Getting back in touch with artists after a long period of time is always fun and usually very rewarding, and such is the case with today’s performer, Livingston Taylor, whom I’ve chatted with several times over the years. As the fourth child in a musical family (which includes James, Kate, Hugh and Alex Taylor) he has made for himself a career that includes songwriting (he has top-40 hits like “I Will Be in Love with You” and “I’ll Come Running,” and two that he wrote that were recorded by his brother James “I Can Dream of You” and “Boatman,” performing, and teaching (he’s a full professor at Berklee College of Music where he has taught a Stage Performance course since 1989). He’s comfortable with quite the range of genres (including pop, folk, gospel and jazz) and his storytelling, especially in his live performances, is always very entertaining. And speaking of performing, he’ll be gracing the stage at Johnson Hall on Saturday the 12th of this month.

Q: Well, you’re going to be coming up to Gardiner, Maine’s Johnson Hall, correct?
Taylor: I sure am and I’m really looking forward to it.

Q: Have you ever played there before?
Taylor: I don’t know. I’ve heard very good things about it but as I try to remember about performing there before, I don’t think I have.

Q: Will this be a one-man show?
Taylor: Yes, it tends to be just me with guitar and piano.

Q: Now, you have five decades under your belt as a singer/songwriter, performer, teacher and author; and I share a similar time period as a music journalist. How do you view what you’ve done over that span of time?
Taylor: Well, I have to tell you that I don’t spend much time looking backward, it doesn’t particularly enthuse me. The same as you, you look forward, it’s not like you go back and read all your old articles all the time, no, you’re pursuing new ones, and it’s not dissimilar. So the question is not what did I leave in the dust but what the heck am I getting ready to dive into that occupies my attention.

Q: (Chuckle) Now what is that? Is it anything in particular?
Taylor: Well, different things show up. I’ve been absolutely fascinated in chemical energy storage — Re: batteries, and not just battery technology but I’ve also been really fascinated by nuclear physics in the last couple of years. Because I’m really curious whether nuclear fission is a reasonable substitute for burning coal — burning hydrocarbons, and I’m curious about transitioning off hydrocarbons to batteries for automotive and other things. So, yup, I’m curious about those questions.

Q: And I’m curious about the juxtaposition of this fascination with that of creating music.
Taylor: Well, that’s hardly against songwriting. Indeed, those are the same curious questions when you write a song: How can you make the story come through? How do you solve your vowel sounds, where you’re singing? How do you get your message across, how do you want to choose your melody and your chords? So these are not incompatible questions.

Q: Let’s look at the performing aspect of this, seeing you’re going to be coming up to a venue where you haven’t performed before.
Taylor: That makes sense to me, yeah.

Q: How do you go about going through 50 years of your music to put together a show that’s not a marathon in length?
Taylor: Well, you come to an intersection and that intersection is a point in time and a point in space, and those are me walking onstage and everything starts from that instant. And I bring onstage with me — in my brain — hundreds of songs that I get to choose from; so each night I get to paint yet another picture of the environment that I’m in, and, yup, it’s fun. So I assemble a show: I place different songs in it in different times, different structures and tie them together in various ways, it’s a matrix that’s a concert.

Q: Having listened to excerpts from your live album “LIVe: 50 Years of Livingston Taylor” before calling you, I really enjoyed the explanations and the introductions that you do for the songs. That kind of brings them to a level where people can latch on to them a lot easier than just hearing the song itself.
Taylor: It’s a good skill of mine, yes, to be able to lay out a carpet on the way to the song that puts you in the song in a very particular place, therein, hopefully, maximizing the impact of that song. Said another way: it’s all in the presentation!

Q: And one thing about doing this on your own, one-man show, so to speak, is that you can go wherever your muse or the audience leads you, you’re not confined to a set list or worrying if the other musician can follow along.
Taylor: The vulnerability is high but the freedom is fantastic.

Q: And it’s probably kind of like a balance between those two things.
Taylor: Yeah, but I prefer the freedom.

Q: So, what can folks expect from your performance there at Johnson Hall?
Taylor: I think they can expect Livingston Taylor. I’m tuneful, I’m creative, I’m energetic, I’m joyous, I’m enthusiastic, and I’m a pretty known quantity.

Q: Yeah, you’re all of that!
Taylor: Yeah.

Q: Are you working on anything new, musically speaking?
Taylor: Oh, yeah, I’ve got about three projects in the works. I’ve got a project where I have former students of mine singing some of my better songs, that’s a project that could turn out very nicely. I also have a project where I have symphony charts, pop charts, written for some of my songs and I’m thinking of going with my arranger over to Budapest and recording over there once the COVID fades a bit. And I’m thinking of another record I’m busting to make of really light pop songs, an album called “Sunshine Pop.”

Q: Yes, it does sound like you are going to be busy for a while, that’s for sure, but in the mean time, Livingston, is there anything you’d like me to pass on to the folks reading this article?
Taylor: Lucky, what you can say from me is that I’m going to be there, I’m going to be absolutely energized and overjoyed to be in their presence; and they can know that I will be well and I will be strong and I am expecting the same from them.

Lucky Clark, a 2018 “Keeping the Blues Alive” Award winner, has spent more than 50 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.

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