Except that Taylor, who makes his home with wife Kim and twin sons Henry and Rufus in the Berkshires near his perennial summer concert home Tanglewood, has no plans to do any such thing.
Since his boffo tour last summer with Carole King, in which the old pals toured arenas packed with nostalgic fans reminiscing on the golden era of the confessional singer-songwriter, Taylor’s been on a tear.
He has made several high-profile television appearances, including a buzzed-about duet with the Zac Brown Band on the Academy of Country Music Awards in April in which he performed on Brown’s “Colder Weather’’ before segueing into his own cowboy lullaby classic “Sweet Baby James’’ to rapturous response.
“We rehearsed just the right amount so that it was still fresh, but we were on top of the material,’’ he says. “It just happened to feel really good.’’
As does the ongoing support he’s received from country artists like Alan Jackson, Vince Gill, Kenny Chesney and others who have cited him as an influence.
“I learned so much from Tom Rush in Boston in Club 47 in those early days and from Dylan and Ry Cooder and Bonnie Raitt. To hear other people treat you in that same way as I thought of those people, it gives you a sense of continuity and of being carried forward,’’ he says. “It’s really as much as you can ask for, is to be embraced by and to be influential to other players.’’
That influence was also recognized recently by President Obama who awarded Taylor the National Medal of Arts. “That’s a champagne appropriate event,’’ says Taylor, who was able to have his mother come to Washington for the ceremony.
During the spring he hit the road with his son Ben for a month of dates — “He amazes me, I’m so proud of him,’’ Taylor says, beaming — and played a series of four shows at Carnegie Hall with friends like Bette Midler, Sting, Steve Martin, and Alison Krauss. And of course, he has been touring the country with his own stalwart backing band as he does almost every summer.
