Extract from the Berkshire Eagle. Link to article http://www.berkshireeagle.com/stories/in-this-moment-james-taylor-and-bonnie-raitt-will-take-the-stage-at-tanglewood,512279

This fall, Taylor will come off the touring circuit, retreating to the Berkshire family homestead in the town of Washington, and The Barn, a state-of-the-art recording studio, to begin work on his next album. It’s a collection of songs he came to love while hanging out with his pals and the band he formed with his brother, Livingston, during their high school years in Chapel Hill, N.C.

“I’ve lived with those early songs for such a long time, they’ve worn such a groove in my brain,” he said. “I really want to record some of them, basically a guitar and voice interpretation of these classics.” After “picking a whole bunch,” Taylor will whittle them down to about an hour of tracks that inspired him as part of his early musical education.

But he’s keeping the release date flexible following the lengthy gestation of his most recent album, “Before This World,” in June 2015, his first recording of original material in 13 years.

The Concord Music CD, vinyl LP and download was his 17th studio release was the first to hit No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, but he had to hole up in Newport, R.I., isolated from the outside world, in order to finish writing the songs.

“It has to be open-ended,” Taylor acknowledged. “I’ve learned my lesson over and over again. When you set a deadline and book a tour to support it, you always blow through the deadline, finishing the album without a tour after having a tour without an album.”

“I don’t know how these songs will find their way into my live performances,” he said. “I’m going to take it as it comes, we’ll have our first sessions in late September and see how many tunes we can get done in a week. Then we’ll book another week, start mixing things in, and then we’ll talk to a record company.”

Have a wonderful JT-filled summer all those who have tickets. We miss him in the UK.