Wednesday, June 11, 2008

JT

I can cross one thing off my personal bucket list now. Not that I actually have one of those but if I did, this would have been there.

Thanks to my daughter Gillian (thanks Gilly bean!) my wife and I were treated to an evening of James Taylor at the Starlight Theater in Kansas City.

He did not disappoint. He must be one of the few singers who in their advancing age can still hit almost all of the notes. Only occasionally did I catch him changing to match his range. And of course his guitar sounds the same. How does he do that? I could not see what he played and have no idea what type of strings he uses but to my ear - the sound is the same as when I first heard him back in the late 60s.

He looks very different though. My friends back in college in Texas used to joke that I looked like James Taylor. I played guitar, liked his music and had a huge wall-covering poster of him in my bedroom. He had long dark hair and a mustache. I had long dark hair and a mustache. The similarity stops somewhere about here.

But I still have most of my hair and it is now short. JT on the other hand seems to have misplaced his somewhere.

Regardless he is still great to listen to and I'm glad to be able to say "been there, done that," but I didn't buy the t-shirt. They were asking $35 and up for a t-shirt at the concert. I passed.

My one disappointment with the concert is that he played lots of other folks' music. I'd rather hear all his stuff than his covers - although (and my wife disagrees on this one - she called it "a stretch") but he did Wichita Lineman by Jimmy Webb (made famous of course by Glen Campbell) and I really liked it. You need a high pure voice to pull this one off. Odd thought but I'll bet Vince Gill could do this one too.

I'll probably never see JT again unless it's on a PBS special or something but I'm glad to have had the chance.

Thanks again Bean!

1 comment:

gillian said...

i'm so glad you got to go!