James Taylor

James Taylor at Tanglewood July 4, 2018

Article updated July 6, 2018 by Dave Read

Something about James Taylor’s Fourth of July concert at Tanglewood felt low-key, but that’s in reference to a dozen or so such, which always rank among the most exciting shows of the year. Our expectations may have been out of whack because his July 4, 2008 show exploded into a celebration of his sixtieth birthday. Maybe now that the ¾ century mark is within shouting distance, seventy is not so big a deal?

My reading of the show doesn’t extend to the usual aspects, such as the favorites-filled setlist of 25 songs, the 218 autographs from the lip of the stage during intermission, nor the revival-like 3 song encore when everybody got into the act, nor his awesome band. I thought he ceded primacy to Mike Landau on Steamroller, which his ace guitarist did not squander, before cutting loose with his own axe-indulgence during a coda that would not quit.

The stagecraft of James Taylor

James Taylor is a master of stagecraft, that aspect of a musician’s duty to an audience that cannot help but color his virtuosity and singing. Stagecraft, a.k.a. patter, is the golden thread a singer weaves through a performance. James Taylor is so good at it sometimes that it steals the show; tonight it was spot-on, meaning that I wouldn’t have noticed it, except that I had an eye out for it.

James Taylor’s Lawn Nation at Tanglewood

The Fourth of July James Taylor concert at Tanglewood is a “bucket list” sort of event; it is a musical performance with social implications elbowing their way to the fore. It is a generational thing, with an abundance of kids running around and no shortage of patrons for whom the metaphorical bucket is the last thing they want to be thinking about. Not annual, but since Mr. Taylor built a house near October Mountain seventeen years ago, there has been at least one James Taylor Tanglewood show almost every year.

Here are snapshots of Lawn Nation, as James Taylor likes to call his Tanglewood audience. The images were made around half past six, July 4, 2018.

James Taylor at Tanglewood July 2 – 4, 2012

by Dave Read.

The Koussevitsky Music Shed at Tanglewood is a holy place in the minds of legions of classical music lovers, sort of a chapel to the cathedral – Symphony Hall in Boston. Over the past decade or so, the BSO has instituted a way to ready the place for the returning congregants, inviting lay ministers Garrison Keillor and James Taylor to hold services that are certain to clear the dust from the rafters and get the aisle-wardens, parking-assistants, concessionaires, and ticket-takers into mid-season form.

Tanglewood audience July 4th James Taylor concert; photo: Dave Conlin Read

Keillor, an annual Tanglewood attraction since 2000, can now be counted on to append nearly a whole show of audience sing alongs to his 2 hour live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion. And James Taylor, who has played 40+ times at Tanglewood since 1974, has taken to scheduling little series of shows, often with special guests. This year’s 3 night run included one with Taylor Swift, the young country-pop sensation who was named after him. She appeared late in the first set of the July 2 show for a duet on Fire and Rain, and sang her own hits Ours and Love Story in the 2nd set. Ms. Swift’s entrance caused an eruption of shrieks from the youngsters in the sold-out audience that reminded us of the reception afforded the youngsters from Liverpool when they were introduced by Ed Sullivan in 1964.

Tanglewood lawn scene,July 4th James Taylor concert. — Tanglewood lawn scene,July 4th James Taylor concert photo: Dave Conlin Read

The Beatles get a mention at all James Taylor concerts, when he talks about his luck in getting signed by them to record his first album on their Apple label. The album included Carolina in My Mind with appearance by Paul McCartney and George Harrison, and Something in the Way She Moves, which inspired Harrison to write Something. This season’s version of Taylor’s band was missing singer Arnold McCuller but included long-time collaborator Larry Goldings on keyboards and Dean Parks on pedal steel, each of whom added serious and searing oomph to the proceedings.

We attended the 1st and 3rd show; together the series attracted somewhere in the neighborhood of 53,000 fans. Mr. Taylor is also on the program for the Gala 75 Anniversary concert July 14, which features Boston Symphony, Boston Pops, and Tanglewood Music Center Orchestras, plus special guests John Williams, Keith Lockhart, Andris Nelsons, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Yo-Yo Ma, and Peter Serkin.

James Taylor, Amy Grant, Vince Gill at Tanglewood

July 3 & 4, 2011 concerts reviewed by Dave Read.

Independence Day weekend 2011 is bound to be remembered as the Dawn of the New Millennium of Peace & Understanding because that was when James Taylor leapt across the cultural divide into the arms of Amy Grant and Vince Gill, in front of back-to-back sold-out audiences at Tanglewood. This was a big surprise; we don’t do country at Tanglewood.

(Photo: Scott Caltron )

They tried it Fourth of July 2006 with LeAnn Rimes – really good concert, but half-empty Shed. That experience may have factored in to the secrecy leading up to these shows and the fact that the guest performers weren’t announced until the day before the show, well after they had been sold out, even though the date had been made months earlier.

Here’s the shocking news: the two shows were seamless; there were no jolts, nothing at all abrupt in the transitions between the several numbers each of the guests did in the midst of Taylor’s concert routine. It’s all pop entertainment, people, despite the machinations of merchandisers and principalities such as the CMA and the Grammys.

Furthermore, any dissimilarity between and among songs of James Taylor, Amy Grant, and Vince Gill were washed away by the sameness of self-deprecating adulation each evinced for the other headliners on stage.

Amy Grant is a knock-out, plain and simple, wholesomely pretty appearing toward the end of the first set in sexy summer dress with shawl that got lost for the second set both nights as did her shoes! She did her 20 year old Baby Baby to everybody’s delight.

Vince Gill too looked right at home in the Koussevitsky Music Shed, wearing grey slacks and jacket with a black collarless shirt – rather metropolitan. His song Pretty Little Adriana was a highlight of his mini-sets, especially his deft, searing blues guitar playing. No wonder Gill is a regular at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads festival.

James Taylor was no less good, and effusive as always in his regard for his band with whom he worked up a fresh sampling from his ouvre for these shows. Our favorite both nights was Steamroller, delivered in about half the time but with maybe double the oomph of earlier Tanglewood performances. Two or three minutes into it, ace sideman Larry Goldings took the lead on the Hammond B3, then it segued neatly back to Walt Fowler on muted trumpet, before coming front and center for James Taylor and Vince Gill’s guitars. Very cool.

Another highlight for us was some jazzy singing by Taylor – several little riffs that were like the vocal equivalents of guitar solos. They emphasize the joy he takes in his work and make it feel as is he is truly into the current presentation of the song and bringing it to life rather than merely involved in yet another recitation of it.

We sensed that, in his patter this week, Taylor has given additional prominence to his 1968 anointing by the Beatles. As grateful as we are to him for introducing Amy and Vince to us this year, perhaps he’ll be more Beatle-esque next summer and invite to Tanglewood some mixed-up homesick youngster at the dawn of a startling career?

James Taylor and friends at Tanglewood Ozawa Hall

June 30, 2011 performance; by Dave Read

James Taylor and Friends was the billing for the first of the four James Taylor concerts at Tanglewood during the 2011 season. It attracted a capacity crowd to Seiji Ozawa Hall, where the audience spilled over the rise leaving some members of lawn nation with a better view of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s old place than of Mr. Taylor. Playing second fiddle to the headliner, just barely, was mother nature, who was lauded all night for delivering just the sort of setting June and the Berkshires were meant to be presented in.

We need to resist the temptation to describe Taylor’s performance as being measured, as one would expect at the outset of a run of four concerts in five days. The concert felt like a recital, which befits the venue and it’s 1,200 seats – intimate in comparison to the 5,100 seat Koussevitsky Music Shed, where the other three concerts will take place. It was a discrete event, featuring everybody’s neighbor and friend, accompanied by his longtime keyboards player and vocal quartet, augmented by wife Kim, whose birthday it was, plus a contingent from the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and BSO cellist Owen Young.

Taylor is as expert with patter as he is with the songs so that an evenings’ performance coheres; without making the audience feel like anything other than peers, Taylor talks about being in the studio with Paul McCartny and George Harrison – in 1968, for heaven’s sake – that’s when for all anybody else knew, the Beatles were rearranging the universe. But James Taylor was auditioning his song “Something in the way she moves,” which not only scored him an Apple Records contract, but also inspired Harrison to write “Something,” which is on everybody’s list of best Beatles songs.

In what may be an indication that more of the audience was from away than is usually the case for a James Taylor Tanglewood concert, the Stockbridge reference in Sweet Baby James aroused not much more than a loud smattering of applause rather than the roar of recognition remembered from earlier shows.

Carole King and James Taylor Troubador 2010 Reunion Tour at Tanglewood

July 3-5, 2010 performances – by Dave Read.

One week before resuming its annual function as the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Tanglewood became summer camp for the 60s generation when the Carole King and James Taylor Troubadour Reunion 2010 Tour parked there for 3 shows, July 3, 4, & 5. The weather was perfect for each sold-out audience of 18,500, packed into the Shed and sprawled accross the vast Lawn. By the time the tour pulled into Lenox, it had already rolled cross-country from Oregon, after a dozen shows in Australia, New Zealand and Japan; from the Berkshires, it goes back west toward a final show July 20 in California.

James Taylor hearts Carole King!

King and Taylor, 68 and 62, just couldn’t look or sound or perform any better than they did during these shows, which were artful compilations of each other’s body of work, accompanied by “The Section,” Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar, and Russ Kunkel, plus Robbie Kondor, Arnold McCuller, Kate Markowitz, Andrea Zonn, and Kim Taylor. Cellist Yo Yo Ma, a Berkshire resident, was a surprise guest for 2 songs July 5, Sweet Baby James and You’ve Got A Friend.

Juke boxes were the original killer app for the 60s generation; in a kind of Aquarian alchemy, Tanglewood was transformed during these shows into a dazzling, dynamic Wurlitzer. All told, the Tanglewood leg of the tour amounted to about 6 dozen numbers and roughly 8 hours, nary a moment of which was anything but “totally freakin awesome,” according to our audience poll.

James Taylor and Carole King concert Tanglewood scenes

Article by Dave Read.

For the July 4, 2010 performance of the James Taylor and Carole King Troubador Reunion 2010 World Tour, we meandered among the audience on the lawn and alongside the Shed for this video and these photos. This was the middle of three consecutive days when audiences of 18,500 packed into the Koussevitsky Music Shed and sprawled accross the vast Tanglewood Lawn.