It was a steamy 27 degrees and the sky was barely in twilight when James Taylor, in blue jeans and blue jean shirt, strode onto the stage. The huge crowd was applauding before he even made it to the microphone to say hello.
I have been listening to James Taylor since his 1970 hit Sweet Baby James, and in those days I found his voice had a kind of melancholy quality to it.
Well, sometime between then and now his voice has changed. His baritone has mellowed and become downright comforting when singing the sweeter songs.
Taylor opened the show with a bluesy version of "Nobody Knows" followed by a boogiefied "Sha Na Na (Get Yourself a Job)," after which he cooled the crowd down with a mellow and pitch-perfect "Country Road."
It was his slow and nicely phrased rendering of "You Got a Friend" that drew huge applause and big whistles from the crowd who knew all the lyrics and sang along with him.
At his most sincere when singing hits like "Shower the People" and "Fire and Rain," JT also rocked it with "Whenever I See Your Smiling Face" and extended and funkified versions of the Wilson Pickett classics, "Midnight Hour" and "I don't Want to Lose This Good Thing."
In a mood to play, Taylor didn't spend much time on chit chat between songs. The couple next to me had seen him in Montreal the night before and said that he had talked to the audience and joked quite a lot at that show — even speaking in passable French some of the time.
Given the choice I would rather hear him sing any time.
We saw Taylor as free wheeling as he gets as he belted out "Roadrunner" and skated through "Steamroller" while wailing on the guitar and playing counterpoint with the drummer. The crowd loved it.
With a new CD, Covers, to be released in September, JT has assembled a largish group of renowned musicians for an extended tour that includes several Canadian dates laced into his U.S. agenda for the first time in his 40-year career. Throughout the show Taylor introduced the players and each had a chance to show their stuff.
However, it was the singer-songwriter himself that the approximately 30,000 in attendance just couldn't get enough of, and Taylor obliged by coming back for not one but two encores.
Sadly, the show had to end sometime. With fans clapping and his shirt soaked with sweat, Taylor sat on a stool and sang one last sweet song "You Can Close Your Eyes." Hearing him croon, "Can't sing no blues anymore, I can sing this song," was a fitting ending to an enthralling evening.
The Ottawa band Cooper Brothers, which rocked a receptive audience with tunes that spanned four decades, had the crowd singing and dancing before Taylor's set.
Real life brothers Brian and Dick Cooper and Canadian Hall of Famer (2007) Les Emmerson led the group, which included guitarist Brian Sim.
The Cooper Brothers cranked out their hits as many in the audience sang along—"You'll Know Her When You See Her," "The Dream Never Dies (Just the Dreamer)," and of course "Rock and Roll Cowboys," the first single from their first album, which kept the fans happy.
The crowd responded warmly when the group sang "Signs" and "Absolutely Right," hits from Emmerson's former group Five Man Electrical Band, and of course Emmerson was playing his famous Fender Stratocaster guitar.
The set was rounded out with a couple of tunes from their new CD, Icy Blue Eyes and a socially relevant song about poverty in Mexico "Tear Down the Wall."
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