James Taylor; oh boy, can that man sing.
Yesterday my parents and I went to the Embassy Theater and saw James Taylor. You know that dream you have when you purchase tickets to a great singer-songwriter and you hope that maybe they'll just show up alone with their guitar and play. However, when you get to the concert they've brought a whole big band and the aspects that you were hoping for (voice, guitar, lyrics) are overshadowed by the "big show" hoopla?
Not tonight.
Stage left: one piano
Stage right: a large screen
Center Stage: James Taylor, guitar
James put on a great show, not just because his voice has somehow gotten better with age but because he brought pictures. Sometimes before a song he would put pictures up on the screen and explain how the song came into being. Pictures of his parents, old girlfriends, old cars, Richard Nixon, Mediterranean Islands. He was extremely funny, quipping at one point when he realized his explanation was a little long, "You probably didn't realize that you were paying to sit in the dark to look at old photos." Or when he was explaining a song, "So, that's the first and last verse, the rest is just filler. All that middle stuff? Filler." When he was describing Richard Nixon's resignation, "And he walked down that long hallway and out through the French doors, or rather, what we would call Freedom doors nowadays."
If a chorus was needed in a song, on the screen would be the choir from his hometown filmed singing the chorus in his recording studio/barn. It was awesome seeing an ordinary choir, ordinary faces, ordinary people sing along to their friend's songs.
It's times like this when your hometown becomes a little less quaint and a little more cozy. When you can run into your dentist at a concert and he'll ask you about your life, or when the elderly ushers who have worked so hard to hold onto and maintain such a magnificent theatre crack a large grin when James Taylor compliments their preservation efforts.
After being so down on concerts a month ago, James has reminded me how powerful live music can be by making it personal and really seeming to care that each person in that audience connects with the show and the music.
