On Tour With James Taylor & Carole King

A good case could be made that the genesis of this summer’s James Taylor/Carole King tour reaches back almost 40 years, to the November, 1970 night the pair first performed together onstage at the Troubador in West Hollywood.

Building upon the success of that event, a two-week, co-headlining encore at the legendary club ensued in 1971, this during the time that Taylor’s Fire and Rain resided at the top of the charts, and King’s Tapestry was earning acclaim.

More recently, 2007 marked another notable Taylor/King Troubadour pairing accompanied by The Section, their original band including guitarist Danny Kortchmar, bassist Leland Sklar, and drummer Russ Kunkel.

Conceived and launched on March 26 in Melbourne, Australia, the 2010 Troubadour Reunion Tour went on to New Zealand and Japan, then landed in North America in May.

Joined once again by Kortchmar, Sklar, and Kunkel, as well as Andrea Zonn on violin/vocals, Kate Markowitz and Arnold McCuller on vocals, and Robbie Kondor on keys, Taylor and King were met with a phenomenal response.

With numerous wall-to-wall, sold-out dates to its credit, and many more running at 95 percent of capacity, the tour was the second highest grossing of the season as of the evening it wound down at the Honda Center in Anaheim.

As much as things remain the same, they change, and so it was this year for Taylor and King. The songs are timeless and the duo is in fine form, but gone most notably this time were the up-close-and-personal confines of the Troubadour, which were exchanged for the cavernous expanses of numerous arena dates instead.

“When we first talked about reuniting, we knew we wanted to bring the Troubadour to life,” Taylor told Pollstar. A fitting and proper plan, but the nature of the venues slated for the shows seemed to offer starkly different options.

Thanks to the skillful use of stage design and sound reinforcement, however, these potentially cold, impersonal spaces were given an intimacy and vibe reflective of the original performances.

At the heart of this clever deceit was a rotating circular stage serving as the hub from which the songs revealed themselves in the round. A trio of VIP seating areas branched out from the perimeter of the stage in propeller-shaped spokes.

Outfitted with tables for two, these seats were sold through Tickets-for-Charity to benefit Habitat for Humanity, Autism Speaks, and several other organizations. Beyond the VIP seating, house seats expanded out a full 360 degrees on all sides, offering everyone unobstructed views.

“Distance shrank and a feeling of intimacy grew thanks to the in-the-round blueprint,” notes veteran house mix engineer David Morgan, commenting on the metamorphosis brought to the arenas given new purpose for the show by stage and lighting designer Roy Bennett and his team.

“On the audio side, our goal was to reinforce these spatial perceptions even further, and we did that in no small part by employing a design relying upon four stereo PAs. If people were 150-200 feet away from the stage, we didn’t want them to feel as if they were.

That’s why we made all the sounds as natural as we could and distributed them evenly everywhere. The end result was that no matter where you sat, it felt like you were in a much smaller room. Aiming the arrays, amp shading, and EQ were really critical to meeting this goal.”

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