Concert Review: James Taylor at Red Rocks in Denver

In December I was in Tokyo. I’d been in Asia for 2 weeks already and I was worn out, cold, lonely, and homesick. As I walked by a Starbucks in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, I heard the strains of James Taylor. It took me home. He has the power — his baritone voice and warm melodies convey a profound sense of locality. His words and music describe home with the clarity of Tolkien writing about a place in Middle-Earth.

Red Rocks has a special affinity for JT. He started by saying “I haven’t played here since… 1903!” In truth, it’s been since 2003 that he was last here, and I was in the audience then. He ended his final encore then with Sweet Baby James, but not this time, as I’ll describe below. But this time he said of Red Rocks, “It’s one of my favorite venues… I’ve not seen a more beautiful place so far.” He certainly didn’t say this the last time he was in Denver, when I caught his concert at the Coor’s Amphitheatre.

He’s said in an interview:

Though he took to the stage 15 minutes late, the crowd was enthusiastic. There were a dozen musicians on stage. He had 4 vocalists, who occasionally played instruments, and 7 instrumentalists including a saxophonist, trumpeter, 2 drummers, 2 guitarists and a pianist. These included:

Michael Landau – electric guitar
Luis Conte – percussion
David Lasley – vocals
Walt Fowler – horns, keys
Lou Marini – horns (the “Blue Lou” of Saturday Night Live and Blues Brothers)
Steve Gadd – drums
Kate Markowitz – vocals
Larry Goldings – piano, synthesizer
Arnold McCuller – vocals
Jimmy Johnson – bass
Andrea Zonn – vocals, fiddle

… each of which he introduced, saying, “I’ve got to introduce them all or the bus ride is terrible, they get so touchy.”

• It’s Growing
  

by the Temptations. This was immediately followed by

• Get A Job

or as it’s better known by the words “Shanana-na, shanana-nana” originally done by the Silhouettes.

Then he did one of the crowd pleasers

• Country Road

and as he walked down a country road, with the timbre of his voice still perfect after all these years, he flung music into the air. This was finished by an Appalachian version of an Irish jig, with fiddle, whistle and drum called

• Whiskey Before Breakfast

As the wind came up into the open air mountain venue he said “it’s gone all blustery.” He then introduced a song made famous by Glenn Campbell

• Wichita Lineman

As the wind increased, foreboding a storm, he said “It’s a night for hairspray… or in my case bowling ball wax. Now here’s a song by George Jones from 1955.”

• Why Baby Why

He recounted how they’d toured across Canada and in Calgary played at the Rodeo. “You’ve heard the saying ‘you’ve got to go to a rodeo?’ Well, this was my first. We had to do a couple of country songs because we were told this was the ‘Nashville of the North’. We did another country song to balance it out, this one from Rogers & Hammerstein. It’s a Broadway song about ‘country’ as if Broadway knew anything about it. This is the first song from the musical Oklahoma.”

• Oh What A Beautiful Morning

and what he did with it was magical. I don’t know why, but I felt like I’d been transported to OZ.

• Every Day

was a cover of an old Buddy Holly tune. And “Blue” Lou did and incredible sax solo. He then told us the story of doing some work back in the ’70s, “that’s a whole decade that I don’t remember. But evidently and repeatedly I played at a nightclub in LA called the ‘Troubadour’. And I worked with someone named Carol King. I was so excited to learn the chords to a song she’d written. I didn’t realize at the time I’d be playing that song every night for the rest of my life on Earth. But it could be worse. My hit could have been something like ‘Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight.”

As he sang:

If the sky above you
Should turn dark and full of clouds
And that old north wind should begin to blow

…the crowd shouted their approval, for it had indeed begun to rain by this time. This is not the first concert I’ve seen at Red Rocks where it rained — last summer’s Diana Krall concert did the same — but JT had a particularly good attitude toward it and wove a number of jokes around it.

To add a little sunshine, and a more than usual Latin beat intro from drummer Luis Conte he played

• Mexico

Before the break, they did a song that starts as an acapella chorus, almost like a hymn, that I used in the introduction to my podcast to the “History of Martin Luther King”

• Shed a Little Light

Let us turn our thoughts today
To Martin Luther King
And recognize that there are ties between us
All men and women
Living on the earth
Ties of hope and love
Sister and brotherhood

He returned from the break with a song by Big Mamma Thornton, a song made popular by Elvis Presley, but done in a style unfamiliar to those who know the Elvis version

• Hound Dog

JT followed this with one of his perennial favorites

• Walking Man

Then came a song make famous by Junior Walker and the All Stars

• Road Runner

but during the song, the thunderstorm came up strong and they lost all audio power toward the end of the song. This was quickly remedied and he picked up without a best using one of his most popular hits, a song that was most apropos

• Fire and Rain

I’ve been walking my mind to an easy time
My back turned towards the sun
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around

This was followed by a song by the Dixie Chicks, “We really like the Dixie Chicks” JT said.

• Some Days You Gotta Dance

One of my favorites came next. I can still remember watching Sesame Street with my children when they were young, and he was on the show, up on the roof to sing

• Up On The Roof

As the rain continued, and JT changed guitars between almost every song, he quipped “This is my all-weather guitar. The electric guitar is a vast improvement over the gas and steam powered guitars that proceeded it, and there was the word burning guitar which was unsuccessful for obvious reasons. The less said about the horse-drawn guitar, the better. The old jokes are the best, don’t you think?”

This song is essentially an excuse for some judicious jazz jamming. JT will ham it up with the audience and even jam with his voice. The end of the song featured him and his lead guitarist in a duel over a cacophony of chaotic chords.

• Carolina on My Mind

came next, one of his favorites. But he didn’t do the other song about that part of the country, namely “Copperline.”

• Shower the People

was a huge crowd favorite, with an extended solo by Arnold McCuller, “a fine vocalist in his own right. I’ve listened to his album ‘Sabor’ over and over again.” JT mentioned.

• Your Smiling Face

had everyone on their feet, singing along, and ending the show. But the crowd wouldn’t settle for that. They called “JT, JT, JT…” and unsurprisingly he came out for a number of encores, including the cover of Wilson Pickett’s

• Midnight Hour

which slid effortlessly into the cover of Eddie Floyd’s

• Knock On Wood

• How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)

This Marvin Gaye song had everyone clapping and singing. But this fabulous show ended with just JT, his four backup vocalists and a guitar singing the heartfelt and beautifully harmonious song he’d first recorded over 40 years ago. As I recall, the last time he sang this song at Red Rocks, he was joined onstage by his musician daughter Sally Taylor who was at the University of Colorado at the time.

• Close Your Eyes

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood culturevulture
www.billpetro.com

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