Kentucky musician Brit Taylor got a real kick out of working with Sturgill Simpson

The first time Brit Taylor met Sturgill Simpson, the thought of working together was nowhere in the room.

In fact, the only topic flying about the backstage dressing room at the Grand Ole Opry, where the two met following a performance by the latter, was something seemingly removed from the daily grind of two Eastern Kentucky country music stylists: Karate.

“Everybody had left the dressing room, so it was just me and Sturgill and his son,” Taylor recalled of the artist who would soon serve as her producer. “His son had on a jacket with a martial arts dragon, so I just looked at him and said, ‘I bet you like karate.’ His eyes got big. Sturgill’s eyes got big and he looked at me and said, ‘What do you know about karate?’ And I was like, ‘Well, my daddy is a tenth-degree black belt and I’m a second-degree black belt. I’ve studied Pa-Kua and Tai Chi.’

“So we just hit it off right there. I told him where I was from (Knott County), who my folks were and we bonded over Kentucky and martial arts. I remember leaving that night thinking, ‘Well, Sturgill has no idea I can sing or write a song but by God he knows I can whoop somebody’s butt.’”

New album produced with Sturgill Simpson

Flash forward to the present. Having already created a national but still commercially independent buzz for her 2020 debut album, “Real Me” (a record that sported songs Taylor co-penned with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys), the Hindman native has released a sterling follow-up record of regionally rooted country titled “Kentucky Blue.”

The record sports Kentucky-born country renegade Simpson and veteran studio engineer David Ferguson as producers – a team responsible for overseeing, among other projects, fellow Kentuckian Tyler Childers’ breakout albums “Purgatory” and “Country Squire.”

So what did it take to enlist Simpson for the project? A karate duel? Hardly. The road to “Kentucky Blue” was actually opened by Ferguson.

“I had been trying to figure out what I wanted this next record to sound like and who I wanted to make it with, so I had meetings with different producers just trying to sort everything out,” Taylor said. “I got to the point where it felt like nobody really understood what I wanted to do. Nashville is a town known for chasing certain sounds, but I didn’t really want to chase any sounds other than my own. I didn’t feel like anybody really got that.

“One day after a meeting, I was rather frustrated. I texted Ferg, who I’ve known since 2018. I was just like, ‘Man, I don’t know why we haven’t made a record together. Why don’t me and you make a record? You know how to make a country record better than anybody.’ He texted me back immediately and said, ‘How about me and Sturgill doing it?’ Well, I never in a million years would have guessed that was what he was going to say. Immediately, my hopes started soaring. But I was also like, ‘Don’t get your hopes up, don’t get your hopes up,’ because three months prior, I had been offered a record deal by a company who, a month later, just out of the blue said, ‘Never mind.’ So I was like, ‘Oh gosh, don’t get your hopes up again.’”

From Kentucky Opry to Nashville

Taylor’s hopes were rewarded with Simpson and Ferguson helping embellish a collection of songs that reach from ’60s-style lushness to ’70s-inspired collages with Latin and even Tex Mex leanings. All are led by vocal color full of country candor, grace and animation as well as home state inspirations that were blooming all around Taylor when she began singing with the Kentucky Opry at the age of seven.

“I sang there every weekend of the summer and every weekend of the Christmas season. It’s really the only thing I ever wanted to do. I was a really, really shy kid and didn’t really care for attention. But with the Opry’s help and my parents gently encouraging me without pushing me, I just started to love it. Then the songwriting bug hit when I was 13. I don’t think I would be here if it wasn’t for the way Kentucky takes care of kids with creative minds.”

Taylor’s initial journey from her homeland to Nashville was considerably less celebratory. Her marriage dissolved, her band disbanded, a song publishing deal died and her home was nearly commandeered by her bank. These were the kinds of miseries that have fueled generations of country songs, except that Taylor was living every one of them out herself. She turned to cleaning houses to pay the bills, developed her work into a successful small business and started funding her own musical projects.

“It’s the hard times that challenge us and make us question our entire belief systems, that give us an opportunity to grow and be better if we don’t let them break us,” Taylor said. “I really went inward and started looking at who I was, what I believe, what I want out of this life, why I am here. It’s everything. I would not go back and change anything, no matter how painful, and it was painful. I would not take one different step that has led me to everything that I’m doing now, everything thing that I have now and the person that I am now. It’s really wild. I never would have believed in those moments or that I would be even saying something like this.”

2023 performances will include Railbird, Somerset festival

Now with “Kentucky Blue” in the hands of fans and a 2023 touring schedule that brings her to The Burl this weekend, to Railbird in June and to Somerset’s Master Musicians Festival in July, Taylor is ready to share the next chapter in her homegrown career.

“It’s going to be a whirlwind,” she said. “All the hard work is about to start, but I’m really excited for people to hear the record and to see their reaction.

“I feel like I’m more creative than ever. The ideas come and go, but as far as knowing who I am, how I want to sound and how I want to move forward, it’s just so much fun. I’ve finally found my people who I want to create with, people who get it and get me. It’s more fun than it’s ever been or how I would have ever imagined it would be.”

Brit Taylor, with Brother Smith

When: Feb 10, 8 p.m.

Where: The Burl, 375 Thompson Rd.

Tickets: $12 at theburlky.com