A Talk With David Lasley
Continued from Page 1

TOURING WITH JT

LS: Do you sing with James Taylor more than any other singer?

DL: Arnold's been, of anybody, the longest. Since '77, he's only missed I believe two years. I had the '77 through '82 or '83, then stopped until 89, came back in '90, so I don't know how many cumulative I've got. It's probably 17 years or something.

LS: What about when you go out on a tour, how do you prepare for that?

DL: A tour now can be anywhere from like four months to six and a half months. One of the years we did, I believe it was '91, we started rehearsals in April, went out early May, and they extended the tour and we actually had Thanksgiving together in Boston or somewhere, so that was a very long tour. For most years, we rehearsed on the Vineyard. Last year we rehearsed in New York.

LS: What's the process?

DL: Rather than beat one song into the ground, we tend to do it a few times and kind of try to get it close. You run a lot of songs, more than enough. James writes them on little cards and pieces of paper and things, and they're usually laid on top of the grand piano, and James tries to put the songs in order in something that looks like a set list that will make sense. And then we try it that way, and then he'll maybe change some songs around, rearrange an order. And before you know it, it kind of falls into place and you have a show. For me, I'm definitely a tape person, and I go home and study it like I'm studying for the test. I like to write everything down and make marks, and little by little, I dispose of the notes. Once in a while, I'll cheat, very rarely. "Jump Up," I needed to cheat on that with a little card, because for some reason the opening line always threw me, "fun" and "run" would confuse me. And when we were doing "Promised Land," there are a lot of words in that song. Lots, like lots, like a board this big, both sides, and they all ran together. They're really fun to do but like [singing] right away I bought me a through train ticket da da, something, da da da, da, da da, something, I can't even do it, Albuquerque, downtown Birmingham, Albuquerque, New Orleans, what town do I go to next?

DL and LS: (laughter)

LS: Does the order ever change when you play one night in one place and one night in another?

DL: No, it's usually the same. In fact, most performers will, if they're hoarse or something, they'll just pull out four songs anywhere. James isn't like that. James very much sticks to the set. He usually wouldn't take a song out without putting something else in its place. The one thing he might do is if we get rain, he will take the two acts and combine them and make it one long show with no intermission and maybe take out one or two songs, but either way you're going to get, usually, anywhere between 25 and 28 songs.

LS: Do you have a couple of favorite James Taylor songs, not necessarily that you've sung on, but just over the years?

DL: Absolutely, if I were to record -- well I did record one, actually, on "Missin' Twenty Grand," "Looking for Love on Broadway." But my absolute favorites are "Walking Man" and my most favorite is from the Apple album, called "Brighten Your Night with My Day." And pretty much everything off of "Gorilla," just kills me.

LS: What was your favorite song from the last tour?

DL: The saddest one was "Daddy's All Gone," because James dedicated it to Carlos Vega, but I think the one I enjoyed the most actually was "Jump Up." Those two just happened to be Arnold and I, but there were other years that I loved things where just Val and I would sing something, or Kate and I would sing something.

LS: Like what?

DL: There was a funny song that Val and I would do about doggies. I'm gonna say "Old Paint," but that's not right. It's a song about -- oh lord -- it's about a donkey (laughs). It's hard to remember, but it was really fun. And then Kate and I did "Hey Mister That's Me Up on the Jukebox." Also "Long Ago and Far Away" is one I enjoy singing like probably just about the most. It just sits in a place in my voice and in everybody's voice and his voice, such a beautiful thing, you know?

LS: During "Live by Request," were you all prepared to sing any song anybody requested?

DL: Gee, you know, we really were. We had rehearsed a lot. I think there might have been certain choices, you know, but no one really knew what the exact songs were. We might have known what we weren't going to do because we hadn't done it in a long time. But there's certain ones you figure you pretty much have to do. That's, I think, one of the problems as you have more and more records, more and more hits and more and more famous songs. If you're doing cities that you've done each year, you can vary your set list, but if you happen to get a city where you're playing for audiences that haven't seen you ever or maybe not in seven years, they want to hear the hits. So those are instances where James would insert something because he knows they want to hear something, basically "Handyman" AND "Everyday." And "Never Die Young," which is also one of my favorite songs, by the way. Now that I think about it, that's my favorite song to sing live.

LS: I noticed in a couple of JT concert tapes that every so often you kind of go like this [playing a guitar]. Do you play the guitar?

DL: No, not at all, no, just the piano. That's my Kootch imitation.

DL and LS: (laughter)

LS: And when you tour, there's one bus?

DL: There's a musician's bus and a singer's bus and a crew bus.

LS: Like Clifford Carter would be on one bus and you would be on another bus?

DL: Right, exactly.

LS: And where would James be?

DL: James is a singer so he would go on the singer's bus. We have bunks.

LS: Private bunks or is it like a slumber party?

DL: No no, it's like a submarine.

LS: Oh (laughing).

DL: There's bunks on either side and they have a little curtain that closes, and they actually are fairly comfortable.

LS: What's the worst thing about the road?

DL: The scariest, I think, is once in a while, you'll be, say, in Birmingham, and maybe you'll go to a movie or you'll be shopping and it'll be like ten to four and you're going, "Oh my God, is it a day off?" or you'll be in the middle of a movie and you'll say, "Oh is it a day off, or is there a show today?" and you really actually forget. So you have a call sheet each day, and I usually tear it off and stick it in my back pocket so I always know in case I panic. There have been times when I've had to say to somebody, "Is it Friday or Thursday?" 'Cause it's five, four, three months into the thing. Of course, you get a break in the middle. You usually have like ten days off if it's a real long one. It's tiring, though. It's amazing to think that James does that kind of a show where he sings so much and so hard and he's always in such good voice. It's rare to hear him be in bad voice or even reach for a note.

I always laugh when I say, "Well I think I've been on the road too long" when I can look out the window and I can know by the skyline where we are. You know, I don't even know by the tour book, I don't even look anymore. Honestly, I know what Pittsburgh looks like, I know what's Buffalo, I know Buffalo from Syracuse, I know Rochester from Syracuse. It's a trip to be turning a corner and you feel like, oh, we're turning the corner before the hotel in Memphis. You say, wow, we've been on the road too long, haven't we, when you know by the sound of the streets, like in Philly in the bus you get the vibrations. You say, OK, we're on that brick street, that's the street before the hotel, and pretty soon he's going to pull up and go squeak and the final brake and the luggage door will open and, you know, wow, we're here, thank God!

LS: Do you all hang out with each other on the road when you're not performing?

DL: Well, you know, we're on the same bus, first of all, so we always know we're going to see each other, and we get "visit time" on the bus on the way to the venue and of course at sound check, and the show. We hang but not like... the thing is there really isn't a lot of free time. But we're all really close and I think that's the sweet part of it. I mean, of course, there's definitely days when... but everybody's very understanding if you're having a bad day. And, you know, the truth is there aren't very many bad days. That must be something to be said for James. I mean there are sad days, you know, there are anniversaries of when you lost somebody -- like during the '97 tour, I lost my mom, or this year ['98] when my sister Judy died, and of course, we thought about Carlos Vega. And you have your times when you think of Don [Grolnick] or it can be anything.

LS: When you dress on the stage, not you specifically, but all the singers, does someone tell you what to wear?

DL: We have a wardrobe trunk and we bring a lot of things, meaning maybe six or eight things. We tend to stick to black a lot. James would never tell you what to wear. Even if he hated something, he probably wouldn't tell you. He might, actually, not love something, like I had these print pants, and every so often, he'd make a funny reference during a show to my "pajamas," but he'd never tell me not to wear them.

LS: James seems to wear the same outfit at every concert (laughs). Does he always wear that blue shirt and the brown pants?

DL: Actually it seems like that but really he has various shades. He doesn't change, you know, an amazing amount but he'll have like a gray-blue and a blue and a gray and he'll have maybe different colors of khakis, or if he likes something, he'll buy like more than one pair or he'll have a gray khaki or a light khaki and a dark khaki.

LS: So it just looks the same.

DL: Yeah, it kind of seems that way but actually, in fact, he's a big launderer.

LS: (big laugh) He does his own?

DL: They all like to go to the venue and do their laundry, 'cause they work out a lot and they've always got aerobic clothes and things.

LS: Do you have any observations about James' fans over the years?

DL: I know it's a cliché at this point but the age range is literally from 3-1/2 years old to 78 or 98, and it's pretty multi-cultural, more multi-racial, or whatever. It hasn't always been that, but this year there's a big mix of age and race, more than there really was before. It's an interesting thing. I think it's something about his music. Maybe we won't know or understand for ten years, or twenty years even, the impact it had when you hear "You've Got a Friend." I mean, it doesn't matter what's on the radio now, it doesn't matter who's number one. When that song's on, it's timeless.

LS: What are your plans for another CD of your own?

DL: Many people in Japan have wanted to put out my two EMI records on CD. And then there's the Laura Nyro project which is half done, "David Lasley Sings Laura Nyro." And I've been trying for a retrospective going from '66 up to my record from '90, plus demos I've written recently and then a couple new songs I wanted to cut. I would like it to be my favorite choices of things that I've sung over the years. Some of them might be really awful and scratchy, you know, demos of things, but it would be fun.

LS: In closing, I'll just say that you've had quite an impressive career.

DL: It's amazing when I look at my resume. Growing up listening to many of the people I've worked with, being a kid, loving them, worshipping them, then becoming a singer/songwriter and having songs recorded by them and singing background for them... you know, it's just....

LS: ... amazing!

Laura Stegman is a writer and public relations consultant in Los Angeles. Thanks to Hugh Stegman for scanning the images and special thanks to David Lasley for providing all the images and sounds.

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