By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, July 4, 2023 performance – James Taylor‘s 2023 Fourth of July concert at Tanglewood, the veritable summer home to music in America for nearly a century, has come to feel, nearly fifty years after his debut here, like an annual rite of mythic popular entertainment.
Hustled, as we Americans seem to be, into states of terminal teenage dependency by the ubiquitous marketplace, we gather annually to hear James testify that recovery is available to all who fall, and that if you reach out for help, you may wind up auditioning for half the Beatles before you’re old enough to vote.
James Taylor is generous as any musician on the scene, and, in the company of the best “session” players available in LA, NY, and Nashville, every concert of his is bound to be a good one. They are usually of the “an evening with” variety – part automythology and family man, part singer/songwriter, and part rock star kickin’ out the jams.
