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Jenny Taylor has always loved singing; it just took her a while to realize that she was very good at it. As a child, her audience was usually just a bunch of farm animals, as she sang country songs by Dolly Parton and others, as well as “songs I made up.”

“I’ve been singing since I could talk,” she says. “The pigpen was far enough back so that no one else could hear me, so mostly I just sang to my pig.”

Her first experiences singing in public were at church, usually in church specials or Christmas programs. “I didn’t do very well singing with the choir,” she recalls. “So I just thought I couldn’t sing. It took quite a while to build up the confidence to sing in public.” As she became more serious about her singing and songwriting, she realized that she needed to learn how to play the guitar.

“If I wanted to write songs,” she explains, “I either had to get someone to help, or I had to learn how to play.” Her father (Don Simpson) bought her a guitar just four years ago, but she’s been playing it ever since. Last year, she was given a flyer by pastor Ken Barrington, of the Cross and Spurs Ministry in Buchanan Dam; she sent in $25, and became a member of the Country Gospel Music Association. This June, she attended the CGMA’s Western Division Conference in Carlsbad, New Mexico (“a big expense for a starving artist,” she says), and competed in the Newcomer category, singing a new song she had written, called “Alive.”

She sang on Friday, June 19, and returned to Texas on Saturday for a singing commitment Sunday morning. It was Tuesday before she realized that she had been named her category’s “Best Female Vocalist” at the awards ceremony Saturday night. “It was my first award ever, for anything,” she says.

Her next step is a planned October trip to the CGMA’s International Conference in Branson, Missouri, where CGMA president Billy Hale has volunteered to produce her next CD (she still hasn’t ever recorded “Alive”). She and her father write most of the songs, but she enjoys singing a lot of the “old country gospel songs.”

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Jenny Taylor lives in Tow with her supportive husband Price, daughter Laura and son Kyle. Her parents are Don and Sherry Simpson, of Llano. We’ll let you know when her new CD is available.