Arts & EntertainmentThe Music Issue

Music and Medicine

Bisexual singer Wendy Taylor went back to school to help glioblastoma patients.

Houston-born artist Wendy Taylor has been performing since she was 3.

“Mostly, I didn’t look back. I started so young,” Taylor says. “It was my first love. It’s the only thing in my whole life, [aside from] science, that I haven’t gotten bored with.”

“I think life responds to music,” Taylor adds. “Plants respond to music. Elephants dance. It’s in our biology. Even before there were instruments, cavemen pounded with rocks with sticks. Music reflects who we truly are.”

Now 35, Taylor has been singing, dancing, acting, writing, and entertaining for over three decades. You can catch her across the Houston area on a variety of stages.

“I’m a singer, but I play piano. I can also play the guitar and drums horribly,” she laughs. “I’ve also been coaching up-and-coming artists for the last 15 years, including the last two seasons of Pride SuperStar.”

Taylor has even been on American Idol—twice. “It was an entertaining experience. I gained many wonderful friendships and memories from the experience, learned a lot about reality TV—and nothing about music. I’d do it again.”

But what’s most remarkable about Taylor is that for the last several years, she has donated roughly two-thirds of her performance proceeds to charity.

“I get to sing for the Montgomery County CPS ‘Light Up the Night with Hope’ every New Year’s Eve to raise money for foster kids to help them get adopted. They have such a good program there in Montgomery County. It’s the most successful in the state,” Taylor says, adding that she also performs annually at CureFest.

“It’s a big concert we do every year to fund a trial at MD Anderson Cancer Center for glioblastoma,” she says of CureFest. “After getting more involved, I decided to go back to school to become a neurosurgeon.”

After graduating from San Jacinto College, Taylor plans to transfer to MD Anderson to continue her studies. She says she has always been a “big science nerd” and that pursuing medical school is “a heart thing.”  

“I got personally involved with these people’s lives,” she says of the glioblastoma patients. “I got tired of just throwing money at it. I wanted to fight the fight on the ground floor. I can’t watch it anymore, so I decided to battle this with more than just music.”

Taylor, who works full-time as a musician and is also a single mother of three boys, jokes that she has “roughly 400 years left in school.” But she adds that it’s “better to chip away at it and get there eventually” rather than giving up on a dream.  

In the meantime, she and her dad designed and built a studio from the ground up. “Music is supporting me and my three boys while I’m going to school,” she says. “This wouldn’t be possible without the incredible, unlimited support from my family. I owe them so much.”

Taylor, who identifies as bisexual, also credits her “rainbow family.”

“The Houston LGBTQIA+ community is my home,” Taylor says. “The more I’m learning about pansexuality, the more I identify with that. I’m open to loving anyone.”

For more info about Wendy Taylor, go to wendytaylormusic.com/

This article appears in the August 2018 edition of OutSmart magazine. 

Comments

Jenny Block

Jenny Block is a frequent contributor to a number of high-profile publications from New York Times to Huffington Post to Playboy and is the author of four books, including “Be That Unicorn: Find your Magic. Live your Truth. Share your Shine." She has appeared on a variety of television and radio programs from Nightline to BBC Radio to Great Day Houston and has performed and spoken at bookstores, events, conferences, and resorts in the US and Mexico, as well as on Holland America Cruise ships.
Back to top button