LAS VEGAS SUN — With 12 shows at Caesars Palace, James Taylor is ready to be surprised by Las Vegas

By Brock Radke

The Colosseum at Caesars Palace has built a reputation on bringing in many of the world’s most popular musicians — legacy acts — for extended residencies or limited engagements that offer fans a supremely intimate way to see these stars and listen to their iconic music.

Having sold more than 100 million albums, winning multiple Grammy Awards and being inducted into both the Rock and Roll and Songwriters Halls of Fame, James Taylor certainly falls into this legacy act category, but he hasn’t played a series of shows in Las Vegas until now. In fact, the 71-year-old singer and songwriter hasn’t really played a series of Las Vegas-style shows anywhere.

“This is going to be an unusual thing for me, to stay in one place. I’m usually gone by midnight and on to the next,” he says of his 12-show Colosseum run, opening Wednesday, April 17. “The first time I played Las Vegas was at the university’s field house, the big basketball center [Thomas & Mack], and I think the last place was MGM Grand. Occasionally I’ve come out to do a separate [corporate or private] thing but it’s always very brief there. I’ve never had the chance to stick around and check the place out.”

Taylor is excited to finally check out Las Vegas but also fully focused on his performances. Here’s the rest of my conversation with the pop, rock and folk music favorite.

Has Vegas been after you to do this for a while? We’ve been in discussions for a while, it just took a while as things often do. I’m glad I finally got the right partner in Caesars in this theater. This is an age of sort of intense communication with my audience because of social media, and I’m getting word people are coming from Italy, from Brazil, from Iceland and other places. It’s a great opportunity and I think people also want to come and see what Las Vegas is all about.

Does playing this many shows in a few weeks give you an opportunity to experiment and really change things up from night to night? We’ve been looking at having a few spaces in the set where we can change things up, exactly that. But make no mistake, this type of performance is not like jazz improvisation where I call out what we’re doing after we get onstage and no song is ever the same. Our priority is to present this material in a way that gives the audience the best possible experience. What that has come to mean for me is basically perfecting the set and building in some dynamics that give it some relief and essentially makes for an evening of theater. And we back it up with the audio and visual stuff we’ve been perfecting for years. We will hope for some spontaneity and a lot of that comes from the audience, but at the same time, our framework is something we pay a lot of attention to.

Las Vegas is certainly a greatest-hits type of city. At this stage of your career, how do you balance the songs you know fans want to hear with the songs you want to play? It’s a definite phenomenon. You do feel, coming to a residency like this, that there’s an element of retrospective in it where you want to sort of present the thing as a personal history. In general, from touring, you get the sense the audience comes to hear a couple dozen songs that define James Taylor music to them and we do build the show with those songs. If you’ve got greatest hits to play, you definitely play them, and that’s how it goes. And then there are songs we do that may not be well-known but we know they work really well live, and that makes up another third of the show. And there are things we like to play that are just great for us and that’s another bag.

Have expectations like those influenced your writing over the years? My songwriting has always been something I have so little control over. It seems to be something I channel, that sometimes I can summon, but I can’t direct it. I’m happy for whatever seems to be generated or what comes through. I remember starting out without an audience at all, with no idea of who the songs were directed toward, and just basically writing them for myself. But as things picked up, it creeps upstream in the process where you start to think about how people are going to react and what kind of effect it’s going to have. I find that’s not really helpful. It’s always best for me to be as surprised as the audience and that’s what I’m looking for.

Since you haven’t had much downtime in Las Vegas, have you made plans to see certain things or go certain places? No. I’m completely focused on preparing for the performance and I haven’t thought at all about downtime or time off. I’ll try to find a good gym so I can work out and stay fit. But I’m completely wide open. I have no idea what to expect.

source: https://lasvegassun.com/news/2019/apr/15/james-taylor-interview-colosseum-caesars-palace/

LAS VEGAS MAGAZINE — Q&A: JAMES TAYLOR

By MATT KELEMEN

James Taylor was ready to give audiences “the optimal presentation” of his life’s work when the opportunity to play 12 nights at the Colosseum in Caesars Palace came up. As he told Las Vegas Magazine’s Matt Kelemen, he’s taking his Las Vegas live set in a new direction from the shows he’s played so far in 2019, visiting different eras of his 50-year career while taking a break from recording a new standards album.

Hello, James.

Hey, Matt. Hi, how are you doing. Are you in Las Vegas?

I am in Las Vegas. Where are you?

I’m at home in Lennox, Massachusetts. That’s sort of the western end of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts where my wife Kim and I have made our home.

Is that your main home or do you have homes around the country?

No, this is pretty much it. I have sort of a family home on Martha’s Vineyard, which is at the opposite end of the state, the island out in the Atlantic, and most of my family still lives down there. So I have a sort of place there and my sister’s sort of staying in it, keeping an eye on it for me.

So when you come to Vegas to play 12 shows within a month, do you think you’ll be commuting back and forth, or will you probably stay on this coast?

I’ll stay out west. We also spend a fair amount of time in Montana, in Big Sky, because my wife has always been a big skier and our kids have followed suit, so we spend as much time as we can during the winter in the snow.

I’ve been reading Timothy White’s 2001 biography of you. I thought I knew my music history but I did not know “Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground” was a reference to the band (The Flying Machine) you were in with your longtime friend Danny Kortchmar before recording for Apple Records. There’s still a lot to learn.

(Laughs) Well, I suppose my lyrics are so personal that from time to time there are little sort of hidden references in there to things in my own past, but that’s what that was about.

I was reading it outside, and have just gotten into knife throwing, and as I ended a chapter and went to take a throwing break the first page of the next chapter described how you met Danny Kortchmar, and he was introducing you to knife throwing.

(Laughs) Kootch was 15, I was 13. Both of our families used to make the trip to Martha’s Vineyard in the summertime, which in those days was a cheap vacation. My mom was raised on the New England coast. Her father was a commercial fisherman and she would haul us up from North Carolina every summer to go back to her roots. There was a community there on Martha’s Vineyard that, as I got older, there was more and more music available. Danny was there. I had a lot of musical connections there on the Vineyard. There were lots of coffeehouses. There were about four of them, in fact, places where you could … and then other open-mic nights and things like that where you could play. It was an excellent way to get started. So yeah, Kootch and I were into whatever mischief we could scare up in such a pastoral setting.

Have you got a friend or two like him that may come to join you while you’re playing in Vegas?

I’m not saying it would be impossible, but as things stand now we’ve put a lot of thought into the evening and into staging it. There’s always the possibility that someone could come by, and that certainly has happened often enough, but I don’t have any plans for it as it stands. Right now Kootch—actually I was just in touch with him—he’s working on the musical side of a film we made of Carole King’s and my tour we did in 2012. We’re finally putting that together as a concert film, and Danny’s basically producing that musically. I know he’s in Los Angeles and working hard because I just spoke with him yesterday.

It’s good to see him working with a lot of your old bandmates (bassist Leland Sklar, drummer Russ Kunkel and guitarist Waddy Wachtel) in The Immediate Family. It’s good to see him thriving.

He’s sort of a walking crossroads where people come in contact with him and it changes their musical life. I was the first one that I know of, but Carole King also had that experience, and so did Jackson Browne. So did Billy Joel and so did Don Henley, so did John Mellencamp. Over and over again, Kootch has had a profound effect on so many people. I think he’s sort of one of the most unsung kind of heroes of our generation of music, really.

I agree. Speaking of unsung heroes, I am sorry to hear about the recent passing of your monitor engineer Andy Sottile. It’s unfortunate he will not be joining you in Las Vegas.

That’s right. He basically lost his battle just this past winter, and yeah, we’re going to miss him.

Your voice sounds great in footage from your recent tour with Bonnie Raitt. Do you have different ideas for setlists at the Colosseum than you’ve been doing so far on the 2019 tour?

Without Bonnie there, obviously the stuff we were doing together, I’ll find other places to go. And also, a show like this in Las Vegas that is sort of stable, it’s installed in one place and runs essentially for a month for 12 different shows, it lends itself to being a retrospective and sort of a summing up, if you will. We’re going to go back and visit different eras of my 50-year career and sort of present them in different ways so as to make the 90-minute show … have it go in some different places and also show all the different sides of things. It’s a very dynamic kind of musical experience that I’ve had as a solo artist and worked that way for many years. As I had the opportunity I added players, and have eventually ended up with a full-complement 12-piece orchestra, really, with a full chorus of four singers and fiddle. That’s my great joy in this life, is having this community of players that I can work with. And they’re so great, such wonderful masters in their own right, so I’m going to sort of show them off to the best advantage.

Several of your band members have been with you since the early ’90s, and at least one has been with you since 1977.

That’s right. Arnold McCuller (on vocals) and I have been together since then. He’s also worked with Bonnie, he’s worked with Ry Cooder, he’s worked with Phil Collins. He’s worked with so many … and Dorian Holley, who I’ve also worked with for years on and off. Dorian’s worked with Aretha and Whitney, and Michael Jackson. He’s the singer’s singer, and this is true of really all of these players. They all have careers of their own, particularly overseas and Europe and in Asia, or are well known as solo acts. Mike Landau on the guitar is world-renowned. Same thing with Larry Golding, our keyboard player. The Steve Gadd Band, they’re basically my rhythm section. When they go out, it’s a way to stay together when I’m not working. It’s all worked out pretty amazingly well.

You’re known for having wanderlust, whether that’s accurate or not. Do you think you will automatically feel the urge to get on a tour bus after the first Caesars concert? While researching I couldn’t find more than three nights at the Troubadour or Carnegie Hall.

(Laughs) It’s true. The last time I played five nights in one place was in Sydney, Australia. It must have been 15 years ago. One-night stands are the grist for our mill. They’re how we work. Having a crew and a sort of rogue community that can set this thing up and strike it at the end of the day and move onto the next place, that’s what defines our life. It will be very interesting to stay in the same town and stick around for a while. It’s one of the reasons this is such an intriguing gig, to come to Las Vegas and be installed in a theater for a month.

Sounds like it might be a good time to have a songwriter’s notebook around.

Yeah, exactly. Right now we’re in the middle of making a standards album, which is American-Songbook-type material, but the difference is they’re all songs that I’ve arranged on guitar, so they have that sort of James Taylor stamp on them in terms of vernacular, the musical vocabulary I use. It’s been a while since … I’m certainly applying my arrangement skills, and it’s also a guitar album. Basically, we recorded the thing with myself and another guitarist, a guy named John Pizzarelli, who’s a great, great jazz player, a chip off the old block. His father (jazz guitarist) Bucky Pizzarelli was part of an entire generation prior to ours. I’d say I’m a little bit out of my … my songwriter’s hat has been off for a while, so you’re right. It’s a good opportunity to stay in one place. For the three days off I get a week I want to check out Las Vegas. I only have a passing experience of the town, which isn’t unusual. It is a tourist location. It’s all about people visiting, but I really want to find out what’s there. I also want to find out what kind of audience is going to show up. I’m really interested to see who is attracted to this thing.

When the opportunity for this engagement came up, did you kind of know what you wanted to do? Were you inspired after attending Sting’s stage musical (The Last Ship) to stretch out and do a different kind of production?

Oh yeah. I was indeed, but of course that was like a traditional Broadway musical. It was really impressive to me that he could pull that off, and actually write for a plot like that, to move a story along like that. I’d say that this will essentially be sort of an optimized presentation of what I’ve been learning over the past 30 or 40 years in terms of presenting this kind of music and this band to an audience. You really do start to think of it as musical theater. It really does want to have a dynamic, and … you have to break the sort of action every once in a while and give it a kind of relief, or comic relief in order to … there’s a dynamic to it that you can perfect, and that you’re always sort of moving towards that perfection. It’s very different from the idea of a jazz interpretation where you never hear the same two songs in a row, and you never play the same song twice the same. This is an attempt to perfect that presentation of 20 songs, 22 songs, something like that, and basically making the best experience possible for the audience. It’s an art form in itself and one that we’ve been paying attention to for a long time. This is the perfect opportunity to present it, and I’m really looking forward to it.

We’re looking forward to it. … One more thing: Taylor Swift’s parents named her after you, and she made confessional songwriting cool, and critically acclaimed as well as popular. Do you feel a little ancestral musical pride?

Yeah, I definitely … there’s nothing new under the sun. We’re all reinterpreting what we’ve been fed on the way up. I do actually feel pretty gratified at the people like Garth Brooks, like Taylor Swift, who have cited me as a source or an inspiration, because I definitely borrowed heavily from the people that inspired me.

source: https://lasvegasmagazine.com/interviews/qa/2019/apr/19/james-taylor-caesars-palace-singer-las-vegas/#/0

ABC: JAMES TAYLOR RECORDING AN ALBUM OF STANDARDS, SAYS GARTH BROOKS CONVINCED HIM TO PLAY VEGAS

James Taylor hasn’t released a new album since 2015’s Before This World — his first #1 album, by the way — but now word comes that he’s working on a collection of standards.

Speaking about the new project, James tells Entertainment Weekly, “They’re songs I’ve known for years…what’s great about these standards is that it’s not about production value or backbeat. They hold your interest and connect with you through really sophisticated changes. The lyrics are fantastic. They’re the epitome of American popular song.”

And while James is no slouch on guitar himself, he’s teamed with legendary jazz musician John Pizzarelli for the project, calling him a “great, great old school jazz guitarist with unbelievably deep skills.”

Meanwhile, Taylor will kick off a 12-date residency in Las Vegas on April 17 at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Playing Sin City is something James’ pal Garth Brooks convinced him to try after Brooks did his own residency and loved it.

“He thought I’d love it and he had been really surprised by it,” Taylor explains.

James admits, “I was a Vegas snob forever, for sure,” but notes, “It’s now a town of two million people. It’s not just the strip; there’s an actual population there, and it’s just an excellent place to put on a show.”

The show will be a “retrospective,” he says, adding, “It’s an opportunity to really put on our most elaborate and most complete presentation. This particular staging that we’re going to present is something we’ve essentially been perfecting over the past couple of years.”

Taylor also says he’d be open to more Vegas shows in the future if this run of performances is a hit.

source: http://kticradio.com/abc_classicr/james-taylor-recording-an-album-of-standards-says-garth-brooks-convinced-him-to-play-vegas-abcid36175718/

BILLBOARD: James Taylor Preps Las Vegas Residency

By Gil Kaufman

James Taylor is getting ready to kick-off his first Las Vegas residency on Wednesday (April 17). The 71-year-old folk rock icon will set up shop for 12 shows at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, which has hosted everyone from Celine Dion, Elton John, Bette Midler and Cher in the past. “Garth Brooks recommended that I give it a try,” Taylor told EW about the idea that’s been kicking around for a decade. “He thought I’d love it and he had been really surprised by it [during his residency].”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer has never played a string of shows in Vegas, where he said he’s going to be hitting a custom-built stage that will include the return of his One Man Band drum machine. “I was a Vegas snob forever, for sure. Back in the day, Vegas definitely had a very specific connotation for us, and it was something [that folk and pop artists] in the late ’60s and early ’70s, were distancing ourselves from,” he said. “For one thing, it’s now a town of two million people. It’s not just the strip; there’s an actual population there, and it’s just an excellent place to put on a show.”

Taylor said his all-star band won’t shy away from playing the hits — “Fire and Rain,” “You’ve Got a Friend” and “Your Smiling Face” — but is most excited about the chance to put on his most elaborate stage show to date. “This particular staging that we’re going to present is something we’ve essentially been perfecting over the past couple of years.”

The show is slated to run 12 dates, but Taylor said it’s possible he could add some more gigs in the future. The dates for Taylor’s Las Vegas residency are: April 17, 19, 20, 24, 26, 27 and May 1, 3, 4, 8, 10 and 11.

source: https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/8507123/james-taylor-las-vegas-residency

LEXGO — James Taylor, a master, lets Bonnie Raitt ‘steal the show every night’

BY WALTER TUNIS

Even the headliner at Rupp Arena knew who really ruled the evening.

As he got down to business on Wednesday with a near-two hour, hits-laden show full of sublime and unavoidably sentimental tunes spanning over five decades, James Taylor remarked to the audience of 7,200 that one of the greatest pleasures of his nearly concluded tour was watching his co-billed pal Bonnie Raitt “steal the show every night.”

Count Rupp as one of those nights. Oh, nothing against Sweet Baby James. At age 70, he still exuded a good-natured folk-pop exuberance that serviced tunes as varied as the show opening reverie “Carolina in My Mind” and the tropically jovial “Mexico.”

His vocal work – with a few rare, reedy exceptions – has aged remarkably well, too, as did his way with an orchestrally inclined 11-member band that included, get this, a pair of champion Frank Zappa alums (drummer Chad Wackerman and trumpeter Walt Fowler.)

But the divine Ms. Raitt – who, amazingly, was making her Rupp debut –took this night home in her hip pocket.

At 69, her vocals revealed a regal glow, assimilating, as they have throughout her career, a balance of blues, soul and rock ‘n’ smarts. Similarly, her guitar work – a gorgeous, slide-savvy tone that ignited the set-opening “Unintended Consequence of Love” – would serve as rocket fuel throughout the concert.

The sheer scope of what Raitt packed into her hour-long performance was, frankly, astounding. It ran from a slow, swampy revamping of the INXS hit “Need You Tonight” and a solo acoustic blues reading of Skip James’ “Devil Got My Woman” to a cool but decidedly torchy take on her own 1991 hit “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”

But the showstopper was clearly “Angel from Montgomery,” the John Prine classic Raitt is largely responsible for introducing to the world (she recorded it in 1974, three years after Prine, but before many audiences were familiar with the song.) She gave it a solemn but emotive delivery draped with a kind of tasteful world-weariness that yielded a sense of scholarly humanity.

There was also an obvious level of camaraderie between Raitt and Taylor at the show. Taylor began the evening with an extended and heartfelt introduction of Raitt that nicely set the pace for the program’s overall charm that carried over into segments when the two artists sat in on each other’s sets at their conclusions – Taylor during Raitt’s career re-defining take on John Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love” and Raitt as a co-pilot for Taylor’s encore segment that blasted off with a jovial reading of “Johnny B. Goode.”

Again, don’t get the idea that Raitt’s triumph demeaned Taylor’s showing. His set offered a few nice setlist surprises early on – namely, 1970’s “Sunny Skies,” the autumnal title tune to 1974’s overlooked “Walking Man” album and the fatherly snapshot “First of May” (one of the only tunes in the set to venture beyond the ‘70s.)

But it was with two very familiar 1970 works, played back-to-back late in the show, that the emotive extremes of Taylor’s writing came into view.

The first, “Sweet Baby James,” remained a quiet anthem of child-like expression, a cowboy lullaby that unfolded with still-vital innocence. After that came “Fire and Rain,” Taylor’s career-making single – a curiosity, given how the song is a eulogy full of blunt sadness that the singer communicated at Rupp with conversational reserve. In the end, that just made the musical impact all the more devastating.

source: https://amp.kentucky.com/entertainment/music-news-reviews/article226325640.html

OMAHA.COM — Review: Two of the best living singer-songwriters landed in Nebraska last night

By Kevin Coffey

LINCOLN — It’s hard to say something about James Taylor that hasn’t been said.

Legendary songwriter? Yep.

Songs you know by heart? Uh-huh.

Killer band? You know it.

Guitar and vocal skills as steady as in 1968? Oh yes.

Even if it’s all been said, written, sang or proclaimed before, don’t let that diminish the man’s incomparable talent.

For a crowd of more than 7,000 on Wednesday at Pinnacle Bank Arena, Taylor played a serene and stellar concert, peppering a nearly two-hour set with the songs where you know every word (“Fire and Rain,” “Something in the Way She Moves” and “Sweet Baby James” among them), a few that maybe you don’t (“First Day of May” and “Country Road”) and plenty of stories about how he wrote them all.

Taylor joked about losing his hair, told the story of writing “Sweet Baby James” for a godnephew and being a huge fan of The Beatles when he auditioned for Apple Records.

“I played this song for George Harrison and Paul McCartney,” he said. “I don’t know how I got through it, and I can’t remember any of it. It was like a car wreck. Kinda like the rest of the decade. I was told I had fun.”

All the while, the audience sat and listened respectfully. It was so quiet, you could hear fans talking softly from several rows away.

It was, as every Taylor concert I’ve ever seen, wonderful.

It helps to have an amazing crop of songs, a never-aging voice and a lineup of killer musicians that have appeared on famous recordings for decades.

(Seriously. His lineup is killer.)

It was made all the better by having Bonnie Raitt be a part of the show.

Raitt and Taylor have been on tour together for some time, mostly because they enjoy each other’s company.

When introducing her opening set, Taylor called Raitt “my favorite performer.” Then, when he joined her onstage, he said, “I told ya.”

“I’ve loved James since I first heard him,” she said.

Raitt played a masterful mix of covers and classics, weaving songs by the Talking Heads and Skip James together with her own “Something to Talk About.”

And if you’re not moved by her powerful take on John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery,” you may want to check your pulse and make sure you’re still alive.

It was quite the double bill, and it was made even more fun when they joined together to play John Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love” and later for Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.”

It doesn’t get much better than two legendary artists playing as well as they ever have — even at ages 69 and 70 — and playing even better together.

source: https://www.omaha.com/go/review-two-of-the-best-living-singer-songwriters-landed-in/article_3b9c7509-60ee-546c-8c65-81dbadd2ac99.html

JAMBASE.COM — James Taylor & Bonnie Raitt Honor Andy Sottile With ‘You Can Close Your Eyes’: Pro-Shot Video

By Scott Bernstein

On February 13, James Taylor‘s longtime monitor engineer Andy Sottile died at his home in State College, Pennsylvania. Sottile was a member of Taylor’s crew for decades. James and Bonnie Raitt honored Andy Sottile with a gorgeous version of “You Can Close Your Eyes” in Austin on the day he died. Pro-shot video of the powerful performance has been shared.

Taylor and Raitt went on with the show at Frank Erwin Center in Austin on February 13 shortly after finding out about Andy’s passing. James spoke about Sottile during his introduction of the beautiful tune from 1971’s Mud Slide Slim & The Blue Horizon. Watch James Taylor and Bonnie Raitt deliver an emotional “You Can Close Your Eyes” in Austin below:

source: https://www.jambase.com/article/james-taylor-bonnie-raitt-andy-sottile-you-can-close-your-eyes-video

CITYBEAT.COM — One of America’s Most Acclaimed and Influential Singer/Songwriters, James Taylor, Can Still Fill Arenas 50 Years After His Debut Album

By BRIAN BAKER

Last year, James Taylor celebrated two milestones — his 70th birthday and the 50th anniversary of his self-titled debut album, which featured his original (and, in my opinion, superior) uptempo version of “Carolina in My Mind.” Taylor held the distinction of being the first non-British act signed to the Beatles’ fledgling Apple label, and he impacted the band tremendously. Taylor’s song “Something in the Way She Moves” inspired George Harrison to write his classic “Something.” Harrison and Paul McCartney were uncredited guests on “Carolina in My Mind”; the bridge lyric, “a holy host of others standing around me,” was a reference to them. Although that first album is now considered a classic, it tanked after its initial release, hindered by Taylor’s inability to promote it; the recovering heroin addict relapsed while recording in England and was subsequently hospitalized in Massachusetts.

Taylor was further sidelined after a motorcycle accident that broke his hands and feet, but around that time The Beatles broke up and Apple was dissolved. The incapacitated Taylor began writing furiously, inspired by his young, turbulent life, including his teenage battle with depression, his band experiences with friend and guitarist Danny Kortchmar, his solo launch in Greenwich Village, his two rehab stints and the suicide of his friend Suzanne Schnerr. At the same time, Taylor and his new manager, Peter Asher, negotiated a contract with Warner Bros. Records, which resulted in 1970’s Sweet Baby James, a convincing display of Taylor’s exquisite guitar work and compelling songwriting, particularly on the powerful and plaintive “Fire and Rain.” Heralded as a Folk Rock masterpiece, Sweet Baby James sold 1.5 million copies in its first year and earned Taylor several Grammy nominations.

Taylor’s path was inalterably set after the success of Sweet Baby James. He became a critical and commercial juggernaut, and ultimately one of the most successful recording artists in history, with global sales of over 100 million. His early work helped define the Folk Rock sound of the ’70s, while his middle period found him veering in more of a Pop direction.

Taylor’s last four albums have been among his most acclaimed. The 1997 album Hourglass earned a Grammy for Best Pop Album, 2002’s October Road went platinum within three months of its release and 2015’s Before This World was Taylor’s first No. 1 album. Since his amazing first record, Taylor has added 16 more to his estimable catalog and become a musical and cultural icon.

James Taylor is an unparalleled songwriter, a gifted translator of other artists’ material, a committed activist for peace and the environment and an enduring influence on his fellow artists.

The last verse of “Sweet Baby James” begins, “There’s a song they sing when they take to the highway, a song they sing when they take to the sea.” There’s a better than average chance it’s a James Tayor song.

There aren’t many thoughtful, Folk-based singer/songwriters who could make the leap from coffeehouse to arenas and then maintain the kind of popularity it takes to still fill such big venues five decades into their career. But Taylor will do just that this Tuesday, Feb. 5, when he plays Cincinnati’s U.S. Bank Arena with special guest Bonnie Raitt. Taylor is playing with his “all-star band,” which features Kate Markowitz (vocals), Arnold McCuller (vocals), Dorian Holley (vocals), Andrea Zonn (vocals/fiddle), Larry Goldings (piano), Lou Marini (horns), Walt Fowler (keyboards/horns), Michael Landau (guitar), Jimmy Johnson (bass), Michito Sanchez (percussion) and Chad Wackerman (drums).

source: https://www.citybeat.com/music/live-music/article/21045743/one-of-americas-most-accompllished-acclaimed-and-influential-singersongwriters-james-taylor-plays-cincinnati

AUSTIN360.COM — James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt play to each other’s strengths at Erwin Center

By Peter Blackstock

On paper, it’s not necessarily obvious that James Taylor and Bonnie Raitt would be such compatible touring partners that they’d spend a couple of years on the road together. She’s grounded in blues, funk and soul; his core is folk, pop and jazz. Her personality is radiant and gregarious; he’s calmer, a bit more quirky. He mostly plays acoustic guitar, letting his 11-piece crew color the sound; she favors electric, and can take full command when she lets loose with a slide lead.

And yet there’s clearly enormous mutual respect between the two artists. Raitt opens the shows with an hourlong set, but Taylor comes out first to give her a glowing introduction. Wednesday evening at the Erwin Center, Taylor emerged again at the end of Raitt’s set to duet with her on John Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love.” To no one’s surprise, Raitt responded in kind by joining Taylor two hours later for his encore, cutting a rug with Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” before sending folks home with the hushed blessing of “You Can Close Your Eyes” (which they’d sung together in this building at a 2017 Hurricane Harvey benefit).

It’s telling that Taylor ended the show on a quiet note — squeezing his 1971 Carole King-penned smash “You’ve Got a Friend” between those two tunes with Raitt — because although he digs pumping up the volume at times with the rock swagger of “Steamroller” and the shiny pop of “Your Smiling Face,” in the end Taylor has always been a balladeer at heart. At 70, he remains one of the best alive, and the professionalism of his performances may be unparalleled.

It’s not just that he has a sterling repertoire to pull from — “Carolina in My Mind,” “Sweet Baby James,” “Fire and Rain,” “Something in the Way She Moves,” “Mexico” — but also that the presentation is nearly perfect. Stage visuals are unpretentious yet exquisite: Five layered rectangle screens of different dimensions float in front of a full-size backdrop, synchronized with a precision that must take an enormous amount of time and effort to get down before the tour begins. And the sound mix on Wednesday was as good as I’ve heard the Erwin Center sound since — well, the last time Taylor played a full show here, in 2016. Sports arenas that double as concert venues are challenging rooms for sound engineers, yet Taylor’s crew makes it possible to hear everyone in the supporting cast clearly.

Taylor gradually introduces the entire cast as the show rolls on: fiddler/singer Andrea Zonn, drummer Chad Wackerman, bassist Jimmy Johnson, percussionist Michito Sanchez, guitarist Michael Landau, keyboardist Larry Goldings, trumpeter Walter Fowler, saxophonist Lou Marini, and backing singers Kate Markowitz, Dorian Holley and Arnold McCuller. It’s a classy habit that underscores how much he values their contributions.

McCuller also joined Raitt for a song during her set, which included the obligatory but splendid crowd favorites “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and “Something to Talk About” as well as deeper blues dives such as a solo acoustic rendition of Skip James’ “Devil Got My Woman” that she dedicated to Austin singer Ruthie Foster. Raitt has deep ties to Austin thanks partly to her former guitarist, the late Stephen Bruton, and she acknowledged several other locals who were in the house: bassist Sarah Brown, Asleep at the Wheel leader Ray Benson and pop star Christopher Cross. (It was the second Erwin Center shoutout in less than a week for Cross, after Stevie Nicks praised him at Saturday’s Fleetwood Mac show.)

Raitt’s four-piece band was great at getting deep into the groove, especially keyboardist Ivan Neville, of the great New Orleans musical family. The only real downside to her set was that too many people arrived late for her 7:30 p.m. start, which meant a lot of searching for seats that distracted from the performance. Still, it was clear her presence on the bill made a difference in the attendance: The show wasn’t a sellout, but the Erwin Center used its larger south-stage setup, a higher-capacity configuration than the half-room arrangement that was used for Taylor’s 2016 concert.

source: https://www.austin360.com/entertainmentlife/20190214/james-taylor-bonnie-raitt-play-to-each-others-strengths-at-erwin-center