Livingston Taylor is an internationally admired solo artist who’s at the peak of his game. Taylor's exuberant personality and warm charm as a performer has allowed him to maintain a busy concert schedule for over thirty years. The younger brother of folk
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He may be the brother of Sweet Baby James, but he's got the singing, songwriting chops to even change his name and still be on top. Livingston Taylor is an internationally admired solo artist who's at the peak of his game.
Taylor's newest CD There You Are Again continues to reap acclaim as perhaps being the finest work of his already distinguished career -- and this from a guy raised in Chapel Hill who says that he got his start in music by singing along in his crib to a Tuberose Snuff radio commercial.
These days, in addition to touring and performing more than 100 nights a year, Taylor continues as artist-in-residence at Harvard and as professor at Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music, where he's taught for more than ten years. His life has been spent in music -- surrounded by it, submerged in it -- and giving it back to his audience as a songwriter and performer since his first recording in 1970.
His Berklee course represents wisdom accumulated through more than 4,000 performances worth of double-decker arenas and 20-stool taverns, signing autographs and ducking whiskey bottles. In fact, it's safe to say that Taylor, who has also recorded 15 albums, has written the book on stage performance-because he has. His textbook "Stage Performance" was published last year.
I looked around before I wrote this book," Taylor says. "I looked around for anyone who talked about what I talk about, but nobody ever does. Nobody ever tells a group of students that a performer is employed by the audience. They buy the ticket, they hire you, you're working for them." If a student retains only one fragment from the entire semester, Taylor says it needs to be this: "It's not about you-it's about them.
Taylor jokes about the differences in his students at Harvard and at Berklee, saying that, for Harvard, one's entire extended family has worked and saved their whole life to get you there - and that for Berklee, your whole extended family has worked and saved their whole life to try to get you to go somewhere else...
Taylor's new CD includes duets and guest appearances by brother James, sister Kate, Vince Gill, Take Six, Carly Simon, Andre Crouch, Pam Tillis & more. It's a total statement and love and friendship from start to finish. There's a lot of people out there who are lovin' this Liv.
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