THETELEGRAM.COM — James Taylor hopes to make N.L. a regular stop
By Louis Power
James Taylor seems to have enjoyed his time in Newfoundland as much as his fans enjoyed his two shows.
After almost 50 years in the music business, James Taylor is excited to finally see more of Atlantic Canada on his current tour. He’ll be in St. John’s May 20 and 21 with shows at Mile One Centre.
“We’ve been looking forward to it,” he said. “We expected to like it, but the reality is just so much more than what we were thinking. The people have been just unbelievably, to a man, excellent.”
Taylor had previous tweeted about his “amazing day” Friday when he went iceberg hunting on the Bonaventure from Conception Bay South.
Immediately after his second show at Mile One Saturday night, Taylor was already looking forward to coming back. He said his all-star band — including well-known musicians Lou Marini of Blues Brothers, drummer Steve Gadd and guitarist Michael Landau — are also eager to return.
“It’s taken us a long long time to get here, but everybody in the band has had such an excellent time that they all want to come back. So we’ll find a way to come back, and make this a much more regular stop if we can. I’m not sure how soon we’d recover and be able to play it again, but we’ll be back. Certainly the next time we play Canada, probably the next time we play New England.”
He said the trip to Newfoundland is roughest on the truck drivers hauling equipment for the show, but it seems to be worth it.
“They’ve got to do a full 24 hours of travelling to get here from pretty much anywhere we would have played before, from Montreal to Nova Scotia, from New Brunswick, so for them it’s a real haul to get here, but they loved it, too. ‘Cause once we got here they got the two days off.”
Taylor’s St. John’s shows were at the end of this leg of the current tour. The band will be back on the road Thursday starting in Ohio.