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JAMES TAYLOR
+ Josh Pyke
‘A DAY ON THE GREEN’
@ Pokolbin, HunterValley, NSW,
27th April 2024
(Live Review)

Review and photos by Alec Smart (@alecsmart_fotos)

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James Taylor, A Day On The Green, Pokolbin NSW. Photo: Alec Smart

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Veteran singer-songwriter James Taylor, the six times Grammy Award winner who has sold over 30 million albums in a career spanning almost 60 years, headlined the A Day On The Green festival on 27 April at Pokolbin in the NSW Hunter Valley.

The open-air concert took place at Bimbadgen Winery, on a grass slope amphitheatre between the grape vines, with James Taylor appearing just after sunset. Support came from Josh Pyke and Ella Hooper.

Billed as His Final Australian Tour and accompanied by his All-Star Band, Taylor and the A Day On The Green team visited three vineyards: Sirromet in Mount Cotton (Queensland) on Sunday 21 April, then Bimbadgen and Centennial in Bowral (NSW), the following weekend.

The Bimbadgen event attracted a capacity-crowd; it took over 100 minutes for all the vehicles to exit the rural site when the concert ended.

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Ella Hooper

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Ella Hooper ascended the stage mid-afternoon, accompanied by her three-piece band. She performed here just two weekends earlier as part of another A Day On The Green series of vineyard concerts, supporting rockabilly revivalist Chris Isaak on his Australian tour.

Hooper is known for her creative work in Victorian rock band Killing Heidi, which she and her older brother Jesse Hooper initially formed as a folk-pop duo when they were teenagers. The band won numerous awards and accolades and their debut album, Reflector, topped the ARIA music charts on its release in March 2000.

At Bimbadgen she played a set of songs dominated by her recent album, Small Town Temple, her second solo album after the three award-winning albums she co-wrote with her brother in Killing Heidi. She also included Love Is A Rose, the Linda Ronstadt cover, a staple of her set, and finished on Weir, Killing Heidi’s best-known song, their debut single, which became a sort of teenage anthem after its release in May 1999.

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Josh Pyke, A Day On The Green, Pokolbin NSW. Photo: Alec Smart

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Josh Pyke has released six solo albums that have debuted in the ARIA top ten, and received four ARIA awards (from 10 nominations). He’s also an acclaimed children’s book author, with seven illustrated stories published (with amusing titles like The Incredible Runaway Snot and The Bewilderbeast).

Furthermore, he’s an ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation, a charity that brings literacy and cultural learning to remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

On stage at Bimbadgen he’s humble, shy, seated between cellist Freya Schack-Arnott and pianist-accordionist Glenn Hopper.

Pyke’s set featured material from his latest album, To Find Happiness (released March 2022), highlights from his 20+ years of songwriting, plus a few covers, including New Slang by The Shins, which he revealed to be his “favourite song of all time.”

He revealed he’s assembling an album of other people’s music. “I’m covering songs by bands who didn’t get the respect they deserved at the time.” After announcing he was about to play Blackbird, written by Paul McCartney of a little-known band called The Beatles, with tongue planted firmly in cheek Pyke requested people to “please check them out, they need your support!”

Pyke also requested people to scan the stage bar code and follow him on Instagram, which he explained was because he was in a battle with Phil Jamieson from Grinspoon to attract followers. “I’m only 70 behind him!” he chuckled.

For several songs, Pyke didn’t strum his guitar and sang with just the cello and piano accompaniment.

Pyke finished his performance with Vibrations In Air, which he revealed he wrote 20 years ago, at the start of his career, when he never expected to make a living from song writing. Now he’s playing concerts in vineyards to audiences of thousands, supporting legends like James Taylor. In the wake of Pyke’s supports with James Taylor, the trio are embarking on Pyke’s ‘Revisions’ Tour.

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James Taylor, A Day On The Green, Pokolbin NSW. Photo: Alec Smart

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James Taylor began his concert shortly after sunset, enhancing the effects of the glorious stage lighting against the dark backdrop of the surrounding vineyards.

His backing musicians, advertised as an ‘All-Star Band’, really do have platinum pedigree, from accompanying superstars like Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston to acclaimed songwriting in the world of jazz, soul and mainstream rock.

Taylor opened his set with Something In The Way She Moves, his first break-out song that appeared on his eponymous debut album in 1968. Taylor revealed that he performed this song to Paul McCartney and George Harrison when he auditioned for The Beatles’ new record label, Apple Records, and his subsequent solo album became the first independent release for them.

Harrison liked the song so much he borrowed the title for the opening line of his song Something on The Beatles’ Abbey Rd album. Early demo recordings of Harrison’s song revealed he struggled with finding a rhyme for the second line when he sang “Something in the way she moves, attracts me like a pomegranate” (John Lennon suggested ‘cauliflower’!), before settling on “no other lover.”

In 2000 Taylor was inducted into the esteemed Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame by the legendary Paul McCartney, who described him as “a haunting guy who could really play the guitar.”

He’s also very funny – cracking jokes aplenty between songs on the Bimbadgen stage, some a little risqué.

At one stage he stood up from his seat at the front, nearly knocking over his highchair. He declared, “I’m having trouble with my stool…  but I’ve talked to my doctor and it should be better soon!”

On his second song, a cover of Jimmy Jones’ Handy Man, Taylor asserted “It’s a song about a gigolo, a male prostitute, a handy man!”

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James Taylor, A Day On The Green, Pokolbin NSW. Photo: Alec Smart

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I strongly suspect Taylor was being ironic, I couldn’t find any subtle double entendres concerning sexual healing in Jimmy Jones’ original lyrics. But you can decide for yourself by watching Jones’ performing his classic (which began life as a Motown song before Taylor’s folky version) in a 1960 Dick Clark show video here.

A couple of times Taylor teased the audience about tunes he planned to play. When he announced he was about to perform a song inspired by his home state of North Carolina, where he moved at the age of three, the crowd cheered, expecting Carolina On My Mind.

However, he raised a handwritten set list and pointed to the sixth song, Copperline, and explained, “You’ll hear that one later, for now we are this far into the set!”

He was similarly mischievous when he announced he was about to play a song by Carole King (whom he has been close friends with for decades after he encouraged her to step up from writing for others to performing her own songs).

The crowd thought they were getting one of Taylor’s most-loved classics, You’ve Got A Friend (which he saved for the encore) but instead he played a King song made famous by The Drifters, Up On The Roof.

Distinguished violinist Andrea Zahn, who also joined the two backing singers, Dorian Holley and Kate Markowitz, on harmony vocals, launched the song Sweet Baby James with a spirited Celtic-inspired fiddle solo.

Taylor wrote this sentimental waltz in 1969 about his older brother Alex’s son James (named after him) when he was three months old, which he recalled was “while I was driving from Boston to North Carolina to first set eyes on that varmint!”

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James Taylor, A Day On The Green, Pokolbin NSW. Photo: Alec Smart

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Taylor enjoyed a bit of banter with the audience, many of whom were septuagenarians like him (he’s a sprightly 76). When he removed a jacket mid-concert, he was greeted with a chorus of wolf whistles from female fans. Later, one called out “I love you James!” to which he replied, “I love you too! But it’s kind of hard to express, because I don’t know you!”

Taylor alternated acoustic guitars most of the concert, which he played in his characteristic bluegrass-meets-classical fusion of finger-picking. However, he switched to an old electric Fender Telecaster for a rocking rendition of Steamroller, during which he also played an amazing blues solo on harmonica.

Of the old Telecaster, he joked, “this comes from an age shortly after they replaced steam engine-powered guitars! Before that they were horse-drawn!”

During Shower The People, many couples took to the aisles between the rows of seating to dance, whilst backing singer Dorian Holley demonstrated his amazing vocal agility by ad-libbing during the extended chorus.

Taylor received a standing ovation after his set-closer, Your Smiling Face, then returned for the encore You’ve Got A Friend, one of his signature songs, followed by the Marvin Gaye tune, How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You), which inspired almost everyone (10,000 people?) to ascend to their feet and dance.

You’ve Got A Friend, one of his signature songs, Carole King wrote as a response to Taylor’s earlier song Fire And Rain. Taylor’s includes the lyrics “I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend”, which King was inspired to add the reassuring words: “All you have to do is call and I’ll be there. You’ve got a friend. ‘Aint it good to know you’ve got a friend?”

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James Taylor, A Day On The Green, Pokolbin NSW. Photo: Alec Smart

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You can see an original performance of King and Taylor performing the song together in November 1971. Link here.

As Taylor reached the climax of this soulful song at Bimbadgen, I looked around and saw streams of tears glistening on so many faces, men and women, young and old alike.

At the end of the encore, Taylor appealed to Bimbadgen stage management if he might perform a bonus third song grand finale, a request they granted. He finished on You Can Close Your Eyes, just him and the three backing vocalists, which faded on the lyrics “I can’t sing the blues anymore, but I can sing this song. Yes and you can sing this song when I’m gone, you can sing this song when I’m gone…”

And then he was gone, and we won’t see him again, because that was his last tour of Australia – for us the grand finale of a remarkable career.

You can watch a video of Taylor performing You Can Close Your Eyes with singer-songwriter Carly Simon, to whom he was married for 11 years (and had two children together), at their home in Martha’s Vineyard in 1977. Link here.

Incidentally, Taylor Swift, the most successful female recording artist in history, whose April 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department broke Australian records (with ten songs in the top ten of the ARIA music charts), was named after James Taylor.

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James Taylor, A Day On The Green, Pokolbin NSW. Photo: Alec Smart

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James Taylor
Set List

Something In The Way She Moves
Handy Man (Jimmy Jones cover)
That’s Why I’m Here
Yellow And Rose
Anywhere Like Heaven
Copperline
Country Road
Sweet Baby James
Never Die Young
Mexico
Carolina In My Mind
Steamroller
Fire And Rain
Up On The Roof (Carole King/Drifters cover)
Shower The People
Your Smiling Face

Encore

You’ve Got A Friend (Carole King cover)
How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You (Marvin Gaye cover)
You Can Close Your Eyes

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James Taylor, A Day On The Green, Pokolbin NSW. Photo: Alec Smart

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Check out Alec’s full gallery of this event HERE

ADELAIDE – Check out Colin Reid’s review HERE and Michael Selge’s full gallery HERE

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James Taylor, A Day On The Green, Pokolbin NSW. Photo: Alec Smart

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Follow JAMES TAYLOR
Website – Facebook – Twitter – Instagram

Follow JOSH PYKE,
ELLA HOOPER, A DAY ON THE GREEN

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James Taylor, A Day On The Green, Pokolbin NSW. Photo: Alec Smart

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Press Release 8th February 2024 (below) HERE

JAMES TAYLOR
and his all-star band
announce 2024
Australian Tour Dates

Extra shows added due to
overshelming demand, as dates
sell out across the Country

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AMNPLIFY – DB