The Interview: Taylor Kress

We talk UFOs and strange occurrences in this longer episode-Taylor has pretty much seen it all! Every single day Taylor is putting his life on the line, whether it's helping save the lands we live on, singing with his band, Jubal...(or regaling us with his stories of ghosts), Taylor's got your back.

Please note: This track may include some explicit language.

Transcript

Hello,

Everyone,

And welcome to another episode of Bite-Sized Blessings.

Sorry the episode is delayed this week.

On Saturday and Sunday,

I was driving to Arkansas,

Which is where I'm recording this from.

I'm also outside,

So if you hear some birds or the passing train,

That's just what I've got to work with this week.

This week,

I get to interview a super cool friend,

Taylor Kress,

Who fronts the band Jubal.

At the end of this episode,

You'll hear a song by Taylor and his bandmates called Raynosa from the album County Ball.

Taylor talks about UFOs.

He talks about something unexpected that happened during a therapy session.

In fact,

Taylor had so much to share,

We had to whittle it down to the two events included in this episode.

Taylor's many things,

A musician,

A wildland firefighter,

A coffee barista.

He's pretty much done it all,

But I think you'll understand that it's really with his band and his music.

For me,

That's where he shines.

So now,

Episode 114 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

Where it got weird was,

So we were talking,

And then she asked me where it was now,

And it was in my neck,

And what color it was,

And it was gray.

And these are the things I remember very vividly,

Because then she asked me,

Was it conscious?

And I,

Shit you not,

I lost control of my body.

All right,

So my first question always is,

Who are you as a human being?

How do you self-describe?

If you were to go to a party or go to a conference,

Who are you as a human being?

That is a great question.

I guess the answer,

I would always,

It would be contextual.

It would depend on the context of who I'm talking to.

Also,

I am a multifaceted individual.

I'm Taylor Crest.

I'm a writer.

I am a husband.

I'm a firefighter,

And I'm a musician.

And,

Yeah,

I guess those would be the main things that I would pick up the top of my head,

But I don't,

It's hard.

I usually just go with,

Like,

I'm me,

I'm Taylor.

Kind of crazy.

Here we go.

Would you say cowboy poet?

I mean,

That's a great term.

If someone,

If anyone wants to start referring to me as that,

I'll take it,

You know.

How did you start your band?

Yeah,

So I grew,

I guess my initial start in music would have been,

I played violin classically all throughout middle school and high school,

But I never liked that music style.

No offense to classic music.

It's just,

You know,

Inferior to country music.

But I started after college,

I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

And I started working in coffee and music was my other half of my living.

And we just started,

I honestly at that point just started playing hook and shows and playing whatever I could.

And so I guess,

Yeah,

My position in the band would be,

I write all the songs.

That's what I would say.

I would say I'm more of a writer than I am a musician.

Just given that I,

That's the way my mind works better.

But yeah,

Jake Smith is my brother,

Basically.

I mean,

He's my brother by all,

He's not my official brother,

But he's my brother.

And he's,

He would be the other half of the band,

I'd say,

Because he's just,

He's the composer that adds so much of all the other elements of it.

And yeah,

I guess I've been doing,

I still do that.

I don't do it for a living anymore,

But I still love to play music.

You also have an amazingly magical voice.

I'm sure you know that.

Thank you.

I'm glad to hear that.

I don't,

I'm always very insecure about my voice.

I'm so curious when you're out fighting fires in the middle of nowhere,

Do you bring your guitar and sit around the fire at,

Not the actual forest fire,

But at the end of the day when you're all hanging out,

Do you,

Do you like sing and play for everybody?

No,

I don't.

I wish I could bring a guitar.

We don't actually usually have room for pretty much anything.

I write,

I usually write poetry because like poetry kind of works as a,

It's not,

I don't share my poetry a lot.

It's usually more of a journal for me.

So I usually will kind of journal throughout the,

The assignment.

And it's more of a poetic form.

It's the only kind of way I can write.

But no,

I actually don't really talk about,

I don't know.

I get frustrated sometimes with musicians,

Particularly because I have a lot of,

I mean,

As they can be interesting at times that I don't like,

I don't usually talk about playing music unless it comes up naturally.

Like I don't bring it up at any of my jobs,

Hardly unless there's a reason to.

How did you get interested in firefighting?

Yeah.

Well,

I guess I've worked in,

I've always worked in coffee and music.

And then when COVID hit,

My,

All my sources of income just disappeared.

Because obviously coffee,

A lot of coffee shops had to cut back on their employees.

And then music,

Of course,

Took a,

It took a hit really bad.

It's taken,

Honestly,

It's still recovering,

You know,

Three years out now.

And it's finally getting back to where it's,

You could do things again that are the way they were before,

But it's still not ever.

Music's also just a hard industry right now.

So that would be how I got into fire.

I was bored and I lived in Oahu,

California and had nothing to do.

So I,

The local volunteer fire department needed members and I was like,

Oh,

I'll just go down there.

So I went down for a meeting and pretty quickly fell in love with that type of stuff too.

So then I stayed with them for,

I'm still with them.

I'm still volunteer,

But I was with them for over a year and then got my position with the forest service and started going that route.

Isn't it a little scary every once in a while?

Sometimes,

Sometimes it's a boring,

The most boring job in the world.

And then other times it's,

Yeah,

I've had,

Thankfully,

I'm very fortunate.

I haven't had a lot of really super dangerous things happen to me,

But I've had some days that some sketchy things that were,

Yeah,

They're exciting.

Let's just say,

Let's stick with exciting.

I grew up in split houses.

And so we,

Both,

But both of my families went to non-denominational Christian churches in the South,

Which I feel like are kind of just like closet Baptist churches.

They won't admit it,

But they're non-denominational.

But we switched churches a lot and not,

Not,

Not to ever sound critical of religion,

But I had some bad,

I did not have a good time in high school or middle school for that matter.

And a lot of my,

Some of the people that were problematic related to that were,

Were really involved in some of the churches I went to.

So it gave me,

It gave,

Pushed me away from religion for a long,

Long time.

And it took me quite a while to get back to having some comfortable relationships with it.

I really love what you said about the non-denominational Christian church being like a closet Baptist church.

It's true though.

They're like,

They're all,

They're identical in every single thing,

Except for they just have a lot more like modern music.

You know,

Cause sometimes Baptist churches can be like a little Pentecostal.

I'm guessing there was no speaking in tongues or snake handling.

No,

I never,

I never experienced that.

But that being said,

A number of my friends,

There's a lot of musicians I know back east that are,

Have,

They make a lot of their living on church gigs.

And they have,

A number of them have told me about some,

Some interesting encounters with the speaking in tongues and one,

One story of snake handling.

I've always thought the snake handling is totally crazy because I mean,

I don't hate snakes,

But it just seems like tempting fate to,

Yeah,

To say the least.

Not to mention,

I just don't,

I mean,

I'm sure there's,

I'm not just,

I'm not educated enough on the theological arguments for why you would do that,

But it's never,

I've always been like,

Okay,

Cool.

This is an interesting take.

I didn't know this was a thing or part of this,

But okay,

Cool.

Yeah,

I know.

I watched a show about it actually a few years ago.

And one of the most famous handlers was,

Well,

He'd been bitten so many times he had kind of like this little weird immunity,

You know,

So he could get bitten and kind of not suffer through the,

The repercussions.

But then he just,

It was like one snake too many and he died.

Yeah,

It was,

It was intense.

But again,

It's like tempting fate.

I'm like,

No,

Thank you.

Plus,

I mean,

What do you think,

How do you think the snakes are probably like,

What the is this?

Can you leave me alone for like a while and not touch me?

And why are all these people staring at me and like,

What's going on?

Oh yeah,

No,

I definitely do.

I definitely think the snake is completely valid for biting the person.

You're getting like shook around and dancing and people are speaking in tongues and it's just probably really hectic for this.

I'm going to do the only thing that I know how to do.

I'm going to bite you,

Man.

Why don't you tell me one or if you want to share one of your UFO stories?

I love hearing those.

Sure.

I've had a couple.

Some of it,

You know,

When I say UFO,

I don't necessarily mean aliens,

I just mean truly an unidentified flying object.

And some of them were just lights,

Crazy lights situations that I was like,

Oh,

I'm never going to,

No one's going to believe that.

Not really sure what I just saw.

But the one,

The weirdest one I had was actually this year.

And I was on an assignment in California that I was talking about earlier.

And it was that night.

And the fire camps are really weird.

They're like a city that they set up in the middle of,

You know,

The woods,

Basically.

And we were,

It was dark.

There's a bunch of generators,

You know,

Like generators,

Lights.

So you can't really see a ton outside of your area,

But they were just shutting those all down.

We had set up our tents to get ready to go to bed.

And again,

For the people that want to check the credibility of my story,

We were seven,

Like seven to 10 days into this assignment.

You're sober.

You can't tell me that we were drinking or anything.

It's like we were sober,

Seven to 10 days sober.

You're sitting there like no one's had a drink or done anything.

So you're sitting there and you're,

I was talking to my friend Sarah and we're over the hillside.

There's just this dark black oval.

And again,

You,

There's all these generator lights.

So the sky is slightly illuminated from that.

But this thing is solid black,

Like completely pitch black.

And it has about 25,

I think 20 to 25 is what I counted,

Little lights in the middle of it.

And it's just floating really slow across the sky,

Like almost like a blimp would.

And I remember pointing to Sarah,

I was like,

Sarah,

Do you see that?

I was like,

What the fuck am I looking at?

And Sarah turned around and she was,

Did the same thing.

She was like,

What the fuck?

And it just,

We watched it for about five seconds to 10 seconds,

Just in complete awe.

And then it disappeared.

So then that was the whole visual part of it.

But just so other people that would know,

There's,

You can't,

You'd be like,

Oh yeah,

Well,

Someone might've been flying or something.

You can't do that on a fire.

There's a thing called a temporary flight restriction,

A TFR.

So nothing can be flying in that zone unless it's monitored and recognized and acknowledged within like their whole system that's there.

So this thing,

But we looked on the map and it was flying right on the edge of this,

Like the inside edge of this TFR.

And so we have no idea,

Again,

No idea what it was.

Did it make any noise?

Could you even hear anything?

No,

Couldn't hear or see anything.

And then it just disappeared,

Like I said.

And it was one of those times,

Like all the other times I had seen weird lights and stuff in my life,

I've been like,

You know,

Had a couple of drinks.

So I'm like,

Ah,

I never know who's going to believe this one.

But it's like that one,

I was like,

No,

You can't.

I know what I saw and someone else was literally standing with me and saw it too.

I've been,

Again,

I've been really fortunate.

I haven't had any,

Any crazy,

Crazy things happen to me.

And that,

Especially with all the different jobs I've had,

I'm kind of lucky in that sense.

I'm glad I haven't had to experience one.

Well,

I would love to hear your ghost stories.

Any of your ghost stories.

Yeah,

I will share one.

This one is,

Is weird.

So I was,

I was dating a girl who was into this,

She was doing this work that's for,

To help people get over trauma.

And it could be physical traumas,

Emotional,

Mental,

And it's Eastern philosophy and some Eastern work for Westernizing and using it like a more medical,

Like a Western,

To make it apply to Western medicine and like work within the framework.

So,

She had been doing that and hadn't really talked,

We hadn't talked a lot about it.

And I was like,

Hey,

If you ever want to practice or do anything,

I'd love to work with you on some stuff.

Just like if you're,

If you're comfortable with that.

And I have some pretty severe back pain that I've always had since I was like 21.

And we,

We sat down and she's like,

Yeah,

Let's try it.

And so the way it starts is ask you mostly it'll ask you a lot of questions,

And you just answer the first thing that comes to your head like she'll ask you like you know what color is it,

You're like,

Whatever you said first thing you said you know what shape is it.

Where is it located,

And you're like okay it's here and it's like what has it moved and it's like okay blah blah so this goes on for probably five to 10 minutes,

And the questions and it's changing locations it's,

You know,

You're feeling the pain kind of moving her up the different areas and like the more you think about it and the,

The,

Where it got weird was.

So we were talking.

And then she asked me where it was now and it was in my neck,

And what color it was,

And it was great and these are the things I remember very vividly because then she asked me,

Was it conscious.

And I,

I shit you not,

I lost control of my body.

I was like,

I was like my back arched up like you're trying to pop your back,

You know,

And the worst part is she continued to ask me questions.

And I was answering but I was not I had no,

No control over why answers,

And it took about a minute before I could could speak for myself,

And I didn't know I had no recollection of what was saying I was because I was too honest in shock.

We gotta stop this like I didn't explain what happened.

And so she went back and talked to her.

I guess teacher instructor on it,

And instructors only answer really was that it was.

It was just saying that you're really not supposed to have run into that that often in that line of work but it does happen and they kept the word they use for it was energetic influences,

Which sounds like a nice,

Nice way to say ghost or whatever you want to put the term on it.

It was pretty terrifying I guess I wasn't necessarily just like really changed my viewpoint on a lot of that stuff around like okay I guess there are there's some different stuff out there that I've not been acknowledging,

At least you know and I'll sit down and listen to someone's argument to say it was hypnosis or something like sure maybe there was some,

Something that she didn't she didn't know like I know that's a full other science there but like it.

The details happened the way they happened for me and it was pretty.

Yeah,

Pretty incredible I guess that's the word for it.

Maybe it was just like a helpful little gremlin that lives in your body and is gray.

I've always jokingly referred to it as the little gray man of my neck.

So,

You know,

I think we're all thirsting for those stories of the inexplicable the unexplained.

Yeah,

Well I wish I wish there was,

And maybe it's not established I feel like I,

I picture it to be like I've told people before I try to tell people when we talk when I talked to them about it because I want,

I wanted to be like yeah it's,

I'm not crazy I'm not this,

I'm not some,

You know,

I didn't,

I'm not a lunatic here so it's like this is what happened and it happened very really and this was the exact circumstances in which it did so it's like you can it doesn't have to be viewed in this.

I don't know maybe I'm just used to people that don't that are skeptical of everything so it's been,

It was very eye opening for me that's for sure.

One last question.

When that black oval disappeared,

Did it literally just wink out of existence,

Or did it?

Did it?

Yeah.

Okay,

Yeah,

It just like it was like moving there perfectly and then it just like was gone,

Because we were both staring and I can literally have a second viewpoint that also said it was the exact same thing we were both watching like,

What the hell and then it just gone.

Gone.

Yeah.

Okay,

That's it.

That was it.

Of course,

That's always how it is and it's so frustrating because you want to go get like five other people but come everybody come take a video.

It's like too late.

I was so in awe and then it's just gone.

Yeah,

Well that's that was all I'm gonna get on it.

That is amazing and I'm so jealous.

It was so cool.

And Sarah is a big alien like,

I'm not gonna say conspiracy theorist,

Alien theorist.

There we go.

And like,

Sarah lost it.

She was so excited.

She's like,

Oh my god,

We just saw the craziest shit.

It was so cool.

I mean,

I think it like the whole next day.

That's all we could talk about.

And I bet everyone else there who didn't see it was jealous.

Or that or they thought we were lunatics.

I don't know.

She's gone.

I am so grateful to Taylor for sharing his music with me,

But also for telling me a few of his stories.

I need to thank the creators of the music used for this episode.

Of course,

Taylor and the band Jubal,

But also Winnie the Moog,

Alexander,

And the band.

Of course,

Taylor and the band Jubal,

But also Winnie the Moog,

Alexander,

And Frank Schroeder.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite Size Blessings website at bite sized blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to all sorts of delicious things,

Including a link to Taylor's band camp page.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Taylor.

Do it all.

Be a musician.

Be a wildland firefighter.

Play the violin.

Be a barista.

Learn how to make delicious coffee.

Never limit yourself.

And eventually,

I think you'll find exactly the place you're meant to be.

She's gone.

She's come.

I guess I'll never be the same.

I call for water,

Not giving rain.

I know I'm not,

It's no win.

I guess she's going back again.

I thought it's no win.

And then I know it and I'm gone.

So I'm gone.

And they stole her home away.

And they stole her home away.

And they stole her home away.

And they stole my home away.

And they stole my home away.

And they stole my home away.