“Welcome to the inside of my head,” James Taylor said after taking a break at the Paramount Theatre on Tuesday night.
As he fumbled with his acoustic guitar and glanced at daughter Sally to his right and etown radio host Nick Forster on his other flank, it was endearing watching Taylor, an old veteran folkie, fidget nervously.
The tapes were rolling.
With that, he launched into “Long Ago and Far Away,” an album track from 1971’s “Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon.” And you didn’t have to look far amid the sold-out theater to realize what is so special about etown, Boulder’s nationally syndicated radio program.
You’re inside James Taylor’s head. You’re starring in the movie “Being James Taylor.” And etown’s alternative concert experience – album tracks, B-sides and covers mixed with interviews – is rejuvenating for audiences and performers.
Taylor was playing the unusually small venue in honor of etown’s 15th anniversary. And while it was mostly business as usual for this Boulder nonprofit, hosted by Nick and Helen Forster, it was also a night of reminiscing.
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who introduced Taylor, recalled seeing him in Philadelphia in 1968.
Taylor jump-started Tuesday’s enthusiastic crowd with “Something in the Way She Moves,” the biggest hit he would play all night, rolling across the hard vowels that have always been his trademark like a New England boater on a glassy Chesapeake Bay.
“Etown is a beautiful and rare thing on the radio and in this land,” he told Forster after admitting he couldn’t read sheet music.
Later, the show’s other guest, bluesman Keb’ Mo’, said he had never seen Taylor live but recalled his own teenage years playing in a steel drum band. When asked how he made everything around him so funky and soulful, Keb’ Mo’ responded, “I learned that in the chitlin clubs in south-central Los Angeles.”
When Taylor retook the stage, he laid into “Rainy Day Man,” saying it was one of the first songs he ever wrote. But the evening was taken to a new level when Taylor recalled seeing Bob Dylan at Club 47 in Harvard Square. “He was a cultural mountain … range,” Taylor said before stamping his own imprint on “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” sans major percussion, followed by the uncharacteristically silly “Mona.”
It was a night to reminisce. And remember.
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-820-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
