor & the Crystal Cannon Band A four-piece rock group fronted by guitar singer songwriter Susie Taylor. They bring you Detroit city rock-n-roll. Their first CD, Shooting Blanks, Has catchy hooks and a feel-good beat. Their second self-titled CD will be released in the summer of 2002. The genre on this CD will be on the modern rock side. THE STORY BEHIND THE WOMAN Susie Taylor: what a story she is. Some would say she is an adult prodigy. As an adult she remains world record holder and holds the national record in boat racing and State titles for figure skating. Her competitors took years of training. She accomplished this in 6 months. Learned American Sign Language in 30 days and went on to professionally interpret for the deaf at a major university. How does this relate to music? Susie takes the bull by the horns when it comes to mastering something. Just a year ago she bought her first guitar. Susie plays like she has been playing for 20 years, playing 100 % from the heart. This 100-pound woman, with the body of an 18 year old can also out dance the best of them. In her rhythmic training she went as far as to become an exotic dancer for a few months. She says " That's just on more notch on my belt of experience. Life's not worth living if you don't live it to its fullest, and that dancing experience helped me to sing, play and dance at the same time.” Susie is amazing. She truly has a gift and the determination to go all the way. And by her track record I think she’ll do it. Some ask why she started music late in her life. As a child Susie was diognosed with dyslexia and ADD. Back then they didn’t know much about it and it was a struggle for her to learn and focus on many things. She did try to learn music and became very frustrated. She couldn’t processes the information. Always she wanted to play in a band but didn’t think she could and others would say to her, give it up. So her dream lay dormant inside. Now Susie Taylor grew into a fine young woman and conquered her disabilities using compensatory strategies and better understanding herself, she took that disability and turned it into power. She says “ Its never to late to live the dreams of your life. Yeah, some people have told me give it up, your too old, but that made me just want it that much more. With age comes knowledge and you know knowledge is power. It’s strange how when people get older, their life light dims, but I find as I get older, my life light gets brighter because it’s that much less time we have to live and I better hurry up and live as much as I can.” THE CRYSTAL CANNON, The story behind the group. What does the crystal cannon represent? In times of weakness we find strength, in times of weakness we can better see our dreams and it’s that strength that helps guide us to those dreams. Susie says, “ Yeah, in a nut shell is my big gun to help remind me I ain’t going to take no shit. Got to do what I got to do and it reminds me how fragile life is too.” The crystal cannon has got to be the first group that formed and played a warm-up gig for a national act since Creedence Clearwater. They did under 12 hours after meeting. That’s typical for Susie, Taking the bull by the horns again. This is their story. Two years ago Susie went through a terrible divorce. That relationship almost cost her life. That’s when she bought her first guitar and wrote the song PAIN AND MISERY & DON’T DRAG ME DOWN. You can guess what inspired those songs. At first Susie didn’t think she was going to persue music professionally, but on the morn she bought that $100 guitar she was so proud. She took it to her parent’s house to show them. She had an Eagles book and played a few chords for them and they weren’t surprised how fast she picked up the songs, within a few hours. Her father jokingly said, “Now you can become a rock star” Susie replied “ I just want to play campfire music and sing in the shower.” A few weeks later she wrote the songs Don’t Drag Me Down and Pain & Misery and played it for her friends who could really relate to it and encouraged her to record them. That same day she went to the Guitar Center to buy a strap. A producer was in the store and had overheard her talking and told her she had a nice speaking voice and if she could sing. Before she knew it, she was doing back up vocals for one of his artists. That’s when she met her lead player Ron Foss. He was an engineer at a studio. They have been together ever since. He taught her how to engineer. And only after 4 months of getting that guitar, she wrote, played and produced her first 2 songs, and many more followed. Ron Foss wanted very much to play with a group. He was a studio musician. He had recorded many of his own songs that boarder pop-rock, and Susie was more into the harder rock. She likes Ozzy, Metalic and Rush. And Ron was more into Tom Petty and the Beatles. Susie broke him of his Beatle trance and turned him on to harder rock. He didn’t have much experience at gigging either, but the two of them decided to go for it and start a band. With in the 4 months of Susie buying her first guitar she had original songs, recorded a CD, formed a band, and was warming up for a national act. A band hasn’t formed that quick since Creedance Clearwater. How they met bass man and drummer Dion Lay is pure luck. A neighborhood girl heard they wanted to form a band, and her cousin, who was the bass player, and his friend Dion was in town, just got off of a long tour with a national act. So they met that night, got a call from the bass player and said his friend needed a good band to fill in for a warm up gig for Firehouse and that the other band cancelled and wondered he if they could pull it off. With out hesitation Susie said “ Yeah, I can pull off my parts but you have only heard my stuff once, a few hours ago, and the gig is in 12 hours. Can you pull it off? “. And the rest is history. They put on a show to remember; they rocked the house down Ron can remeber that cold Nov night. The first gig of their life. It was a full house. He said his knees were bruised from shaking so hard. He wanted to faint. Susie told him “failure is not an option here, hello. This won’t kill us ok. The only thing that’s going to be killed is our pride if we suck”. Everything was going wrong up to that point. They had to find a drum kit for Dion, his was still on a plan, so they tried to rent a kit but their credit card was declined. They finally found a friend to lend them the money. Susie was sick with 102-degree temp, had strep throat, started her period, the vans’ heat in the truck broke and it started a snow storm, and had to drive 2 hours to get to the gig. Nothing stopped them from playing their first show. After the show must go on. Well that’s it for now in a big nut shell, and there’s still a lot more. Watch out for their new CD coming soon. It will be a more modern rock sound. For now their CD, Shooting Blanks is straight forward, in your face, up beat rock. Pretty cool stuff. This is one group that you need to keep an eye on. Definitely up and coming group. Susie Taylor has since went back to school and getting her astro physics degree. Susie is dedicated to the literacy and education to her country since having leaning disabilities she has vowed to over come them, as to be an example to other with the same disabilities. It’s never too late to learn and there are organizations to help the learning impaired. The Crystal Cannon Band has set up fund to help contribute to the learning disabled. Written By: Janet Moore

Group Members Susie Taylor: Lead vocals, Guitar, Bass Ron Foss: Lead Guitar, Keys, Vocals Tazzy Lay: Drums, Vocals Tom Yatch: Bass, Vocals

Instruments Rhythm Guitar, Lead Guitar, Bass, Drums, Keys

Albums Shooting Blanks

Press Reviews Anne Carlini, DJ from Rock station WRIF, commended Susie with "singing with such emotion and feeling"

Additional Info T-shirts and mugs

Location West Bloomfield, MI - USA

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