For a band to go from good to great somebody's gotta bust out and rise above. Somebody's gotta make with the charisma and the balls. Bee Eater's presence comes from singer Meghan Taylor, a petite powerhouse with Kool-Aid-colored hair and two different colored eyes. She shimmies. She shakes. And she sings in a big voice that belies her slight frame. Taylor gives the band its sizzle.

An engaging performer, Taylor's been doing it in one form or another since she was a toddler. Her onstage moves and antics are definitely borne of the music she plays, but never get overtly salacious or gratuitous. Taylor doesn't work blue. She has made a serious dent in this town.

But now the 35-year-old singer is moving to New York City. And she's getting a little tired of defending her decision.

"Every time somebody in this town says ‘I'm moving somewhere bigger and better,' the first thing people say is ‘Oh, you'll be back,'" she says. "I'm sick of hearing that. And if they're saying that, it means they're jealous or they're negative. And if you do come back, who gives a shit? 'Cause this is a great town. I don't care if I come back. Maybe I will, maybe I won't."

Taylor previously lived in New York from 1992 to 1996 after graduating from Sarah Lawrence College with a degree in dance. She performed in several dance companies before moving back to Rochester.

"I moved back here because, you know, dancers don't make a lot of money," she say. "And I got sick of working 10 jobs just to be able to dance every one in a while."

Her stint with several companies here was short lived; a bigger jones was brewing.

"I decided that dance was not rock 'n' roll enough and got bored with it," Taylor says. So she hitched her wagon to the lucrative music biz.

And like so many kids that dream rock 'n' roll dreams, Taylor got a little ahead of herself and formed the all-girl White Cotton Panties in 1997 - before any of them could really play.

"Yup, we came up with the name first," she says.

Taylor wound up in the singer slot after inadvertently discovering at a karaoke night she could sing. With a little practice and a lot of moxy the band hit the local circuit hard and rapidly became a fairly decent draw.

"We did well," says Taylor, "because everybody wants to see a bunch of girls. But keeping a bunch of girls together is impossible. Keeping anybody together is impossible."

White Cotton Panties even played with national acts like Southern Culture On The Skids and King Missile before winding up in the hamper in 2001.

"I floated around all sad wishing a band would pop out of nowhere," she says. Taylor languished in limbo, running assorted karaoke nights and slinging suds until Todd "Grimey" Groemminger of Uncle Sam fame gave her a buzz in 2003. Bee Eater was born.

For the next few years the quartet dished out ferocious sets of tight hard rock with Taylor's roar on top. With the rest of the band statuesque and coolly rooted to their parts, all eyes were on Taylor. All eyes couldn't be taken off Taylor, a wailing mix of pogo stick and pinball.

"It's just a genuine love of movement," she says. "Which I think sucks people in. And I like to crack wise."

But whereas this band was fun for the guys as an opportunity to get their ya-yas out and their drink on, Taylor wanted - wants - more.

"I hate thinking there's a ceiling," she says. "But it's not just up to you when you're in a band. That's why I gotta go."

So at 35 she's gonna start over in New York, confident something will click.

"A lot of cool bands are in their 30s," she says. "Some of them have been in bands for years or come together for one project and all of a sudden, Pow! Something works. So I'm not afraid."

Bee Eater plays its Meghan Taylor farewell show Friday, April 27, at Dub Land Underground, 315 Alexander Street, 232-7550, at 10 p.m., call for cover.