| James Taylor
Great Woods Mansfield, MA June 3, 1998 Approximately 2 1/2 hours. Why a review of James Taylor for The Phantom Tollbooth? Simple. There are lots of Christians that like James Taylor and we are, after all, The Source for music reviews of interest to Christians. This naturally begs the question: why do so many Christians count themselves as James Taylor fans? I can think of two reasons. First of all, his music is benign and safe. Christians like benign and safe. Most Christians don't like scary and questionable, and James Taylor is never scary and rarely questionable. In fact, given his penchant for being safe and rarely questionable, there is assuredly a contingent of our family that has assumed James Taylor must be of the faith. See also the fans of David Wilcox, Collective Soul, Extreme, Dream Theater, Kings X, and even Bob Dylan: artists whose faith in Christ have been much--sometimes hotly and always wastefully--debated. Second, and most importantly, there is a thematic quality to James Taylor's music that resonates with "believers." In Taylor's own words his songs are largely about "moving from darkness to light, about regeneration, emerging and transformation, and consolation." These themes should be of interest to us, because they are a central part of our own stories, the stories of our faith journeys. James Taylor, be he Christian, Buddhist, pagan, or a worship-our-mother-earth-gaze-some-more-at-your-navel-and-pray-to-the-trees new ager, is still writing wonderful stories of faith, hope, and love. His recent opening appearance for his current tour was no exception. In fact, this particular concert was probably somewhere up near his
4,782nd, give or take a few hundred. He's been singing, songwriting,
and officially releasing albums since 1968, which makes him one of those
rare musicians with three decades of experience. As a result, his
cross-generational appeal is abundantly evident. You'll find two-year
olds to eighty-year youngs in attendance, and every age group in between.
James Taylor remains one of our most enduring and prolific American troubadours.
He's also one of the best. This year alone he won two Gramm'ys (Best Pop
Album and Best Engineered Album) for his latest album, Hourglass,
which is by all reports the best album he has released since the late Seventies.
More importantly, Bob Dylan, the poet of our generation, at that time named
Taylor as one of the songwriters he valued. Or as James Taylor wrote:
"We can spend a great deal of time mourning our youth. Or not.
More optimistically, we can see the recent past as having triggered a need
to recreate our themes--trick ourselves into being ourselves again, even
if we are a folksinger in the electronic age."
The James Taylor formula, if it's fair to call it such, is a simple
one. He acts like a lanky goof telling truly humorous anecdotes between
numbers and putting a little boogie in his step when it suits him.
Furthermore, he has that rare gift of being completely genuine in his enthusiasm
to be doing what he's doing. You might say he seems born to the stage,
such is his natural, happy demeanor while playing his songs. And
he has a lot of them. With fifteen albums to his credit, not counting
greatest hits and live albums, he has hundreds of songs to perform.
Being hard-pressed to play them all, he still manages to give the people
what they want. Fans were treated to such old classics as "Carolina
on My Mind," "Shower the People," "You've Got a Friend," "Mexico," "Steamroller,"
and "Sweet Baby James," as well as more recent hits, "Little More Time
with You," "Jump Up Behind Me," and "Another Day." Each was played with
James Taylor's gifted immediacy. For someone who has sung "Fire and
Rain" thousands of times, he still sounds like he's suffering the tragic
loss of the lover that inspired the song. Or in the case of "Your
Smiling Face," he seems happy to be singing this quintessential love song
for the umpteenth time, and the audience loves every sweet minute of it,
too. Another highlight included "Belfast to Boston," which is a brand
new song inspired by the unrest in Ireland. It's basically a heartfelt
and universal plea to put down the guns--everywhere--and the kind of song
that sticks a lump in your throat.
Some folks like to dismiss James Taylor as a bit of sap. He'd
probably be the first to admit it. Yet, his gift for melding folk,
blues, gospel, and other world-beats into his pleasant signature pop sound
is without peer. He's an exceptional songwriter, recovering addict
survivor, and no mere Seventies dinosaur, as his recent album and this
sold-out tour date proves. If James Taylor is an institution of distinctively
American music right at home with mother's apple pie, then I'm glad I had
a slice.
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