Discover the stories behind his greatest songs.
Through this intimate retrospective of music, stories and video, James Taylor offers a witty and revealing look at the songs you love most. His new 19-song live concert CD and two-hour companion DVD of this multimedia performance create a unique and extraordinary portrait of this iconic artist.

About Hear Music

The Ellen DeGeneres Show
Thursday, November 15

Late Show with David Letterman
Mon Nov 19

The Today Show
Tues Nov 20

Tavis Smiley on PBS
TBA

(check your local listings)

Your new DVD comes from your most recent tour -- "One Man Band which was basically a solo concert with piano. Where did this concept come from?

I used to perform solo in the beginning...before I had a band, and the last time I toured solo was a really long time ago. It's good from time to time to do this. It's good for your chops, for your skills, and it's good to get back in touch with the songs in their sort of simple, unadorned versions, and present them that way.

As an artist, what's new and different for you about your songs now that you've rerecorded them? Have they changed for you in some way?

Inevitably, songs do change. By performing solo, you take things back down to their essential form. It's like going back to the well for me, going back to the source. And I think the same thing is perhaps true of the audience. It's some sort of a reminder of what's at the core of this music. It's not until you've performed a song a couple of dozen of times that it completes itself. The songs I have come up with the DVD come after doing many performances of this show; and by now, they really have arrived at a complete place. And that sort of process of simplification and completion is what I wanted put on record.

The other element of the One Man Band show is that it gave me an opportunity to try out all of these sorts of gags: my drum machine, my pre-recorded chorus, a couple of my slightly-funny sight gags, illustrations and stuff. It's a challenge to hold an audience's attention for two one-hour sets if you're just piano and guitar. We wanted to throw in these other elements that would basically break it up and leaven it.

You recorded the DVD at a small theatre in Pittsfield, MA only a few miles from your home.

Yes, the Colonial Theatre, it's local -- a small community theatre. When you become successful you get bigger and bigger, pull in larger and larger audiences; you play in large stadiums. There then becomes a point of diminishing returns with that. But my music is not particularly stadium music. I like to play theatres and I like to play small.

Can you talk a little bit about how the CD/DVD came to be distributed through Hear Music and Starbucks, and how you were drawn to that relationship?

It's just fascinating to look at each project and say where "Well, where's the best place to put this right now? Where do we take this?" With Starbucks, Ray Charles was the first project that I did with them, so I knew them. And then because of my friendship with McCartney and talking to him about it, and then participating in Joni Mitchell's most recent record--that gave me the sense that this was an exciting new way to go. It feels like working with Apple Records all over again. Starbucks has been interested, enthusiastic and hands on throughout the entire project.

What else is going on in your non-musical life?

Yeah, it is an exciting time. I just finally arrived at a time in my life when I am able to record, to rehearse, film things, build things close to home. So we built an office and a recording studio here in the Berkshires, way up in the woods, And since we've moved into it, it's been operating non-stop. It's very gratifying. My kids are young. Also, my daughter, Sally, my oldest kid, just had a baby boy, so, I need to be available to my family but at the same time I'm able to do my work.