Phil from Life On Planets is here, Black Coffee. “I’ve never seen this many Black folks hanging out here,” Taylor says, tears streaming down her face as she surveys the scene. This is a massive win for me.” As South African amapiano duo Major League DJz take over the decks, Black Coffee - who’s been hanging out backstage nodding his head to the beat - pulls Taylor aside to tell her that the diversity she’s been working to achieve, it’s happening, right here. “That’s unheard of at a dance music festival. “I think we have 17 brown and black artists on the lineup between both weekends,” Taylor says as a set by twin production duo Coco & Breezy thumps from the speakers. When Big Freedia arrives to perform in the late afternoon, Taylor greets her like an old friend, offering a hug and a cocktail to one of the artists helping forge the Do Lab’s most diverse Coachella lineups since the group started hosting a stage at the festival in 2004. “Having that kind of skillset and bringing it to the table is amazing for me, because she’s like, ‘Oh I know so and so I can call them.” You can do more backdoor deals and get stuff done when you have personal relationships with people.” “She’s out and about every weekend at shows, checking out all the artists and meeting all the agents and the managers, networking in a way that like, everybody loves her,” says Flemming. When Billboard catches up with Taylor backstage at the Do Lab area during the first weekend of Coachella 2022, she’s demonstrating her efficacy, buzzing around like a rave mom/hostess, making sure everyone is happy, hydrated and welcomed.
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“So I basically taught myself how to do the job.” When this previous Director announced she wasn’t coming back, Taylor permanently took over the position. “She gave me an hour long crash course and was like ‘I know you can handle this, I’m going offline’,” Taylor recalls. The years passed, Taylor’s contact list grew, and when the Do Lab’s then Assistant Music Director was leaving for maternity leave, she asked Taylor to step into the role while she was gone. That led to a gig at Coachella, and soon the woman who’d been on the fence about attending LiB at all was working at 10-12 festivals a year while also bartending at venues like the Hollywood Palladium to further immerse herself in music culture. “But I was like, ‘If I really want to do this I’ve got to get humble.’ So I got humble.” While her dream was to work in artist relations, she was offered a paid gig doing food hospitality at Lightning in a Bottle 2016. “I was like, ‘I’m 34 years old, am I going to go volunteer at a music festival?'” Taylor recalls. Her first break came when she was offered a volunteer gig at the October 2015 Dirtybird Campout, which was co-produced by the Do Lab. But fresh off the natural high of her first LiB, she knew she had to get into the festival world. In 2015, she was working as a singer and dancer and managing restaurants in Los Angeles while also doing production work on film and television projects.
Taylor’s path to her current position required hustle. “Diversification has definitely been a goal of ours for awhile,” Flemming says, “and having Tadia help focus on it is super helpful… She’s also really good at keeping her ear to the ground and figuring out what’s hot before anybody knows what’s hot.” “,” Taylor says, “every part of my body wanted me to say, ‘Yes, I’ll take it.’ Then I had a moment where I said ‘Jesse, you know I’ve wanted this job ever since I started working with you, but I cannot take it unless you commit to diversifying this festival.'”įlemming said yes, Taylor did too, and the pair began a work partnership that has delivered the Do Lab’s most diverse lineups in the company’s more than two decade history. In her role, Taylor has helped evolve Do Lab lineups to reflect a more diverse collection of artists than are typically seen at many festivals during this post-pandemic moment of social reckoning when events that aren’t diversifying simply look lazy and out of touch. (It’s the first LiB since 2019, with the past two years cancelled due to the pandemic.) Stepping into the role last year, Taylor now works with Do Lab Cofounder, Owner and Music Director Jesse Flemming to curate lineups like the one for Lightning in a Bottle 2022, which begins today (May 27) at Buena Vista Lake near Bakersfield, Calif. Seven years later, Taylor is doing exactly that as the Assistant Music Director for the Do Lab, the Los Angeles-based company that’s produced Lightning in a Bottle since the early 2000s. “I remember having this moment where I was like, ‘I want to be a part of creating something that makes other people feel the way this is making me feel right now.'” “I had this visceral experience where the Ferris wheel was in the background, the Thunder stage was on the right and this guy was standing on top of a van playing the trumpet as the sun was setting,” she says.
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