Interview // Playing Catch Up With The Bachelorette's James Taylor

Known as the sweet and handsome southern gentleman viewers fell in love with from Jojo's season of The Bachelorette, after a shocking elimination that left fans devastated James Taylor is pursuing his dreams and currently taking the music industry by storm. We were lucky enough to have a quick chat with him on on life after the show, his new album Can't Stop and some of his thoughts on the dating culture today.

G’day James, thanks so much for speaking with us. How was it being back home with your family for Thanksgiving – what’s your favourite Thanksgiving tradition?
G’day mate! Yeah it was great, I’m still with them actually - me and my little brother are going to sing our national anthem before a basketball game at a university right now. We play a lot of board games cos we’re really cool like that - but it's competitive in my family, we go all out and keep a list of who’s won every year. Of course we also eat a lot of turkey, a lot of food, watch the cowboys on TV, and that’s kind of our Thanksgiving in a nutshell.

Sounds like home. Congratulations on the album! Are you touring now?
Thank you so much, it was fun making and we’re actually working on a new one right now! We’ve been touring all over the place, next up is Arkansas and Oklahoma for the next 3 days. Yep just moving around playing music.

Well how are you liking life on the road then?
Life on the road is the best, I love it. You know you miss family a little bit and sometimes you can’t find your clothes or whatever living out of a suitcase. But it’s kinda nice, I can be somewhat of a slob at times, my house is always messy and I actually just sold my house, got rid of it, so I don’t even have a home anymore, totally living on a tour bus – that’s life.

Homeless James Taylor living the dream! Who would you say are your biggest musical influences?
Haha yes, homeless James Taylor. Do you know what, my biggest is probably the other James Taylor – the real James Taylor. He’s just himself and he’s almost genreless. He just writes good songs – it’s not country, it’s not rock, it’s just James Taylor. So I love that, I just like when you can write a good song that everybody can enjoy. I think he just does that perfectly.

Well hope you get to see him on day in person! If you could collaborate with any artist today, who would it be?
I’d probably go with George Strait. I think that would be kind of fun to have myself up and coming working with a legend like that, you know hero over here. I think that’d be pretty awesome to go do a song with George.

So of course we loved you on The Bachelorette, looking back now how was it going through something like that?
Oh it was crazy, just so fun. Also a little weird, they take your phone, you don’t have TV, no computer, but you make so many friends for life. We got really close because all you have to do is talk and tell stories and you’re living with them. They wake you up early and you go to bed late so every second of the day you’re spending with these guys for two and a half months. Then obviously falling for the girl Jojo was great, she was sweet and beautiful and really good to me. So you fall for her quickly and of course it sucked when she kicked me off, but you know that happens and only one person can win and I understood that going in. I’ll never forget leaving that night, that wasn’t fun at all, it was like everything I want is back that way, why am I going this way but I’m not the one driving the limo or handing out roses, so I kind of just had to get over that. But other than that we went to so many cool places and they spoil you, you eat so good over there, you eat like kings, anything you want to drink they give you, so it was pretty cool.

It must've been nice to be disconnected for a while. I feel like you don’t have the distractions of TV or phones so you can create better relationships.
Oh yes, you are absolutely right, we got so close. There are some friends that I’ve been friends with for 15 years, but I don’t even know them as well as some of those guys, even the guys that were only there for 10 days I know some of them better because you know we actually put the phones down and didn’t have TV distracting us or things to do, we were just talking and opening up. At first it was just fun stuff, like dumb little stories from names to where they’re from and then next thing you know people are opening up about really deep personal stuff. I feel like it was really nice being disconnected so that we could actually connect. And by the way...speaking of connecting, people in Australia have been so sweet to me, I still get so many messages from people in Australia and it’s just always good and encouraging – I gotta make it over there sometime.

You do! We would love to have you over here! So dating apps – have you used them and if so what do you think of them?
I just got back on actually, I think they’re good and bad. People get on there and they just swipe left to right whether its Bumble or Tinder - they judge somebody just off their picture and that’s not really good just because there’s so much more to a person than that. Someone could have the best personality in the world and you would never know it if you’re just swiping left to right. However, if you actually take the time to look at someone’s bio and read what they say obviously you can kind of see if you’re attracted to them pretty quickly, so its kind of nice to at least get a feel for somebody and start that way. But then again I guess one thing I did learn from The Bachelorette is that we kind of compare people so easily and it was nice at least for me being just with Jojo where she was the most beautiful, she was the sweetest, she was the most fun, she was the best at everything and partially because we didn’t have phones out there or anything like that so there was nothing to compare her to. We’re always second guessing ourselves so much these days, like oh man this girls really hot but this girls really cool and so end up texting both of them and never really giving either of them a real fair chance to just be the center of your attention and really treat them like they deserve to be. So like I said if you use dating apps right and really don’t just talk to every single person on there, I mean really put some effort in…I think they could be great.

I feel like it would be hard dating now the world knows who you are?
Yes I guess its kind of like they say on the show, are you really here for the right reasons? That’s what they always ask, so it’s kind of the same game. I have to see for myself and I give everybody the benefit of the doubt to an extent, like I’m hoping if they did see me on the show that they thought I was a nice guy, they saw something in me that they really appreciated and admired and wanted to get to know better, so I like to think of it that way. Of course I know there are people who just wanna date someone that they saw on TV or something like that just for popularity, but you know I think you can find that out pretty quickly.

I can understand that. How was it being thrown into the spotlight following the show, is it something you ever get used to?
Oh man, you know I loved it. I like the spotlight, sure it is kind of weird being followed around 24/7 with a camera and microphone - that’s kind of a little shock to your system right there for anybody because that’s just weird. But it was also really fun knowing everything you did good or bad could be on TV and you’re just totally open for the whole world to see and to judge - so I actually thought it was pretty neat.

Now I have to ask this, would you want to be The Bachelor if the opportunity ever arose?
Um I don’t you know, I’m doing what I love to do right now. At first they were talking to Luke, Chase and I, the 3 of us about doing it this year and then they picked Nick out of the blue which was kind of surprising to a lot of people. I kind of knew that I didn’t have a chance because I got voted off right before hometowns and they had told me, man we really like you but you need a little more exposure so will you do Bachelor in Paradise. I said no to that because I promised my mum I wouldn’t do it, you know she’s from the south and its really conservative down here she just thinks that it's really trashy.

I personally think that was a really good call, no Bachelor in Paradise - it's a very different style to The Bachelor and The Bachelorette.
I think so too, you know everybody is drunk 24/7 and people are hooking up left and right, it’s just wasn’t really something I wanted to be a part of. So they kept telling me to come do that and offering to pay me money, they were like well if you do this you have a chance to be The Bachelor because you know I’m pretty open, talk to everybody, you know I’m pretty easy to work with and so I think that they saw that I might be good candidate for them to have. But anyway, I thought they might have just been telling me whatever I wanted to hear so I would say yes and then all of a sudden they picked Nick from Bachelor in Paradise and I got a couple of texts from the producers being like you should’ve done it, but you know everything happens for a reason and I’m so happy to be over here, you know I’m driving to go play music right now for a big crowd and I can’t wait because this is what I really love.

I hear you 100%, I feel like it kind of led you to what you really love inadvertently, you weren’t really doing music before The Bachelorette from what I understand?
Yeah I didn’t really do it, I was writing songs for other people and for myself and I’d play around a little bit but mainly just for fun. I didn’t make very much money doing it and I had a full-time other job. It had always kind of been a dream of mine. Really I brought my guitar because I heard there was a lot of downtime, so I brought it to just kind of pass the time and they all loved my music and were like hey you don’t need to be doing sales anymore you need to be doing music full time, so they put me down as a singer-songwriter and I was like ok well here we go!

Can't get enough? Catch James Taylor's album on iTunes or Apple Music here and follow his many adventures on Instagram here!