Chad Taylor biography
Chad David Taylor was born November 24th 1970 in Owing Mills, Maryland. That not only makes him the oldest of the four band members, but also the only one not born in Pennsylvania. The Taylor family moved to York when Chad was a little guy and where he went to kindergarten at Jacob L. Devers. At the age of 5 he was building blocks there with.. Yup, Ed Kowalczyk. At his 10th birthday Chad’s father, David, gave him a guitar as a present. One which Chad still owns by the way. +Līve+ guitarist played the trumpet during his time attending high school; it’s how he learned to read notes. His music teacher tried to get Chad to try the piano at one point, but that wasn’t a big success.
Around the age of thirteen, Taylor met Patrick Dahlheimer and Chad Gracey in school. They formed a band with which they entered in on talent hunts and school shows. After a while, former kindergarten buddy, Ed got involved in the band which was then named Public Affection. One day after his Seventeenth birthday Chad played his first official concert show, in a full house of 400 people. Story goes that when classmate Dana flashed to him and his fellow band members Chad decided he’s never wanted to do anything else than play in a band…
Chad’s father played an important role in the early days of the band: he was the one moving all of the bands gear to wherever they needed to go and he also made the cellar available for the band as a rehearsal room. “I’ve always believed in my boys, like I call them, had something special, something different. That’s why I’ve always travelled to there shows, helped them buy some gear and drove them all over the place,” is what David Taylor said years later. He even called David Sestak (who until a couple of years ago was Live's manager) to tell him that he ‘really needed to listen to this band’, because otherwise he would commit the biggest mistake of his life’. Sestak came out to a show and was very pleasantly surprised: he thought that these four should start making an album of their own. Because the guys didn’t have a dime to spend, Chad came up with the idea to sell stocks of $100 a piece to friends and family. That way they collected the $5,000 that was needed to create the album, that was named ‘Death of a Dictionary’. The demo was noticed by Gary Kurfirst, former director of Radioactive Records and until recently became manager of the band. On his label the band completed their first real debut album, with the name ‘Mental Jewelry’.
It needs to be said that the life of a rockstar didn’t only bring success to Chad. As a consequence to his guitar playing and physical efforts he can’t use a certain muscle group in his left shoulder like he should. This repetitive strain injury (RSI) set in because Chad used to lift his left shoulder during playing the guitar. Physical therapy and acupuncture made sure he doesn’t have any severe pain to that shoulder anymore, but the shoulder will never be the same.As you might know Ed usually takes up the biggest role as it comes to writing new material. The other three band members do bring in their part though. And because he’s a guitarist. Chad Taylor does a lot of writing too. He for example is the founding father of the well known riff in Lakini’s Juice, which was born on a late evening after a couple of bottles of wine. Also the quite unconventional chords to White, Discussion come from his hand. People often say of Chad’s guitar work, that it’s not that theoretically underlined: Chad doesn’t really look at what chords are ‘good’ or ‘wrong’. He just goes with his gut feeling and plays with pure passion. “Pat and myself express ourselves with our instruments as to where Ed does it with words. I rather leave the lyrics up to him and only read them once they're finished. Poetry and books are great, but I feel more attracted to songs,” Chad said.
These days Chad Taylor is also active on the movie front where he has recently co-produced a feature length film titled ‘Home’. Chad has also assisted in developing shows for a range of other television networks, like HBO, Discovery Channel and others. Most recently he has produced the debut album of his younger brother Adam,.Chad also appears on the album playing guitar.