Rosie Frater-Taylor, Music Spoken Here, The Marr’s Bar, Worcester, 13/11/2025.

Rosie Frater-Taylor - guitar, vocals, Jonny Wickham - bass, Steve Taylor - drums

Rosie Frater Taylor on Re:play

Thursday saw the return of Rosie Frater Taylor to The Marr’s Bar to close out our brief Re:play series featuring five select bands that performed with us when Music Spoken Here was just getting started, almost four years ago. Rosie’s first appearance with her trio featuring Dave Edwards on bass and Tom Potter on drums, was on 22nd December 2022. She has since returned in her drummer dad’s band Steve Taylor’s Fusion Phew in May 2024 and her trio this time round featured Steve Taylor and bassist Jonny Wickham from that band. This was Jonny’s fourth appearance on our stage, having played twice previously with Robert Castelli (March 2023 and last month).

It seems that the winter cold and flu bugs are taking their toll on our enjoyment of live music at the moment as several regulars, including our resident DJ MooreFeJazz, were struck down and unable to join us for this brilliant and entertaining performance. Despite the lower than expected turnout, it was still more than double the audience for her first appearance three years ago and included a few who were there the first time.

Following a quick tune-up of her guitar, Rosie launched into ‘Think About You’ from her 2022 album ‘Bloom’, her soft but confident vocals accompanied by on-the-beat guitar chords for the first few bars before Steve and Jonny got involved. The song closed out with a beautifully improvised guitar solo, subsequently embellished with wordless vocals in unison, a technique often heard with George Benson.

The remainder of the first set featured songs from Rosie’s latest album ‘Featherweight’, starting with the rhythmically playful ‘Falling Fast’. In our recent ‘Piece Talks’ video interview, Rosie talked about her fascination with rhythm and the importance it has in her songwriting, having learned drums from an early age from her dad. This song also happens to be the first video we published from a live recording at The Marrs Bar in 2022 when we started our YouTube channel and it has remained in the all-time top ten most viewed videos on the channel since.

Next up was a cover of TLC’s ‘No Scrubs’, followed by ‘Hold The Weight’ and ‘Give and Take’, both bringing out the rockier side of Rosie’s guitar work with some excellent soloing, to the extent that she broke a string on the latter. We were then treated to an impromptu, elaborate yet subtle three-minute drum solo from Steve that featured some canny cymbal moves while Rosie changed the string. Steve and Jonny then left the stage for Rosie’s solo performance of ‘Stop Running’ using a loop pedal before returning to close out the set with ‘Twenties’.

The second set opened with a couple of new songs, starting with another solo performance, this one a new song written with New Zealand drummer and composer Myele Manzanza, who Rosie has collaborated with on several occasions. It transpired after she started that she hadn’t adjusted the tuning of her guitar required for this song, but undeterred, Rosie seamlessly sang out her oversight while retuning and resuming the song as if it were all an intended part of the performance, to a ripple of applause from the captivated audience.

Steve then joined the stage to sit at the cajon for ‘Higher Life’, a song inspired by Rosie’s encounter with Seal, who contacted her online after hearing her cover of ‘Crazy’, leading to the two meeting up when he was in London for Wimbledon. Rosie’s fascination with the 7/8 time signature resulted in her refreshing arrangement of Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’ that played out with another improvised guitar solo, again embellished at times with unison vocalising.

Next up was ‘Just My Type’ from the ‘Bloom’ album and Rosie’s most streamed original song on Spotify. ‘Heartbeat’ was then followed by another cover, this time of ‘Dreams’ by Stevie Nicks, which I suspect was a highlight for many of this evening’s modest but appreciative gathering. The set closed out with ‘Better Days’ from the ‘Bloom’ album and a cover of the gorgeously syncopated, dancey ‘DTs’ by Brotherly.

Enthusiastic applause from the thoroughly entertained audience was rewarded with an encore of ‘Umami’, taken from her first album, ending with a only bass solo of the evening from Jonny and another drum feature from Steve.

It was without a doubt a stunning and engaging performance throughout, with Rosie once again demonstrating her connection with the guitar publicly noted by Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. I bet those that weren’t able to make it down were gutted, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles I guess.

DAVE FULER, MUSIC SPOKEN HERE