“I’m a neurodiverse phoenix rising — here to show that transformation is possible, resilience is real, and laughter is medicine.”

FOGFEST 2024 - Stephanie Hartwell-Mandella  and Tré Taylor - Pirate Diva’s!

FOGFEST 2024, Pacifica, CA—Stephanie Hartwell-Mandella and Tré Taylor—Pirate Divas!

Tré Taylor Birthday Soiree & Diamond Head Jazz band @ The Coastal Vine, Moss Beach, CA - December 2025

Tré Taylor

Born in Marin County and raised amid the rolling vineyards of Sonoma County, California, she first came into this world as Tracy Lyn Grigonis, but found her artistic wings as Tré Taylor — a name affectionately adopted for being “three times as sparkly”—Étincelle Divine x III.

She grew up in the heart of wine country during the wild and wondrous 1970s and ’80s — an era of music, movement, and revolution—shaping her into both a rebel and a romantic. Rooted in the rhythms of the land and the spirit of change, she became equal parts tenderness and tenacity: grace, grit, and a lifelong devotion to song.

Tré Taylor is a vocal artist, singer-songwriter, comedian, and spiritual multimedia artist whose roots run deep in gospel, Americana, jazz, and blues. Once dubbed “the white Etta James” for her soul-rich, torch-song delivery, she’s spent a lifetime transforming sacred rage, humor, and heartbreak into performances that make audiences weep, laugh, and heal all at once.

With a southern-souled heart and a New Orleans groove, Tré has always been a storyteller at her core—blending rhythm, truth, and laughter into something unmistakably her own. After decades on stage as a beloved jazz and Americana vocalist, she’s stepping into a bold new era as an original artist—one whose voice carries both the wisdom of experience and the wonder of reinvention.

Alongside her music, Tré built a serious career as a corporate event planner and executive assistant during the Silicon Valley dot-com boom and later in San Francisco’s biotech sector. She worked behind the scenes with leadership teams, helping produce large-scale events and supporting the development of cutting-edge work in travel health medicine and research. But she wasn’t just organizing logistics—she was often the “culture person,” the one entrusted with the fun committee, the morale, and the humanity of it all.

And during that same era, she pursued one of her deepest passions: the mind. Tré became a Certified NLP Master Practitioner through The NLP Institute of California, where she studied advanced language and change work (and returned to the trainings more than once because she’s a lifelong student of transformation). That education—combined with spiritual practice, hard-earned lived experience, and relentless curiosity—became part of the backbone of her voice and her work.

Like many high-achieving creatives, she confused endurance with destiny. She worked mornings to midnight, nights, and weekends on her own dreams, across time zones, running on caffeine, adrenaline, and the fear of losing everything she’d built. She once called it “balance,” but let’s be real—it was burnout dressed in ambition.

Over time, her body began to revolt: chronic health struggles, nervous system collapse, and the kind of physical suffering that forces a person to either surrender or evolve. That crash became her awakening. Healing wasn’t optional; it was survival with a soul.

She began the long climb back, learning to listen to her body, to slow down, and to rebuild her life from the inside out. Tré’s hero story isn’t that she never fell—it’s that she never stayed down.

What she discovered in that crucible was the key that had been hidden her whole life: neurodiversity. Late-diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD (only recently, after decades of being misunderstood), she finally understood why she always felt “different,” why she carried secret shame, and why so many systems couldn’t name what she was experiencing.

Rather than a deficit, she began to recognize her sensitivity, intuition, and creative problem-solving as extraordinary strengths—the very qualities that allowed her to survive, adapt, and ultimately thrive.

Today, Tré embraces her neurodiversity not as a mask to hide behind, but as a creative superpower. She uses AI as an accessibility tool—not as a replacement for her voice, but as a bridge that helps her translate what she senses, knows, and creates into words, music, and tools other people can actually use.

Her breakthroughs have come through grit, study, and spirit—especially through advanced NLP, deep inner work, and a long relationship with the symbolic world. Carl Jung’s work has been a steady lantern for her during this life transformation—guiding her toward meaning-making, creativity, shadow integration, and the idea that healing is not just personal… it’s cultural.

Tré’s dream isn’t only to heal herself anymore—it’s to help address the low-income housing shortage by helping build a community center with a tiny house village around it. Self-Sustaining Affordable Housing Artian Sanctuaries for others like her: the neurodiverse, the sensitive, the misfits and mystics, and the artists and survivors.

A place where people can park their vans, roll in with their RVs and creative schoolies, take a hot shower, share a real meal, swap stories, sing a song, tell a joke, and remember what it feels like to belong. This isn’t about escaping the world—it’s about reimagining it. One gathering at a time.

Tré stands today at a threshold: her health reclaimed to the best of her ability, her creativity overflowing, and her spirit awakened in ways she never expected. The work of survival is giving way to the art of becoming.

Her vision includes designing and building a permanent home base: a music studio kitchen, a tiny-house village, and a creative landing pad for the community—where collaboration, nourishment, and art are the infrastructure.

She also dreams of partnering in love and business, designing and building a beautiful life with someone who wants to build a future that feeds people—literally and spiritually.

2026 is her “roots-finding year.” Where she will put down those roots is still unfolding. It may be in California—or beyond. The truth is, California has become brutally expensive for artists and builders, and Tré is looking for a place where a creative, community-centered vision can actually breathe.

Wherever it lands, she’ll keep doing what she’s always done: bringing comfort, courage, and a little comedic holy mischief to the people who need it most. Because life may never be perfect—but with love, music, food, art, and community, it can still be deliciously fun.

With love, music, food, art, and fun —
Tré Taylor (and Bleep the Tattoo)

If you feel called to help me get back on my feet, here is my GoFundMe link. Your kindness keeps the wheels turning—literally.
Even $5 buys me gas, hope, and another chapter in this ridiculous, miraculous story.

🚐💛 Van-Life Survival Fund GoFundMe Here

Subscribe if you’d like to share the road ahead. The destination is still a mystery—but the adventure is just beginning.

💛 Shine on, Sacred Weirdos ✨✨ Additional Biography

In 2019, while she was still recovering from multiple surgeries and finding her way back to singing, award-winning writer Jean Bartlett interviewed Tré for a nine-page biography. Jean captured her journey as a professional jazz vocalist and storyteller at a time when she was still navigating pain, healing, and transformation. Her words reflect the spirit of a woman who refused to give up on music, laughter, or life itself.

If you’d like to dive deeper into Tré’s story from that time, you can read Jean’s full feature here:
👉
Read the Biography by Jean Bartlett (PDF)