Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I saw him tonight, was a birthday present for my wife and I probably wouldn't have gone on my own. I've always appreciated him especially his early work but like a lot of artists I thought he had gotten really commercial. So anyway I went tonight and it was one of the best concerts I have been to in a long time, he played for three hours and did two oncores and ended the night with "You can Close Your Eyes" sung only with his three back up singers and his guitar. He had a ten piece band including a fiddle player who one of his back up singers also, she was really good and she and the drummer did kind of an odd tempo Irish sounding thing and as was I digging her playing I was also thinking, man that drummer is really good, after the song James introduced Steve Gadd and I almost fell out of my chair. I have always though he was one of the best drummers I had ever heard on the strength of his Steely Dan stuff, especially the Asia album. But he and the band were great, James did a very eclectic mix of music as only someone like him could, folk, jazz, Irish, soul, R&B, and rock n roll. and he did it all very well and went from style to style to style seamlessly. And he's still agreat guitar player and get's that beautiful acoustic sound he's always gotten. If he comes around your way I would urge you if you have an open mind to check him out, it's definitely worth it, he's a hometown boy here so it may have been a little special for him playing here, but no one left disappointed (except for my wife because he didn't play "You need a Friend"), but she liked it too.

I have always admired his songwriting talent, guitar style and warm friendly singing voice.

He's got great stage presence too, almost shy-like but he's very funny in a low key way. That warm friendly style is real close as I can tell, because his personality onstage is similar to his singing style. He's just a very likable guy at least onstage and is great with demanding hecklers. Someone kept yelling for "Sweet Baby James", he said we'll be doing that one a little later, then picked up a big giant set list, held it up and looked at it and pointed, yup it's down here but we have to go through all this krap first, haha! and he said it as a joke, didn't PO them at all.

He does a great blues tune on the Crossroads DVD.

If you haven't bought the DVD of James Taylor Live at the Beacon Theatre 1998. Go get it and turn it up to 11!

He did "Steamroller Blues" last night, that may be the song, it's from one of his early albums. It was great last night, they really grooved on it and they were plenty of solos. The Alembic bass sounded great also. I forgot his name, last name was Johnson I think.

Lee Sklar used to play bass for him back in the '70s. Could it have been Keltner on drums? Saw him many times back then...

No, it was Steve Gadd, I couldn't believe it when he was introduced, some of the crowd even knew who he was, he's a monster, never expected to see him with James Taylor, but I never expected the dynamic show I saw either. He's one of the best session guys going, listen to the drums on the song "Asia" by Steely Day. I always like Lee Sklar but I don't think they've played together for a long time. He was the first guy I heard of who played fretless bass beside the guy in the Youngbloods. "Get Together" had a great fretless tone. I remember Jim Keltner also, he always had great bands.

Jimmy Johnson on the Alembic 5 string bass.
He is credited in many bass books as having the first low B 5 string electric. Story goes his dad mentioned older acoustics used to have a low B on them so Jimmy contacted Alembic and had one made. His regular group out of the twin cities is Flim and the BB's IIRC.

Yup that's him, he was damn good on that thing and had a great sound. He used the lower notes judiciously.

I saw Jimmy back in 1990 with Flim & The BBs.