Gavin Taylor discusses The Muffled Sirens and the story behind the band

The Muffled Sirens is an Oklahoma band with some students from ACM. The band is made up of lead singer, rhythm guitarist, and keyboardist Gavin Taylor, lead guitarist Grae McGinnis, drummer and vocalist Blake Dillard, and bassist and Saxophonist Dylan Heard. The Muffled Sirens is a flamboyant rock band. 

The band got started after lead singer Gavin Taylor’s previous band Treason 58 broke up during Covid, said Taylor. He said he was fixing to graduate high school and didn’t know what he was going to do then a member of his previous band told him to go to ACM.

He went to ACM and was in an assigned band called Blake. He had also formed a solo band to perform whatever he was writing at the time. His solo band had a gig booked for The Opolis, a music venue in Norman, when he got a call that said the members of his solo band were not going to be able to perform. Taylor said he has never canceled a gig before and so he asked Blake Dillard from the assigned band he was in if he would perform with him. Dillard said he had a friend named Dylan Heard who plays bass that could perform with them. Gavin Taylor, Blake Dillard, and Dylan Heard performed that gig and Taylor said that he just got the sense that there was some sort of telepathic happening with the music that just flowed. He asked Dillard and Heard to be in this band.

About a month later, Taylor was in line for a Yungblud concert and right behind him was Grae McGinnis. They bumped into each other after the show and Taylor asked McGinnis to be in the band with them. Plaza District Festival of 2023 was their first show together. “Not only was there this musical connection, but there was such a quick bond and we were just around each other constantly,” said Taylor. 

Taylor said he got the name for The Muffled Sirens after his aunt passed away. He said his aunt was this really cool lively hippy art lady and she passed away suddenly taking her life when he was about twelve years old. He said the night his aunt died his dad had a stress induced stroke. He woke up the next day to these muffled sirens and after that night he began writing songs. “After that night, truly I began writing songs. All of these songs stem from me writing about that grief and that weird time,” said Taylor.

The name became an allegory for people who are silenced like a muffled siren. Taylor said some of the other members of the band have also dealt with the loss of their parents. He said they all kind of shared this interesting grief. Taylor said on top of all that, they all are advocates or in the LGBTQ+ community and so much of that community is the personification of what the band is about.

He said that is why they started imploring drag acts to open for them. He said they recently played a show where they were playing “Cherrybomb” by the Runaways and they had drag queen Yakisoba Zay Michaels come on stage. 

When discussing how they are able to be themselves in a state that is sometimes opposed to that, Taylor said Oklahoma is the best place to workshop this because there is so much hate and you get to see the coin being flipped by the antagonist. Taylor said they had a guy wearing ‘Make America Great Again’ merch at a show. Taylor said he was not trying to judge a book by its cover because that would be the opposite of the band’s message, but he said you could see when he looked at the drag artist walking on before them there was so much bottled up fear among other emotions.

At that show, when the band brought the drag artist on stage and when the band spoke about what it is to be somebody who is not afraid to wear their insides on their velvet sleeves, there was just a catastrophic switch in people’s brains, said Taylor. He said the music is everything and the clothes are everything, but the whole point of making art is to convey a specific message. He said to see Yakisoba Zay Michaels being who she is and changing these bigoted perspectives was quite emotional. He said to sum it up being a band in Oklahoma is nerve wrecking, but the most liberating experience even when it does not work.

Gavin Taylor talked about the band’s unique style and said his style in particular stems from 70s glam rock like T. Rex and David Bowie. He said his style is an accumulation of so many things including proto-punk from the 70s and indie sleaze from the 2000s.

He said before he got with the band he was doing a 70s glam thing, but Grae McGinnis brought this early punk CBGB look, and Blake Dillard and Dylan Heard both have this 70s hippie style and Taylor said for some reason just works. Taylor said he used to be in Hallmark movies as a child and by doing that he met costume designer Jack Odell. He said since then they have become best friends. “She has elevated our style so everything that you see on stage is either given to us by her or you know definitely influenced by her,” said Taylor. He said that their style really comes from Jack Odell’s brilliance and his chaotic suggestions. 

Taylor said before ACM his songwriting was a lot more singer/songwriter and now they are doing a lot of bigger compositions. He said that has come from studying music theory and songwriting at ACM. He said they also have such a good music culture that gives you so much to pull from. “I can take some sort of strange public domain riff from ragtime and put it into some sort of you know grungy Nirvana type thing,” said Taylor.

He said ACM has also taught him so much about music business and what to look out for in the music industry. He said people like to take significant things from you and ACM has taught him so much on how to avoid that. He said before ACM he was quite aimless and they have kind of taught him who to trust. 

He said the band is currently trying to get into the studio to perform one of their songs “Glass Doctor.” Taylor said the band is wanting to get a record out. He said they are thinking about touring across the state at schools since The Muffled Sirens are so much about individuality. He said their whole thing is about sharing their perspectives and really going for what you are trying to do.

Taylor said he wants to tour these schools because in high school he started truly dressing the way he dresses. He said he wants to perform at school assemblies to encourage kids to be themselves and to make things and not be ashamed of it. He said they are working on getting that tour planned out now. The Muffled Sirens will be playing at the Plaza District Festival Sept. 28 on the ACM Stage. They are set to go on around 7:30 p.m. Within the last year The Muffled Sirens have performed at Norman Music Festival, Resonant Head, Oklahoma PrideFest, and many other places.