Brotherly Love

Liv Taylor can still make 'em cry.

by Nicole Pensiero

You almost hate to bring it up, hate to mention the “J” word, but there’s no way of getting around it. For however good Livingston Taylor is -- and he is good, very good, in fact -- there’s a label that never seems to make it past the first sentence or two of any concert review or profile: He’s “James Taylor’s younger brother.”

So it hangs in the air all but unspoken, until you finally say the words, cringing, that Liv has probably heard a million times before: "Is it a help or hindrance, being James Taylor's brother?"

A pause, and then comes the answer that typifies the easy warmth and graciousness that the 51-year-old Taylor's fans love him for.

"I can tell you this: The quality of my career, and of my entire life, has been dramatically improved by the fact James Taylor is on this planet," he says. "He's a wonderful musician, a wonderful brother and one of my best friends."

OK, then, there it is: Being James Taylor's brother is a good thing. But it's hardly the only thing -- far from it. Livingston Taylor -- the third of five Taylor boys born to that illustrious North Carolina/New England musical clan and just two-plus years younger than James -- has had a career that, while not as commercially dynamic as that of his brother, may be more exciting on its own terms.

In addition to being the Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University for the past three years -- he lives right on campus in a dormitory apartment -- Taylor is a professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, teaching a course titled "Stage Performance Techniques." He also tours extensively, doing about 100 shows a year.

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Liv Taylor, as any fan (and as he himself will tell you), is at his best in front of an audience. There's some intangible quality -- a sense of connectedness, an easy rapport -- that's never quite been captured on vinyl. What strikes you most is how much fun he appears to be having as he jumps among three instruments (guitar, piano and banjo).

"All I ever cared about was being good; I never cared about any other aspect of [the music industry]," he says.

Two weeks ago, Taylor did what he often does for his East Coast gigs: He flew himself down in his 1964 Cessna 205 (named Bertha) to perform at Appel Farm in Elmer. The audience, which ranged in age from 7 to 70, was mostly made up of die-hard fans. They savored every morsel he dished out, beginning with the dramatic 10-minute poem -- a maritime epic that takes place during the slave trade of the 1800s -- to the hysterical banjo version of the theme from Shaft. In between, there were tenderhearted cover ballads ("The Way You Look Tonight") and bitingly witty folk-pop originals ("Not as Herbal as I Ought to Be"). No one even cared that he didn't play his one big radio hit, 1978's "I Will Be in Love With You." With three standing ovations, the show was, for lack of a better term, a love-fest.

"For me, it's like being with family, so I'm enormously relaxed onstage," he says, adding that people often cry at his shows when he does sad numbers, "which says simply that they feel safe enough to cry." Once, at a large venue, he spotted a woman with tears running down her face during his aching rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." He slowed down for a minute, caught her eye and said quietly, ŒIt makes you cry, doesn't it?' She nodded yes, "and for me, to make that connection with one person in a room of 3,000, was what it's all about."

And managing that in a way that appears effortless is actually the result of "doing it and shaping it and honing it three times a week for 33 years," Taylor says.

"I always knew it would take a lifetime, that I just had to hold on and work and study, and later on in life, I'd get to be good, " he says. "To transfer emotion and feeling to people through music is the product of a lifetime of study. And life is the ultimate cross-training -- there's always more to learn."

Livingston Taylor plays Sat., Nov. 2, 7 and 10 p.m., $23, with Chris and Meredith Thompson, Tin Angel, 20 S. Second St., 215-928-0770.