October 15, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, for years, Tasha Layton lived the dream that countless young artists imagine. She toured the world, performed before massive crowds, and sang beside one of the biggest names in pop music. But beneath the lights, she felt a growing emptiness that success couldn’t fill. When she finally stepped away, she didn’t know what would come next, only that she needed to start over. Her path back began quietly, through faith, small moments of honesty, and music that spoke to something deeper than applause. Tasha joins us to tell us her story.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we're back with our American stories. Up next, Tasha Layton.
After her success throughout her time on American Idol, Tasha
toured with Katy Perry as one of her backup singers,
and she did so for many years. But even after
all those incredible life experiences, she still felt empty. So
(00:30):
she gave it all up to find God take it away. Tasha.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I grew up in a little town in South Carolina
called Pauline. We had a volunteer fire station and a.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Flashing light in our town. It was just really small.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
And I grew up in the middle of nowhere and
a trailer on a bunch of acreage.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
But I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
That we weren't normal like other folks until I started
school and the teasing started, you know, getting called trailer
trash or being bullied for the shoes I'm wearing or
the kind of car. My parents picked me up from
school in just that we were, you know, well to do.
(01:16):
And I go throughout school and notice that I started
getting sort of this like chip on my shoulder, like
a need to succeed, a need to present myself a
certain way so that I wouldn't be rejected. My parents
(01:38):
were good people saw to the earth give you the
shirt off their back people, and they took us to
church every Sunday morning, and every Sunday night, and every
Wednesday night, and basically every time the doors were open,
we were there. I loved, you know, my family and
our life. But what I had known of religion was
(02:02):
kind of this hard pew on Sunday mornings, and frilly
socks that itched that I had to wear to church
and being told to be quiet. It was kind of
like the shoulds and shouldn'ts of religion. When I was
eight or nine years old, we switched churches.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
We're, you know, the.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Good old southern church Goorn family, and I remember walking
in and something was.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Different about that place.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
When we switched to this new church, I just sent
something bigger than me for the first time in my life,
and it changed me. I really became passionate about knowing
the Bible and what scripture said, and I began to
serve in other countries on mission strips and different types
(02:53):
of things, and throughout that time, I was really feeling
like I had somewhere I finally belonged. So for all
of the bullying and all of the things that I
experienced when I was younger.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I was like, man, this is like, this is amazing.
They loved me for who I am.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
They're not judging me for not living in a normal
neighborhood or all of that.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
And so it was amazing.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
And I got to maybe like sixteen years old, and
all of that kind of came crashing down. There was
a pastor who his wife, you know, ran the worship team,
and she did some other things in the church I
was at, and I didn't know she had like a
really painful history of abuse and all these things, and
(03:42):
she had some struggles and I just happened to be
in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she
was really not kind to me.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
It hurt me. I was very wounded by her.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
It was so painful and the situation became so toxic
that the church split and my family left the church,
and I left the church too. And around the time
I left the church, I was actually already in college
and I started searching.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I changed from major from.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Music to religion, and I went to Buddhist meditation camp
and synagogue in Mosque. I studied mysticism in Europe for
a couple of summers. I tried atheism even I just
I needed truth and I wanted to know that what
I believed was because I believed it, not because I
had just been socially pressured or been told.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
What to believe.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And I wanted to know that what I'd experienced in
church was real. And so I went on this search
of all these different religions and I questioned everything.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
And I got to be honest.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I felt a lot of judgment from Christians who saw
me searching, and then I also recognized a lot of
judgment from people who were either searching or who were
anti Christian, judging the people who had strong faith. And
I just thought to myself self, this is ridiculous, like
(05:12):
everyone is judging each other so hard, and we're not
having any sort of empathy or compassion for each other's
journeys and what we're all going through. That we all
have the same questions in life, and we're all in
need of.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Something to save us.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
And I came to the end of my searching period
and I was really isolated and depressed, and I felt
so alone. I don't think I'd ever felt so lonely
in my life, and I tried to take my life.
It was in my college dorm room, and I didn't succeed.
(05:54):
I knew a lot about guns because I grew up
in the country, and I knew that the gun was loaded,
but the gun did not go off, and I was
so shocked. And when I was going to pull the
trigger again, someone walked into the room and I just
(06:16):
fell apart. I just thought, I'm not okay and I
need some help. I'm not gonna make it through this
without some help. I ended up going to a former
youth pastor's house for I don't know how long I.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Was there, but.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
And just sort of being I just let them level
me and feed me when I would eat, talk to
me when I would talk. And I just decided, you
know what, in all these other paths I've been taking,
you have to strive so hard to reach God or reach.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Enlightenment, or be a good person and eat.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Even in the religious side of Christianity, you have to
like strive to earn God's favor or to be looked
upon as righteous or whatever. But in the Gospel, in
what you read in scripture, Jesus is the only God
who lowers himself to come to us. And so something
(07:22):
about that shifted something in my mind, and I thought,
I'm going to go back to church, whether I feel
it or not. I'm gonna put one foot right in
front of the other. And at some point something's got
to stick. Because I've tried everything else, including Trinity take
my own life.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
I went for about a year, didn't feel a thing.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so tired of this,
I'm bored, I'm numb, I'm not feeling still, and yet
something told me just keep going. And so about a
year into that, the pastor said, if you want to
touch from God, why don't you come up if we
want to pray for you? And I went up there
(08:04):
and I left three hours later. I was just a
sobbing mess on the ground and they probably had to
replace that square of carpet because of all my snot
but I felt again for the first time, and it
was like that presence that I've felt the first time
I walked into that church at eight or nine years old.
(08:24):
That same presence like surrounded me and I thought, this
is this is a turning point in my life.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And you've been listening to Tasha Layton share her story
and for so many people who grew up in the
church and then grew away from the church, and then
went into a questioning phase.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
For all of you who didn't.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Grow up in the church and were never a part
of a church and have questioning phases of your own,
struggles of your own battles with loneliness of your own
and doubt and self doubt. Boy, we hear self doubt
and loneliness and even entropy its lowest when someone tries
to take their own life, which she did once the
gun failed, about to do it a second time. She
(09:08):
was blessed to have someone walk in and stop that,
and then in came a youth pastor to give her
some space and love and time. And we all need
that from time to time, all of us. When we
come back more of Tasha Layton's story here on our
American stories, and we returned to our American stories and
(09:42):
to Tasha Lton sharing her story of discovering faith or
rediscovering faith and ultimately believing in it. Let's return to
Tasha with the rest of her story.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
So I decided the seminary in California. I thought, I
want to help people. I would love to pastor people.
I would love to do this differently than what I experienced.
I would love to help people on a level that
is from a place of education and health and emotional
health and growth. And so I.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Decided I'd go to seminary.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
And I'd grown up kind of doing music, just singing
in choir and singing at church, and I started out
as a music major in college. But when all this
stuff went down with my church splitting and just being
hurt by religious people, I kind of put that down.
And in my third year of seminary, this lady came
up to me and she was like, Hey, I have
(10:35):
this event that I need somebody to do music for.
Do you do music? And I just felt out lied
to her. I was like, no, I don't. And then
she called me back the next day and she said,
I'm gonna call you next week. Just think about it,
and so I did. I ended up saying yes. And
I didn't have callouses on my fingers. I had not
sang in years. I knew musically it was just gonna suck,
(10:57):
and it kind of did.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Musically. It was a train.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Wreck, but the spirit in their room was incredible. People
were just on their knees praying and crying, were just
so moved, including me, and I thought, I think I'm
supposed to pick music back up. I ended up kind
of by a fluke going to audition for American Idol.
(11:22):
I had some friends who were auditioning and they were like, hey.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Just come hang out with us. You should do it,
blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So I thought, Okay, I'll just go hang out. But
it turns out you can't stay in the line unless
you actually sign up to be auditioning for the show.
And so I was like, Okay, you guys are crazy.
There's fourteen thousand people coming to the Rose Bowl. They're
only choosing three hundred. None of us are making it.
This is ridiculous. But turns out I did make it,
(11:50):
and then I kept making it through Hollywood Week, all
the way up until the round right before you get
voted on. And when I left the show, I thought, man,
that actually felt really natural. Something about that felt really comfortable,
Like maybe I'm supposed to do something outside of the
church in reference to music, and so I just tried
to kind of putting my intentions towards that and saying,
(12:11):
you know what, if a door opens, all walks through it,
and a door did open, I get a call from
Katy Perry's manager and he's like, hey, can you be
at SR Studios in Hollywood in twenty minutes?
Speaker 3 (12:26):
And I was like, well, actually I can.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I didn't have anything going on, and so I downloaded
the song on my phone on the way and I
learned it on the way.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
I was the last girl of the day.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
I met Katie for a few moments audition, and then
I went home. I got a call the next afternoon
and they said, can you be at the studio again?
We're leaving for Madison Square Garden on Friday.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
And I was like, what in the world.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
I have never done anything like this, And the first
time I ever do music outside of a little church
is going to be Medicines Quirck.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Garden with Katy Perry.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
It was just the wildest thing ever. And so I
ended up singing for her for four years. I did
the Teenage dream Tour, California Dreams Tour, I did all
of that.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Era and it was amazing. It was an amazing ride.
But I came to the end of that four years
and I was still feeling really really.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Stuck, and I wasn't sure how to get out of that,
and so I took a sabbatical and I just put
everything in storage. I moved back home with my family
to South Carolina, and I just like took a break
and I realized, I don't think I can do this
on my own. So there's the second time in my
life where kind of had a mini meltdown and I thought,
(13:45):
I can't do this on my own.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
I need some help.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And so I ended up going to some counseling place
in Colorado, and it was like a last ditch effort
to ever feel free for the truth in my head
that I wasn't living out to become really real in
my heart, Like why did I battle in security so much?
Why was I so worried about what people thought? Why
(14:07):
was I so sad sometimes? Why was I lonely? Why
did I have these cycles of depression? Like I wasn't
getting to the bottom of it. I wasn't getting to
the root of it. And so my counselor took me
through this process of writing down every single thing that
had ever hurt me, and I gotta tell you, at
the end of two days of.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
That, I felt so desperate and hopeless.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
I was like, I literally don't want to think about
any of this anymore, and how in the world can
God turn this around? Like I've experienced some real hurt
in my life. And so on the third day, after
spending two days doing that, my counselor took me through
this process and he said, I want you to invite
God's presence into your memories. In first grade, I went
(14:57):
to school one day and I drank a lot of water.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
That morning. I got to school and i'd go to
the bathroom.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
My teacher was like, no, you can't go to the
bathroom because she thought I was trying to get out
of reading in front of the class, because that morning
everyone was supposed to be reading a sentence in front.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Of the class.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
She thought I was just scared, And so I asked
her for like three four more times to go to
the bathroom, and she still said no. And so when
it came my turn, I got up and I wet
my pants.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
In front of the whole class.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Well, instead of calling my mom or you know, compassionately
asking me if I was okay or anything like that,
she sent me to the back of the room, to
the bathroom in the back and left me there for
the rest of the day.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Now, my mom almost burned out to school.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
But that aside, I just thought, you know, stuff like
that happens, like kids embarrassed themselves. You go through her
full situations. And I was sitting on a Calcor's couch
in Colorado at thirty years old, realizing that that moment
held weight over me because I took messages from that moment.
(16:05):
I believed lies from that moment. Sitting in the bathroom
in the back of the class, I was ashamed, I
was sad, I felt dirty, I was hurt. And the
message I took from that was I'm not like everybody else.
I'm not as good as everybody else.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
I have to prove my worth.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And so I realized those are the lies that I
need to uproot in my life to move past them.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
And he said, he said, where is Jesus in the room?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
And I started to cry because I had just imagined
Jesus sitting Indian style right next to me on that
dirty public school bathroom floor. And he looks at me
with the same compassion that I would look at my
kids and says, there's nothing wrong with you. I love
(17:00):
you just the way I made you. You don't have
to prove anything to anybody. The power of that moment,
I felt the truth move from my head to my heart.
Everything had changed. It was like I knew that God
loved me. I knew that I didn't have to compare myself.
I knew that I was fearfully and wonderfully made the
Bible says. And so it was at that point that
(17:20):
I felt just this courage and this confidence to move
to Nashville because I thought, I've always wanted to write
Christian books or books that help people connect with God
or know the truth that sets in pre I might
even want to write songs, but I didn't necessarily want
to sing the songs myself, because I didn't have any
aspirations to be an artist. I just worked a nine
(17:43):
to five and just sort of left my hands open
to whatever God wanted to do. I ended up writing
some songs, and I did end up with a record deal.
Long story short, and thirty four, thirty five years old,
I end up doing exactly what I prayed to get
(18:04):
to do as a teenager.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
That I literally travel around.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
And speak to people and sing, and I see people's
lives changed on a daily basis. I see them healed,
and I think back to my journey and all the
pain I've walked through, and how none of that was wasted.
Every single bit of it informs what I do now.
There's a freedom in my voice today. There's so much
(18:32):
about what I do now that I do differently because
I walked through hardship and pain at vary seasons of
my life.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
And so I'm just really, really, really grateful.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Getting to play the rhyme in here in Nashville, having
my grand Ole Opry debut, doing my all music, and
doing it with my kids. I think one of my
greatest accomplishments so far has been successfully touring with my family.
I would describe my life right now in terms of gratefulness.
(19:07):
I think I am so so grateful. More than anything
I'm walking out in reference to music or writing books.
I'm most grateful for just the change in my own
life and the change in my heart. It gives me
faith for anyone that if anyone is walking through anything
and just destitute and hopeless and discouraged, that if God
(19:30):
can do it for me.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
He can do it for you.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
And a terrific job by the production, editing and storytelling
by her own Madison Derricott, and a special thanks to
Tasha Layton. And you can go to Tasha Layton dot
com to listen to Tasha's music. Where to get her book,
That's Tasha Layton dot com. And that moment that she
was humiliated in elementary school pointed that stick with her
and she only learned about that at the age of thirty.
(19:54):
That the lie she took from that message in moment
she believed them and in the end Jesus to care
of her. So many people are influenced by their spiritual
and religious life and we don't shy away from that.
Here on our American Stories. Tasha Layton's story, her work story,
her music story, her faith story. Here on our American Stories.
And we're back with our American stories. Up next, Tasha Layton.
After her success throughout her time on American Idol, Tasha
toured with Katy Perry as one of her backup singers,
and she did so for many years. But even after
all those incredible life experiences, she still felt empty. So
(00:30):
she gave it all up to find God take it away. Tasha.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I grew up in a little town in South Carolina
called Pauline. We had a volunteer fire station and a.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Flashing light in our town. It was just really small.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
And I grew up in the middle of nowhere and
a trailer on a bunch of acreage.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
But I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
That we weren't normal like other folks until I started
school and the teasing started, you know, getting called trailer
trash or being bullied for the shoes I'm wearing or
the kind of car. My parents picked me up from
school in just that we were, you know, well to do.
(01:16):
And I go throughout school and notice that I started
getting sort of this like chip on my shoulder, like
a need to succeed, a need to present myself a
certain way so that I wouldn't be rejected. My parents
(01:38):
were good people saw to the earth give you the
shirt off their back people, and they took us to
church every Sunday morning, and every Sunday night, and every
Wednesday night, and basically every time the doors were open,
we were there. I loved, you know, my family and
our life. But what I had known of religion was
(02:02):
kind of this hard pew on Sunday mornings, and frilly
socks that itched that I had to wear to church
and being told to be quiet. It was kind of
like the shoulds and shouldn'ts of religion. When I was
eight or nine years old, we switched churches.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
We're, you know, the.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Good old southern church Goorn family, and I remember walking
in and something was.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Different about that place.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
When we switched to this new church, I just sent
something bigger than me for the first time in my life,
and it changed me. I really became passionate about knowing
the Bible and what scripture said, and I began to
serve in other countries on mission strips and different types
(02:53):
of things, and throughout that time, I was really feeling
like I had somewhere I finally belonged. So for all
of the bullying and all of the things that I
experienced when I was younger.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I was like, man, this is like, this is amazing.
They loved me for who I am.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
They're not judging me for not living in a normal
neighborhood or all of that.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
And so it was amazing.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
And I got to maybe like sixteen years old, and
all of that kind of came crashing down. There was
a pastor who his wife, you know, ran the worship team,
and she did some other things in the church I
was at, and I didn't know she had like a
really painful history of abuse and all these things, and
(03:42):
she had some struggles and I just happened to be
in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she
was really not kind to me.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
It hurt me. I was very wounded by her.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
It was so painful and the situation became so toxic
that the church split and my family left the church,
and I left the church too. And around the time
I left the church, I was actually already in college
and I started searching.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I changed from major from.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Music to religion, and I went to Buddhist meditation camp
and synagogue in Mosque. I studied mysticism in Europe for
a couple of summers. I tried atheism even I just
I needed truth and I wanted to know that what
I believed was because I believed it, not because I
had just been socially pressured or been told.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
What to believe.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And I wanted to know that what I'd experienced in
church was real. And so I went on this search
of all these different religions and I questioned everything.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
And I got to be honest.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I felt a lot of judgment from Christians who saw
me searching, and then I also recognized a lot of
judgment from people who were either searching or who were
anti Christian, judging the people who had strong faith. And
I just thought to myself self, this is ridiculous, like
(05:12):
everyone is judging each other so hard, and we're not
having any sort of empathy or compassion for each other's
journeys and what we're all going through. That we all
have the same questions in life, and we're all in
need of.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Something to save us.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
And I came to the end of my searching period
and I was really isolated and depressed, and I felt
so alone. I don't think I'd ever felt so lonely
in my life, and I tried to take my life.
It was in my college dorm room, and I didn't succeed.
(05:54):
I knew a lot about guns because I grew up
in the country, and I knew that the gun was loaded,
but the gun did not go off, and I was
so shocked. And when I was going to pull the
trigger again, someone walked into the room and I just
(06:16):
fell apart. I just thought, I'm not okay and I
need some help. I'm not gonna make it through this
without some help. I ended up going to a former
youth pastor's house for I don't know how long I.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Was there, but.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
And just sort of being I just let them level
me and feed me when I would eat, talk to
me when I would talk. And I just decided, you
know what, in all these other paths I've been taking,
you have to strive so hard to reach God or reach.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Enlightenment, or be a good person and eat.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Even in the religious side of Christianity, you have to
like strive to earn God's favor or to be looked
upon as righteous or whatever. But in the Gospel, in
what you read in scripture, Jesus is the only God
who lowers himself to come to us. And so something
(07:22):
about that shifted something in my mind, and I thought,
I'm going to go back to church, whether I feel
it or not. I'm gonna put one foot right in
front of the other. And at some point something's got
to stick. Because I've tried everything else, including Trinity take
my own life.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
I went for about a year, didn't feel a thing.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so tired of this,
I'm bored, I'm numb, I'm not feeling still, and yet
something told me just keep going. And so about a
year into that, the pastor said, if you want to
touch from God, why don't you come up if we
want to pray for you? And I went up there
(08:04):
and I left three hours later. I was just a
sobbing mess on the ground and they probably had to
replace that square of carpet because of all my snot
but I felt again for the first time, and it
was like that presence that I've felt the first time
I walked into that church at eight or nine years old.
(08:24):
That same presence like surrounded me and I thought, this
is this is a turning point in my life.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And you've been listening to Tasha Layton share her story
and for so many people who grew up in the
church and then grew away from the church, and then
went into a questioning phase.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
For all of you who didn't.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Grow up in the church and were never a part
of a church and have questioning phases of your own,
struggles of your own battles with loneliness of your own
and doubt and self doubt. Boy, we hear self doubt
and loneliness and even entropy its lowest when someone tries
to take their own life, which she did once the
gun failed, about to do it a second time. She
(09:08):
was blessed to have someone walk in and stop that,
and then in came a youth pastor to give her
some space and love and time. And we all need
that from time to time, all of us. When we
come back more of Tasha Layton's story here on our
American stories, and we returned to our American stories and
(09:42):
to Tasha Lton sharing her story of discovering faith or
rediscovering faith and ultimately believing in it. Let's return to
Tasha with the rest of her story.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
So I decided the seminary in California. I thought, I
want to help people. I would love to pastor people.
I would love to do this differently than what I experienced.
I would love to help people on a level that
is from a place of education and health and emotional
health and growth. And so I.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Decided I'd go to seminary.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
And I'd grown up kind of doing music, just singing
in choir and singing at church, and I started out
as a music major in college. But when all this
stuff went down with my church splitting and just being
hurt by religious people, I kind of put that down.
And in my third year of seminary, this lady came
up to me and she was like, Hey, I have
(10:35):
this event that I need somebody to do music for.
Do you do music? And I just felt out lied
to her. I was like, no, I don't. And then
she called me back the next day and she said,
I'm gonna call you next week. Just think about it,
and so I did. I ended up saying yes. And
I didn't have callouses on my fingers. I had not
sang in years. I knew musically it was just gonna suck,
(10:57):
and it kind of did.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Musically. It was a train.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Wreck, but the spirit in their room was incredible. People
were just on their knees praying and crying, were just
so moved, including me, and I thought, I think I'm
supposed to pick music back up. I ended up kind
of by a fluke going to audition for American Idol.
(11:22):
I had some friends who were auditioning and they were like, hey.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Just come hang out with us. You should do it,
blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So I thought, Okay, I'll just go hang out. But
it turns out you can't stay in the line unless
you actually sign up to be auditioning for the show.
And so I was like, Okay, you guys are crazy.
There's fourteen thousand people coming to the Rose Bowl. They're
only choosing three hundred. None of us are making it.
This is ridiculous. But turns out I did make it,
(11:50):
and then I kept making it through Hollywood Week, all
the way up until the round right before you get
voted on. And when I left the show, I thought, man,
that actually felt really natural. Something about that felt really comfortable,
Like maybe I'm supposed to do something outside of the
church in reference to music, and so I just tried
to kind of putting my intentions towards that and saying,
(12:11):
you know what, if a door opens, all walks through it,
and a door did open, I get a call from
Katy Perry's manager and he's like, hey, can you be
at SR Studios in Hollywood in twenty minutes?
Speaker 3 (12:26):
And I was like, well, actually I can.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I didn't have anything going on, and so I downloaded
the song on my phone on the way and I
learned it on the way.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
I was the last girl of the day.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
I met Katie for a few moments audition, and then
I went home. I got a call the next afternoon
and they said, can you be at the studio again?
We're leaving for Madison Square Garden on Friday.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
And I was like, what in the world.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
I have never done anything like this, And the first
time I ever do music outside of a little church
is going to be Medicines Quirck.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Garden with Katy Perry.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
It was just the wildest thing ever. And so I
ended up singing for her for four years. I did
the Teenage dream Tour, California Dreams Tour, I did all
of that.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Era and it was amazing. It was an amazing ride.
But I came to the end of that four years
and I was still feeling really really.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Stuck, and I wasn't sure how to get out of that,
and so I took a sabbatical and I just put
everything in storage. I moved back home with my family
to South Carolina, and I just like took a break
and I realized, I don't think I can do this
on my own. So there's the second time in my
life where kind of had a mini meltdown and I thought,
(13:45):
I can't do this on my own.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
I need some help.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And so I ended up going to some counseling place
in Colorado, and it was like a last ditch effort
to ever feel free for the truth in my head
that I wasn't living out to become really real in
my heart, Like why did I battle in security so much?
Why was I so worried about what people thought? Why
(14:07):
was I so sad sometimes? Why was I lonely? Why
did I have these cycles of depression? Like I wasn't
getting to the bottom of it. I wasn't getting to
the root of it. And so my counselor took me
through this process of writing down every single thing that
had ever hurt me, and I gotta tell you, at
the end of two days of.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
That, I felt so desperate and hopeless.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
I was like, I literally don't want to think about
any of this anymore, and how in the world can
God turn this around? Like I've experienced some real hurt
in my life. And so on the third day, after
spending two days doing that, my counselor took me through
this process and he said, I want you to invite
God's presence into your memories. In first grade, I went
(14:57):
to school one day and I drank a lot of water.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
That morning. I got to school and i'd go to
the bathroom.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
My teacher was like, no, you can't go to the
bathroom because she thought I was trying to get out
of reading in front of the class, because that morning
everyone was supposed to be reading a sentence in front.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Of the class.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
She thought I was just scared, And so I asked
her for like three four more times to go to
the bathroom, and she still said no. And so when
it came my turn, I got up and I wet
my pants.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
In front of the whole class.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Well, instead of calling my mom or you know, compassionately
asking me if I was okay or anything like that,
she sent me to the back of the room, to
the bathroom in the back and left me there for
the rest of the day.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Now, my mom almost burned out to school.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
But that aside, I just thought, you know, stuff like
that happens, like kids embarrassed themselves. You go through her
full situations. And I was sitting on a Calcor's couch
in Colorado at thirty years old, realizing that that moment
held weight over me because I took messages from that moment.
(16:05):
I believed lies from that moment. Sitting in the bathroom
in the back of the class, I was ashamed, I
was sad, I felt dirty, I was hurt. And the
message I took from that was I'm not like everybody else.
I'm not as good as everybody else.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
I have to prove my worth.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And so I realized those are the lies that I
need to uproot in my life to move past them.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
And he said, he said, where is Jesus in the room?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
And I started to cry because I had just imagined
Jesus sitting Indian style right next to me on that
dirty public school bathroom floor. And he looks at me
with the same compassion that I would look at my
kids and says, there's nothing wrong with you. I love
(17:00):
you just the way I made you. You don't have
to prove anything to anybody. The power of that moment,
I felt the truth move from my head to my heart.
Everything had changed. It was like I knew that God
loved me. I knew that I didn't have to compare myself.
I knew that I was fearfully and wonderfully made the
Bible says. And so it was at that point that
(17:20):
I felt just this courage and this confidence to move
to Nashville because I thought, I've always wanted to write
Christian books or books that help people connect with God
or know the truth that sets in pre I might
even want to write songs, but I didn't necessarily want
to sing the songs myself, because I didn't have any
aspirations to be an artist. I just worked a nine
(17:43):
to five and just sort of left my hands open
to whatever God wanted to do. I ended up writing
some songs, and I did end up with a record deal.
Long story short, and thirty four, thirty five years old,
I end up doing exactly what I prayed to get
(18:04):
to do as a teenager.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
That I literally travel around.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
And speak to people and sing, and I see people's
lives changed on a daily basis. I see them healed,
and I think back to my journey and all the
pain I've walked through, and how none of that was wasted.
Every single bit of it informs what I do now.
There's a freedom in my voice today. There's so much
(18:32):
about what I do now that I do differently because
I walked through hardship and pain at vary seasons of
my life.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
And so I'm just really, really, really grateful.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Getting to play the rhyme in here in Nashville, having
my grand Ole Opry debut, doing my all music, and
doing it with my kids. I think one of my
greatest accomplishments so far has been successfully touring with my family.
I would describe my life right now in terms of gratefulness.
(19:07):
I think I am so so grateful. More than anything
I'm walking out in reference to music or writing books.
I'm most grateful for just the change in my own
life and the change in my heart. It gives me
faith for anyone that if anyone is walking through anything
and just destitute and hopeless and discouraged, that if God
(19:30):
can do it for me.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
He can do it for you.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
And a terrific job by the production, editing and storytelling
by her own Madison Derricott, and a special thanks to
Tasha Layton. And you can go to Tasha Layton dot
com to listen to Tasha's music. Where to get her book,
That's Tasha Layton dot com. And that moment that she
was humiliated in elementary school pointed that stick with her
and she only learned about that at the age of thirty.
(19:54):
That the lie she took from that message in moment
she believed them and in the end Jesus to care
of her. So many people are influenced by their spiritual
and religious life and we don't shy away from that.
Here on our American Stories. Tasha Layton's story, her work story,
her music story, her faith story. Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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