Tai Shan ain’t your typical coffee house open mic crooner strumming sappy love songs. She’s an acclaimed songwriter and bonafide road warrior when it comes to touring. She’s a Kerrville Folk finalist this year and has been featured in prominent publications such as Billboard, Glide, American Songwriter, Americana UK, and NPR. She’s also an award-winning music educator with fifteen years of experience. She offers lessons in guitar, voice, songwriting, and performance, helping students achieve their musical dreams. Her students have gone on to perform on stages across the U.S., sign record deals, and win prestigious songwriting awards. So, it’s no surprise that she is swinging for the damn fences with Wildflower Moon – securing her place as a multifaceted artist whose work spans music creation, performance, and education and earning her recognition and respect in the music community.
Tai Shan’s music is a seamless amalgamation that transcends genre boundaries. Her soprano vocals glide with nuanced control, merging the passionate fervor of soul with the freeform experimentation of jazz and the infectious melodies of pop-folk. It’s an intimate, emotionally resonant sound enriched by literary depths and strong female narratives. One moment, you’re basking in the breezy Americana lilt and poignant storytelling reminiscent of Joni Mitchell’s confessionals. The next, you’re transported by unexpected melodic hooks and vocal runs evoking the raw intensity of an Alanis Morissette anthem. Tai’s deceptively simple yet surprisingly uplifting compositions constantly keep you guessing, kaleidoscoping through eras and styles with each listen.
At the core of this collection of new songs is Tai’s voice – a supple, emotionally intelligent instrument capable of conveying heartache, joy, defiance, and wisdom with equal conviction. Her phrasing subtly hints at influences like Sondheim’s theatrical dramatics or Tom Waits’ whiskey-soaked poetry, while her soaring upper register can seduce you with an Adele-esque soulful passion. Tai’s ability to alchemize disparate genres into a refreshing, keenly distinctive sonic imprint is a large part of her appeal. This is no paint-by-numbers pop – it’s an eclectic pastiche of surprises and depth designed to stimulate both your heart and mind in equal measure.
Tai’s list of collaborators reads like a who’s who of the music industry. The album was produced by Brandon Bee and Neilson Hubbard, both of whom bring a wealth of experience and a distinctive touch to the project. Bee, known for his work with Justin Bieber and Beth Whitney, lends his polished production style to tracks like “Road Back to Me” and “If Heaven Had Waited.” Hubbard, whose credits include working with John Prine and Jason Isbell, adds a rich, organic feel to songs like “Jump on In” and “Sailing into the Sunset.”
Tai’s restless spirit courses throughout the record, from the free-wheeling “Wheels and Gasoline” to the nostalgic “How It Flew (The Kite Song).” The former is an ode to the open road and its intoxicating allure, with Tai declaring, “The road is like a river coursing through my vein / I drink it like a glass of summer rain.” The latter is a lilting contemplation of life’s fleeting impermanence cloaked in vivid childhood imagery of kite-flying and innocence fading.
But for all her ramblin’ wanderlust, Tai remains grounded in the profound wisdom of life’s quiet moments and simple everyday joys. The tender “My Station” is an intimately stripped-back paean to her husband Austin’s steadying presence and companionship during the rockiest travels: “No I don’t always know how to slow it down / With wheels coming off yeah I’m burning too hot / I know I’ll make my destination / ‘Cause you’re my station.” It’s a rare moment where Tai downshifts into unapologetic heart-on-sleeve vulnerability.
At her most potent, Tai seamlessly intertwines her vignettes and observations into unifying perspectives on life’s bigger-picture truths. Just absorb the shattering “If Heaven Had Waited” – inspired by the sudden tragic loss of a close friend’s husband. In her rawest vocal performance, Tai wrestles with grief, anger, and the cruelty of fleeting mortality: “If Heaven had waited you would be here with me / If angels were sleeping if St. Peter lost his keys / If you can hear me I know that you’d agree / No moment left wasted if heaven had waited.”
That’s the true gift of Wildflower Moon and Tai Shan as an artist—the ability to zoom out from her trials and triumphs to capture the entire panoramic human experience in painstaking emotional detail. It’s a winding, all-encompassing map of life’s peaks and valleys distilled into a series of unforgettable songs and back-road singalong epics.
At her core, Tai Shan is the musical cartographer we need to map the unexplored frontiers of the human soul without filter or shallow platitudes. Her songs cut deep, peeling away niceties to expose life’s rawer truths—one-moment mourning cruel impermanence through loss, the next embracing parenthood’s simple joys and hard-won wisdom. But whether soldiering through grief or basking in romantic waters, Tai maintains her adventurous spirit and defiant forward momentum because the journey itself imbues existence with such bittersweet profundity.
PAST PRESS
“A tale about mature, comfortable love.” – American Songwriter
“Tai Shan is a singer-songwriter who’s hard to pin down to a single musical genre – her stories want to expand out of a folk or rock constraint in order to pull in soulful elements and a tap-tapping of jazz flecks.” – Americana UK
“Tai Shan’s ‘Burn It Down’ Celebrates Women’s Anger Fueling Change.” – Billboard
“With hints of jazz in her nuanced singing and songwriting – Shan is a serious practitioner of the slightly unexpected chord change, the beguiling harmonic shift – taking the concept of the singer-songwriter to new levels on Traveling Show.” – For Folk’s Sake
“A contagious rocker that churns with the swinging soul of Lake Street Dive, with a nod to the brass pop of the ’60s. With a jubilant groove, Tai Shan serves as a go-to for inspirational anthems and jazzy soul.” – Glide Magazine
“Brilliant.” – Belles & Gals